Tiger Woods!

In the forests of the night
The ochre glow of a late winter evening fades into a misty twilight as my overcrowded “safari van” clatters its way towards the forest gate of Ranthambore National Park. It is the end of another dusty ride around the expansive sanctuary but although I’ve spent two wonderful days roaming around the beautiful forest, its most famous resident has so far proved elusive. To try and liven up the downcast mood, some of my fellow-tourists start reminiscing about more productive quests for an appointment with our eremitic host. Our voluble guide eagerly chips in with his wide repertoire of hair-raising anecdotes, perhaps in an attempt to transmute our disappointment to gratitude! The bantering continues, gathering enthusiasm and imaginativeness with every new narrative until one of the raconteurs starts gesticulating frantically towards the road ahead. Unable to see anything through the hazy veil that has descended all around us, I put down my companion’s frenzy to the tall tales he has been subjected to. However, my judgment turns out to be a little premature – my torpid eyes eventually wake up to the majestic gait emerging from the mist…We gape spellbound as it ambles its way down the trail, its every regal tread an embodiment of power and grace. It is just a few feet away now, turning some of us more than a little jittery but the beast itself appears least interested in the commotion it has generated – a patronizing sidelong glance is the only recognition our presence merits, as the lord of the jungle continues his royal march past our humble van, into the darkness of the night.

What is it about the tiger that leaves such a powerful imprint on the human imagination? Is it the fear that this supreme predator evokes or the courage that it inspires? The outrageous beauty of its colors and stripes? The sheer perfection of its design? The elegance of that stride? The searing intensity of those eyes?

Whatever the cause, the effect itself is beyond dispute – and the droves of tourists who descend on Ranthambore every year provide as cogent a testimony to it as the words of William Blake.

A Blend of History and Nature
But Ranthambore is more than just about tigers, although the striped beast is undoubtedly its star attraction. Spread across about 1300 square KMs in Eastern Rajasthan, the Park is among India’s largest tracts of bush forest and for that reason, a unique habitat for the Bengal tiger, which is more typically found in the denser dry deciduous forests of Central and Southern India. Another novelty is the thousand-year old fort, which winds around central parts of the reserve, seasoning the tourist’s already overflowing plate with some history and culture – this is, after all, Rajasthan!

The sandstone fort boasts of a hoary lineage that dates back to Prithviraj Chauhan, whose grandson, Govind, is said to have been its first occupant. The fort’s strategic location and soaring walls helped it repulse an impressive list of invaders including Alauddin Khalji, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak and Feroze Tughlaq before it succumbed to the Mughals in the 1500s who, in turn passed it on to the Maharaja of Jaipur in the 17th Century.

Ranthambore was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1955 and was also one of the 12 original Project Tiger reserves. The mammalian diversity of the Park mirrors its significance as a premier conservation site - apart from its flagship attraction, the forest is home to leopards, sloth bears, jackals and hyenas among the carnivores, besides a wide variety of ungulates, the most prominent of which are the Nilgai (Blue Bull) and the majestic Sambhar. Ornithologists have no cause for complaint either - the sanctuary’s woods and lakes shelter over 250 species of birds, making it an important bird sanctuary in its own right. Easily the most visible of these, is the plucky Rufous Treepie, which is famous for its catwalks on the top of safari vans, strutting its brilliant plumage of black, saffron and white to cheer up tourists who’ve had no luck with the sanctuary’s more famous attractions! Other fascinating water-birds such the Painted Stork and the Purple Heron can be seen in large numbers along Ranthambore’s many lakes and water-bodies. The Crested Serpent Eagle and the Fishing Eagle are among the raptors that crown the avian hierarchy.

The resplendent diversity of the Park’s flora and fauna is reason enough for its popularity but what really makes Ranthambore stand out from comparable wildlife destinations is the convenience of its location (6 hours by road from Delhi and about 15 hours from Mumbai) and the “friendly” reputation of its typically reclusive inhabitants. In fact, tigers in Ranthambore are so used to human presence that safari parties are often treated to hunting demonstrations in broad daylight - among the eye-witness accounts that have been immortalized in the local folklore is that of a tiger and a crocodile playing tug of war with a hapless Sambhar! The gruesome spectacle was even captured on video, copies of which are now aggressively peddled in Ranthambore’s souvenir shops with imaginative titles such as “Tiger versus Crocodile” “Clash of the Titans” etc. Who needs National Geographic?!

