End of the Road
We’ve taken a bit of a break from the micro-planning in Bainoli village because there is some big religious festival going on now (6th – 12th) and all the villagers are going up to a special temple (7km away on the top of the mountain) everyday and so there isn’t anyone to work with. However, that doesn’t mean that we’ve been having holidays here, we still haven’t finalized which villages we are going to work with in the larger watershed so we’ve been spending our days traveling out to visit each of the villages, meet with some of the villagers, gather some basic information about the village to see if it fits our criteria, and if so, organize follow-up meetings to describe the project to everyone and see if they want to participate in the project.
Today Supna, Vimla and I were charged with going out to revisit two villages in the very upper reaches of the watershed (Saan and Kot) that we had visited previously and scheduled a follow-up meeting in. Since we don’t have our own vehicle here (which is a real pain!), we’ve had to rely on local transportation (busses and share-jeeps) to go everywhere. Given the remote location, the system is surprisingly good, but still a lot less than what we ideally want. Almost all the roads in the region have some sort of daily transportation service, but the schedule, frequency and mode (bus and/or jeep) varies greatly depending on where you’re going. For example, to go from Mayali (where we’re staying) to the upper reaches of the Hilong Gard (Hindi for river) watershed, there are jeeps that go out to Amkoti (a bazaar 90% of the way to the end of the watershed) almost hourly, and busses that go at 10:00am and 3:00pm. More importantly, almost all of these return back to Mayali so getting a return ride isn’t too hard (though after 4:00pm the jeeps start thinning out, and if you still haven’t gotten back by the time the 6:00pm bus leaves, your only choices are to spend the night in a village or walk the 12km back in the dark). However, the transportation options out to the upper reaches of the Lustar Gard watershed are much fewer, jeeps leave Mayali at 9:00am and 10:00am, and there’s one bus that goes at 12:00pm.
Saan (2km from the end of the road) is only 12.5km up the river from Mayali, but to get there, the winding mountain road travels 24km, and to make it worse, the curves, streams, landslides, potholes and generally poor condition of the dirt road means that the trip takes about 2hrs one-way (slow even by Indian standards). By slightly rushing our morning schedule, we managed to be ready to go at 9:45am this morning (we’d been aiming for 8:45am, but morning are slow around here) and thus caught the 10:00am jeep, but since the only return transportation goes at 11:00am, 12:00pm and 2:00pm (the three vehicles turn around as soon as they reach the end), even by taking the last bus back, we only had two hours to get everything done.
The previous time we’d gone out to Saan, the jeep going was one with a canvas roof (covering plenty of metal bars) and the only space available was in the back, so not only was it a 2 hr journey, but an extremely bumpy (it’s worse the further back you are in the vehicle) and dusty (the canvas flap across the back did little to keep out the choking dust) one. While we survived, it certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience, and so this time I was glad to find that the jeep going was a nice new jeep, and even though I still ended up in the back, at least it was properly enclosed and had decent shocks.
The size and layout of the jeeps here is extremely consistent. They’re roughly the size of a small SUV, with a bench seat in front for the driver and passenger, a bench seat in the middle that would hold 3 comfortably (4 squeezed) and then small benches along each side of the “trunk” area that hold 2 people each. If these vehicles were in Canada, they’d take only 8 (1+3+4) passengers, but it doesn’t work like that here in India where standard capacity is usually around 12 (2+4+6). Indians are generally smaller so while the extra people certainly means less room, it’s not uncomfortable – you just don’t have any room to move, and you’re sandwiched in between two people you often haven’t met before (though Indians have no concept of personal space so it’s not an issue here).
The other important thing about the jeeps is that while they tend to leave at regular times, they only do this so that people know when to show up, and not because they have a schedule to follow. If the jeep isn’t full (or overfull) by the time the general departure time comes, then the driver will continue to wait in hopes of getting more passengers to fill it up. While waiting for passengers, the drivers tend to stand next to their jeep, shouting the name of the towns they’re going to at regular intervals, and most annoyingly, sticking their hand through the open window to blow the horn. It’s another example of the Indian obsession with the horn, while it does seem to provide a little benefit (people from afar are informed that a jeep is going), in a bazar town with multiple jeeps going in different directions simultaneously, it basically ends up meaning that there is constantly someone (or several people) blowing their horns creating an endless racket, but there’s no benefit in it as there’s no way to distinguish one horn from another so if you’re waiting for a particular jeep, you don’t know which horn blast is for you. The busses act similarly, blowing their horns (big, loud air-horns) upon arrival and departure at each stop, but since there’s fewer busses and they tend to have a more standard schedule, it’s almost possible to wait down in our rooms until we hear the bus horn and then rush up and catch the bus. However, in cities/towns on the main roads, there’s a lot more busses and so the same problem as with the Mayali jeeps occurs – you get a lot of noise pollution and little/no value. Rudraprayag is like that, I still remember the first night I spent in the mountains back in January, staying in Rudraprayag and being woken up at 6:00am by bus horns that didn’t cease until 10:00am – not a pleasant experience to say the least.