In the Wilderness
However, for all its attractions, Ranthambore could do with better management. Getting a seat on a safari involves figuring out a labyrinthine racket that leaves many an “un-enterprising” tourist stranded at the forest gate. The ride is far from a lesson in sensitive tourism. Tourists are ferried across the jungle in a raucous “Canter”, which is a minivan relieved of its top and hollowed out to fit in about 25 passengers. This is usually the perfect recipe for acrimonious debates among its inhabitants, leaving the hassled guide to mediate heated, but poorly informed, exchanges of opinion on the best strategy to spot a tiger. The guides, for their part, display neither enthusiasm nor knowledge – on many trips, it is, in fact, hard to figure out whom the guide might be! The Park authorities could draw many useful lessons here from organizations such as Jungle Lodges of Karnataka, which has emerged as a pioneer of responsible ecotourism in the country.

Apart from tourist conveniences which, perhaps, ought not to be allowed to hijack the management agenda in a National Park, the sanctuary also appears to be facing some grave threats to conservation. Several poaching incidents are believed to have occurred over the years although the Park authorities do not appear very comfortable discussing them. The locals are more forthcoming with the details, claiming that the official census of 1999, which put the tiger population at about 45, is a significant overestimate. A particularly distressing signal of the Park’s state of affairs is the alleged disappearance of Bambooram, the tiger which made headlines after having been spotted by President Clinton…Alarming portents for what was once considered to be a role model of conservation.

Looking Ahead
Nevertheless, while concerns remain, Ranthambore continues to be a compelling destination. Tourists to Rajasthan find Ranthambore a good break from the monotony of the state’s never-ending forts and the Park’s convenient location near Sawai Madhopur on the Mumbai-Delhi railway line, appeals to weekend visitors as well. The relentless construction of hotels all along the Ranthambore road is just one indication of the steady northward movement of tourist arrivals.

Although Ranthambore would no longer qualify as a benchmark for eco-friendly tourism, the ever-increasing visitors do check the local population from falling prey to the easy temptations of the animal parts trade. Most of them now agree that tourism offers a steadier income over the long run than the short-term gains of conniving with the poaching racket. Besides, the messages of conservation and protection seem to have hit home, generating an awareness, and even some pride, about just how crucial a role they play in the preservation of their endangered mascot.
More than anything else, it is this popular local sentiment that breeds the hope Ranthambore’s beleaguered beasts will survive the hunter’s rapacious gun as well as the tourist’s indiscreet lens.

Seasonal Melodies – Chennai’s Margazhi Mahotsavam

A Winter of Content
There could be worse places to spend your winter than Chennai. The city’s notoriously unforgiving weather, assumes a distinctly agreeable character for a brief period between November and February, which is also marked by a number of colorful festivals such as Navaratri, Diwali, Christmas and Pongal. Unsurprising then, that this is also the time when Chennai’s entertainment almanac is at its cluttered best…Diwali and Pongal are occasions to pamper its celluloid-addicted denizens with the year’s biggest block-busters. The city’s many colleges add to the colours of the season with the buzz of their festivals and savvy marketers flood the newspapers with advertisements of shrewdly timed fairs and exhibitions. Sports fans, too, get as slice of the action given the a number of high profile sporting events that are attracted to Chennai thanks to its benign winter and its infectious enthusiasm for sports. The most prestigious of these is the recently re-christened Chennai Open, a part of the ATP tennis tour with an odd cricket test or one-dayer being thrown in for added measure. However, amidst all this festive bustle, it is the city’s annual tribute to a hoary and very traditional art form that gets pride of place as the brightest star of the city’s cultural firmament – the December Music Season, a show-case of Carnatic Music and other South Indian classical arts on a scale that has few parallels anywhere in the world.



Soul Searching
A lazy afternoon at a dingy Mylapore auditorium replays the familiar scene of an aspiring Carnatic musician displaying his wares to a frosty audience of elderly curmudgeons, many of whom are peeved at having their afternoon siesta ruined by the raucous youngster. The tenacious musician, however, continues undaunted, inspired by the thought of these very philistines elbowing each other out of the ticket counter to hear him sing, once his assiduity is rewarded with the elusive grace of Godess Saraswathi. Raga Begada is taken up for elaboration and the boisterous artiste breezes his way through its tortuous notes, smugly dodging the raga’s many pitfalls with a knowing smile on his face. The tedious vocal acrobatics last for a while until the singer accidentally glides through a phrase reminiscent of the opening stanza of “Nadopasana”, an evocative krithi (composition) of Saint Thyagaraja, Carnatic Music’s most revered figure. The krithi’s lofty message, extolling the worship (upasana) of music (nada), serves to remind the vocalist of the waywardness of his own musical approach. Chastened, he quickly abandons his exuberant exhibitionism and begins a soulful search for melodic subtlety marked by a complete surrender to his music. In the process, the audience is turned around from its indifference to a state of enraptured bliss – hairs stand on end, goose-pimples ripple across the auditorium, coffee cups at the nearby canteen pause near mesmerized lips…after years of perseverance and toil spent grappling with the intricacies of sruti (tone) and laya (rhythm), the artiste has finally succeeded in tapping the essence of his art…

For all its sophistication and the technical demands it makes on its practitioners, Carnatic Music (or Karnataka Sangeetham as the traditionalists like to refer to it) is finally judged on the basis of the performer’s ability to capture bhavam (emotion) and bhakti (devotion). The unsurpassed popularity of M S Subbulakshmi, for example, is more attributable to the weighty emotional import of her music than its technical complexity.

Flavours of the Season
Given such an amorphous touchstone, it is perhaps only in the fitness of things that Carnatic Music’s most prestigious event is marked by a degree of disorder that would put Babel and Pandemonium to shame. Performances being cancelled at the last minute, artistes finding themselves booked at more than one venue at the same time, accompanists deciding to play truant, amplifications systems going berserk, chairs giving way under the weight of unsuspecting backsides, snakes cozily winding themselves around rasikas’ (music fans) legs, traffic jams outside various auditoria clogging the city’s arterial roads…. to list just some of the innumerable manifestations of Chaos, which grace the “Margazhi Mahotsavam”, to give the December Music Season its proper Tamizh name.

Margazhi is one of the 12 months of the Tamizh calendar and roughly stretches between mid-December and mid-January. The month is considered an extremely auspicious one, appropriate for undertaking activities directed towards the achievement of freedom from worldly bondage. In other words, an ideal time for the practice of art forms with a high spiritual content such as Carnatic Music and Bharathanatyam. Given these diktats of tradition and the temperateness of the climate, Margazhi had no trouble emerging as an ideal time to conduct the Music Season.
“The Season” came into being in 1927 with the inauguration of a Music Conference organized as part of the Congress Party’s annual session in Chennai. This was followed up with the establishment of the Music Academy the subsequent year, which has continued the tradition since. Building on the Music Academy’s lead, a number of “Sabhas”, or institutions engaged in the organization of fine arts performances, sprung up, primarily around the George Town area. However, the epicenter of the Season gradually shifted to Mylapore, largely on account of the area’s high concentration of legal luminaries, who were also great patrons of music. Carnatic Music is naturally the focal point of the Season although it also includes a number of other performing arts such as Bharathanatyam and Tamizh theatre besides providing a sampler of classical arts from all over the country.

From the 3-4 sabhas that used to conduct fortnight long programs in December during the formative years of the event, the Season has expanded to a mind-boggling number of over 75 at last count, cramming in close to 2500 performance in the 4-5 weeks between late November and early January. However, many of these grandiloquently titled Sabhas are nothing but fronts for pushy parents to promote their children, leaving the worthier objective of promoting genuine talent to a couple of dozen more reputable institutions. The season really revolves around the “Annual Festivals” of these established sabhas, some of which are of relatively recent vintage while many others, such as the Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, go back more than a hundred years. Irrespective of its history, each sabha brings its own unique flavour to the Season….thus, the Krishna Gana Sabha leans towards dance programs while Bharat Kalachar, lays an emphasis on promoting youthful talent. Some recent entrants into the fray have sought to create niches for themselves by broadcasting performances on television and in keeping with Chennai’s stature as an IT stronghold, there is a also a bunch of Sabhas which have started web-casting concerts for the benefit of tech-savvy music lovers who are unable to make it to Chennai for the Season!