Anyway, as per usual, the jeep still wasn’t “full” by 10:00 and so we didn’t leave for Saan until around 10:15. By that time, the driver had managed to find 11 passengers and so while there was still some “space”, he was willing to satisfy our pleas to leave rather than wait further in hopes of finding one more passenger (and thus Rs. 10 or 15). The first part of the trip follows the main road up to the local administrative center at the top of the hill, so the road is great on this section, but it only lasts about 5km. Past that, the road to Saan splits off and heads out on its own. The first part of this road is also in decent shape as there are many villages in this section and so there is enough traffic/demand for a good road, and more importantly, the terrain isn’t too bad (steep, but made of terraced farm fields rather than sheer rocky outcrop). However, around KM 7, the road ducks into a stream-carved gorge and then out around a rocky, forest ridge, and the road become a one-lane (rather than 1.5 lane) dirt track with innumerable rocks and potholes. There’s very little room to navigate around the bumps, one side is a sheer rock face up and the opposite is a sheer cliff plunging down to the river 200m below. However, this doesn’t phase the drivers (for them these conditions are typical) so while they do slow down a bit, we still make healthy progress (unless you meet an oncoming truck/bus which then requires some careful navigating to find a place where you can pass, and even there the gap between vehicles is better measured in cm). This lasts for about 3km, and then there’s another 3km section of good road through a few more villages. Here we dropped of a couple passengers, but picked up a few more so in the end there were more people in the jeep, and even less space than before. This wasn’t anything new though, and by now I’d become fully accustomed to being squished into the back of jeeps. However, the passengers kept on arriving (turned out there was a big festival going on that day at the temple at the end of the road so everyone was going there) so by the time we passed the last village in the stretch, we had 15 (4+5+6) people in the jeep – and another 3 on the roof!
Past the villages, the road went condition plummeted, going from decent, by-passing bad and horrible and becoming simply atrocious. I don’t think you could find even 1 square meter of flat surface on that road, and the fact that there are several little streams dumping out onto it creates a huge muddy mess where you can’t even see the bumps until it’s too late. Average speed dropped from the mountain norm of 25km/h to around 10km/h, in many ways I think it would have been easier to walk. However, we still had another 6km to go, and trying to stop the jeep & squeeze out of my little corner just so I could walk through the mud and water didn’t seem worth it.
Things were going alright (slow and uncomfortable, but I’d only had my head slammed into the (low) ceiling three times) when we rounded a curve and found a group five women walking along the side of the road. They were all dressed up in beautiful saris, and certainly looked out of place. As we neared, they turned to look at us, and with pleading eyes, stuck out their hands to wave down the jeep – they wanted a ride.
In the mountains, passengers are rarely refused, the diver gets more money from more passengers, and at the same time, fulfills their informal “civic duty” to provide transportation to all those who want it (there’s no other options in these areas, os it is critical for the people living in these remote areas). The people on the side of the road want in, and the diver wants to take them, the only problem comes when trying to figure out where to fit them. I understood the ladies’ plight, but couldn’t see how we were possibly going to fit them in (women don’t ride on the roof, and certainly not well dressed ladies), and both the driver and women seemed to recognize the problem as well. However, the ladies were persistent and the driver wanted to be polite (and profitable) and so after some discussion, the back door was eventually popped and three of my trunk companions clambered out. Into this gap piled the 5 women, and after a lot of squishing and rearranging, we managed to get everyone completely in the truck so the door could be shut. I’ve never been that close to that many people before (not even with friends/family), and while it wasn’t really pleasant, it was tolerable – mostly because everyone (even the locals) was laughing at how absurd the situation was. On the outside, one of the displaced men climbed up to join the others on the roof, while the remaining two grabbed the roof-racks, jumped up onto the rear bumper and basically just hung off the back of the jeep. With all 23 of us in/on, the driver set off again. There was a lot of laughing and rapid-fire Garwhali conversation, but no one seemed to be complaining so we just kept going.
We only had to go 2km before we hit the next village and unloaded a pair from the roof, and by the time we arrived in Saan (a further 2km, 10 minutes) we were back down to “normal” passenger levels (16). Extracting myself from the truck (I was furthest in) was quite a process, but in the end I made it out only stepping on half of the other people (which was quite a feat). Standing up straight and stretching out after the 2hr journey felt absolutely heavenly, and I just stood there for a few minutes enjoying the space while the jeep drove away. I’d thought the first trip to Saan had been memorable, but this one was even more so…
The meetings were uneventful (literally – no one showed up!) and it was only after serious effort and 1.5hrs of trying to track people down that we managed to gather a group of villagers together to sort out what had happened. They gave tons of excuses and didn’t seem to really be interested in organizing themselves (and hence participating in our project), but when we questioned them on it, they all instantly replied that they wanted to be involved, and so minutes before we had to run off to catch the last bus back to Mayali, we managed to set up yet another meeting for Saan. I have serious doubts about whether this third meeting will work, but the saying goes, “third time’s the charm”, and the unfortunate truth is that we have no other options for upper reach villages in Lustergard, so from our perspective we need this to work. After all the time/pain it had taken to get out there, I was quite frustrated that essentially nothing had happened, but that’s the nature of our work these days, and since we have no control over the project, there’s nothing we can do about it.
With the work done for the day (and time run out), we hurried back down to the road to catch the bus. However, the excitement for the day wasn’t over, because as soon as we reached the road, huge dark clouds swarmed down the valley and unleashed a full-blown hail storm! The ground was soon white, covered with marble-sized hailstones, but after a few minutes it changed to rain, and not even 15 minutes after starting, the storm had blown away. Soon afterwards, the bus arrived, and we clambered aboard. The trip back was uneventful – bumpier and slower than in the jeep, but at least here I had a (small) seat (with almost no legroom) to myself. Small comforts in this crazy world. After all this in one day, I’m curious (scared) to see what our next trip out has in store, all I can guarantee is that it’s certainly going to be another adventure!
This is the online home of one Shane Warner, my place to attempt to tell some of my stories, as well as just spout off whatever comes to mind.