If music be the love of food
The daily program typically commences with a lecture-demonstration, which is an opportunity for bookish musicologists to engage in esoteric discussions that can rapidly descend from the musical to the unprintable! Morning concerts following the lec-dem are reserved for ageing senior artistes or critically acclaimed musicians whose caliber is beyond the comprehension of all but the most discerning listeners. Emerging talents with good PR skills and an access to the Sabha Secretary’s ear sometimes manage to corner this slot. Else their lot is consigned to the ignominy of the “afternoon concert” which is Carnatic Music’s equivalent of the Purgatory...the inconvenience of the timing and the artistes’ own lack of marquee-value mean that the masses, alongwith their generous purse strings and easily won applause, are nowhere to be seen. That leaves the poor youngsters at the mercy of irascible geriatrics whose continual gripes swing back and forth between the abjectness of the performance and the meanness of the sabha secretary’s decision to switch off the air-conditioning! Matters are not much improved by the heady aromas of sambaar and coffee wafting into the hall – the artiste’s lengthy afternoon ordeal is often compounded by the sight of his few supportive friends and family members jettisoning a wearisome alaapana in Shankarabharanam for a delicious plate of Masala Dosai at the adjoining Sabha Canteen!

The Sabha Canteen! The butt of many a joke but perhaps more integral to the Music Season than the music itself, for many Sabha secretaries sheepishly admit that the gate receipts are unable to offer any meaningful competition to the cash registers at the canteen! Artistes emerging from empty auditoriums are often taken aback by the sight of huge crowds voraciously wolfing down the delicacies thrown their way by the caterers and debates about the best-run canteen are usually much more passionate, not to mention better-informed, than any discussions on X’s Thodi or Y’s Kalyani. Big names from the catering business such as “Arusuvai” Natarajan, Gnanambika and “Mountbatten” Mani set up their gastronomic extravaganzas at various Sabhas with huge banners and billboards that tower over the inconspicuous black board on which the day’s concert schedule is listed. It would seem that the soul has a considerably smaller appetite than the stomach!

Rough Weather
For the performers, the Season is a bit of a necessary evil. The hectic concert schedules, the pressure to perform, the capriciousness of the audiences and the notorious “December Throat” take their toll on the hardiest of souls. Yet, for Carnatic Musicians, there is no bigger stage – it is the “Season concerts” that are most talked about and it is Margazhi, which makes or mars musical careers. However, while all artistes seek to bring out their best during the event, strategies to get the most out of it can vary considerably. Some fit in as many concerts as possible with an eye on probabilities whereas others, more circumspect about the capacity of their vocal chords, decide that quality is better than quantity. While one school of thought advocates that the best accompanists be enlisted to liven up concerts, others point out the dangers of allowing star accompanists to hog the limelight!

The artistes’ anxieties are not without foundation. Chennai, probably one of India’s most musically enlightened cities, is known for its hard-to-please audiences. Seasoned vidwans are often shaken up by frail looking “mamis” blessed with tongues as keen, although decidedly not as musical, as their ears! The large number of concerts also means that the rasikas are distributed among the various sabhas, putting the onus on musicians to make their performance stand out from the crowd. This inevitably leads to accusations of spurning traditionalism and playing to the gallery. In an art form that depends as much on the opinion of masses as that of the cognoscenti, performers have a hard time balancing their acts. Yet, some of them manage to get across simultaneously to the layman as well the connoisseur – Madurai T N Seshagopalan, one of the living legends of Carnatic Music, for instance, can keeps the crowds happy with his moving renditions while at the same time tripping up the experts with complex “kanakkus” (mathematical calculations based on rhythm) and expositions of arcane ragas. This ability to relate with the audience on different musical wavelengths is often what separates the great from the good in Carnatic Music.

While the Season is always a challenging time for musicians, a series of unfortunate incidents resulted in its becoming a particularly trying one this year. The first among these was the passing away of Carnatic Music’s biggest superstar, Bharat Ratna M S Subbulakshmi, fondly known as MS. Although the end was pretty much expected given her failing memory and deteriorating health over the years, the demise nevertheless cast a pall of gloom over the proceedings with some sabhas canceling their programs for a day or two. As if the loss of one institution were not enough, the city gloomily braced for the end of another – The venerable Music Academy, which is said to offer the most prestigious platform a musician can aspire for, came close to canceling its Annual Music Conference this Season. The Academy, also a Chennai landmark, has been the victim of contentious legal battles between rival factions for sometime now and while the Courts had been granting temporary reprieves to the management to conduct the Conference for the last couple of years, it was feared that such an exemption would not materialize this time. In fact Season 2004 was well underway without the familiar buzz around the Academy, when a last-minute order from the Courts rescued this once-glorious institution from the ignominy of being a mute witness to an event that it was instrumental in creating. Finally, just when it appeared that things were back on track, came the killer Tsunami that wreaked havoc on the Tamil Nadu coastline, extinguishing more than 5000 lives. The season continued despite curtain calls from certain ill-advised quarters, which failed to realize that Carnatic Music, with Bhakti as its core element, was not quite comparable to discos or music videos, all of which continued without protest! In fact, the tragedy, combined with the passing away of MS, moved many artistes to come up with their soulful best during the latter part of the Season. Sabhas and musicians also chipped in by contributing generously to the meet relief efforts in the state.

To some, the ills plaguing the Season are symptomatic of the end of the road for Carnatic Music itself. The older ones among these doomsday prophets are quick to hark back to memories from the early to mid twentieth century, which witnessed a particularly impressive effusion of genius in the field. G N Balasubramaniam, Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Madurai Mani Iyer, Maharajapuram Vishwanatha Iyer, M L Vasanthakumari and DK Pattammal besides, of course, MS were just some of the many giants who strode the stage during this “Golden Age” which also saw the blossoming of such legendary instrumentalists and accompanists as T N Rajarathnam Pillai (Nagaswaram), “Flute” Mahalingam and the Mrudangam vidwan Palghat Mani Iyer whose playing has been compared to Nandi, the divine Mrudangist!

The Crystal Ball
While it has to be conceded that Carnatic Music can no longer boast of so many luminaries performing contemporaneously and that it is having a hard time competing with the easy entertainment provided by endless TV soaps and mega-budget movies, an unbiased assessment of the state of the art would have to be one of guarded optimism: Star performers still command full-houses, even when their performances coincide with one other. The infusion of fresh blood into the music scene is another trend that inspires confidence - since the late eighties, fresh faces have been steadily breaking into the “senior ranks”, accompanied by the rise of a number of gifted instrumentalists and percussionists. Many of these youthful artistes are also professionally qualified leaving them to deal with difficult career choices at a very young age. Some, like Sanjay Subrahmanyan, a qualified Chartered Accountant, manage to walk a tightrope between a career as a front ranking-musician and a partnership in one of Chennai’s leading accounting firms, besides promoting and co-editing an online music forum called www.sangeetham.com, which is gaining popularity as much for its musical content as the gossipy nature of its delightful bulletin board!

Given the plethora of gifted performers and the increasing support of ardent rasikas across the world, Carnatic Music seems to be doing reasonably well for itself and is one of the few Indian classical arts that still enjoy a mass base. The portents for the Music Season, in turn, would appear favorable despite the knocks it received this year. Yet, one is sometimes left wondering whether things ought to be a little better…

Unpleasant Notes
As yet another satisfying concert draws to a close, the percussion artistes perform the “tani avartanam”, a part of the performance reserved exclusively for the rhythmic accompanists. The Ghatam (Clay Pot) vidwan seems to have been gifted with an “Akshayapattiram” (Vessel of Plenty) as one magical pattern after another emerges from the mysterious recesses of his humble instrument, eventually culminating in a thunderous applause from the spellbound audience. Lost in the sublime nadais (tempos) of the Ghatam as I drive back home, I notice the vidwan, who was the object of a thousand cheers just a few minutes back, patiently waiting at the bus-stand, pot in tow, for his transportation home. Although my vehicle is a modest one, I suddenly find myself utterly inadequate at its wheel, groping in vain to rationalize the bizarre choices of society that lead to such a distorted distribution of its fruits. I am unable to do much better than recall Thyagaraja’s rhetorical question, underlining the transience of material well-being, which forms the opening line of his immortal krithi in Kalyani, “Nidhi Chala Sukhama?”

Vijay

The Wasteland

The wind crosses the brown land, unheard…
Wedged between the Great Himalayas on the West and the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges on the North-east lies an amorphous mass of reddish-brown mountains, that would find a place in any list of the most spectacular wildernesses on earth. The Zanskars are believed to have resulted from the collision of the super-continental tectonic plates of Gondwanaland and Laurasia, the massive impact of which, it is said, yanked up the ocean floor on either side to form the range. The landscape, no less dramatic than the region’s geological history, mocks the picture-postcard perfection of Himalayan stereotypes. There are no pine forests to be found here, no grassy grazing pastures, no perfectly shaped snow cones reflected in tranquil mountain-lakes. Instead, visitors are greeted by a vast wasteland of rock, scree and ice, almost completely shorn of vegetation except for narrow strips along the river valleys.

Zanskar’s remoteness is impressive, even by exacting Ladakhi standards. While the Indus valley, including Leh, was a major trading post on the famed Silk Route, the few remote passes providing access to Zanskar remain snow bound for all but 3-4 months a year, keeping the area almost untouched by external influence. Unfazed by their inhospitable environment, however, the ever-smiling Zanskaris make the best of the recalcitrant soil to insure themselves against the demands of an unforgiving winter. The pretty fields of wheat, barley and potatoes surrounding the villages along the rivers are temples to their tenacity and perseverance.
Soon the winter snows will lock up the region leaving its inhabitants with only one exit route – the parlous traverse over the frozen Zanskar river, also called the Chadur, every step of which is fraught with the danger of deadly dunks in water so cold that it runs with the viscosity of oil…

The road winding above among the mountains
My journey begins from the picturesque village of Darcha on the Manali-Leh Highway which, until recently, used to be the trailhead for the southern access to the region through the 5000 metre high Shingo La. A dirt track now leads upto the village of Plano, about 10 KMs further and work continues beyond as the Indian administrative machinery slowly worms its way into the heart of this pristine land, carrying seeds of change to lifestyles unaltered for centuries.

A few days later, in a cozy meeting room of an NGO in Leh, I sit through a film on Helena Norberg-Hodges, an active campaigner against the direction of development in Ladakh and the authoress of the acclaimed book, “Ancient Futures”. The film berates the disruption of traditional Ladakhi culture, which is upheld as a model of harmonious co-existence with nature. While the film chooses not to point fingers, the Indian Government, as the architect of change in the region, is implicitly posited as the villain of the piece. The predominantly Western viewers gasp and sigh as the film seeks to unveil the ugly depredations of modernity on a hoary but defenseless culture. It seems unlikely that any of them have been in a situation where a road can make the difference between life and death…It is hard to argue with Norberg-Hodges’ assessment of the Ladakhi way of life or that it will be considerably altered as a result of external influences. What is debatable, however, is the wisdom of artificially insulating a culture from inevitable winds of change so that a few iconoclastic anthropologists can preserve their Shangri-Las...
Gordian sociological knots apart, it is not a very pleasant experience to hike in the company of noisy, smoke-belching bulldozers. On the other hand, there is a good reason to look forward to the completion of the road – I might well need the services of a Qualis to haul myself across the Zanskar in a few years’ time!

The rugged trail follows the Darcha River for about 3 days until it culminates in a back-breaking 40 degree ascent leading upto the Pass, beyond which lies unraveled, the majestic moonscape of the Lingti Valley – I am finally in Zanskar! The last vestiges of the monsoonal shroud, which so completely dominated the horizon at the trailhead, are arrested by the obdurate pass, leaving a clear deep-blue backdrop for jagged ochre-brown cliffs, which point arrogantly heavenwards, as if to indicate the divinity of their origin. The might of the mountains is, however, humbled by the gushing waters of the Lingti river, as it carves out a few life-sustaining oases from this forbidding desert – charming, whitewashed houses surrounded by greenish-yellow fields and rows of chortens provide a stark contrast with the uncompromising severity of the mountains and sky above.

Continuing alongside the Lingti, a side trip from the prosperous Zanskari settlement of Purney, takes me to Phugtal Gompa – an awe-inspiring monastery literally chiseled out of a sheer red cliff. I make my way through its labyrinthine alleyways, into a grotto in the cliff that serves as the main prayer hall. Phugtal, like many other Gompas in the region was set up by Padmasambhava, the itinerant Indian Buddhist sage who is credited with bringing Tantric Buddhism to Tibet. In the early 18th century, Phugtal played host to Alexander Csoma de Koros, a Hungarian scholar whose contributions towards bridging the intellectual distance between the East and the West, which include the first English-Tibetan dictionary, deservedly earn him a place among the great pioneers of Orientalism.

It is not much more than a week since I commenced my journey and a part of me is already beginning to miss the familiar comforts of home. I can’t help marveling at the scholarly fervor of Koros, Padmasambhava, and other Himlayan Masters such as Adi Shankaracharya whose quest for truth and knowledge forges routes through physical and mental barriers that would have intimidated less resolute feet. There is surely no worthier testimony to the greatness of their lives than these venerable mountains.

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
The first stage of my journey ends at Padum, where my attempt to hitch a ride onwards to Kargil and Leh results in my being unceremoniously consigned to the hold of a rickety truck alongwith a few tons of freshly sheared wool, a couple of unfriendly looking dogs and a few sheep, whose continual bonding exercises are liberally sprinkled with rituals of mutual anointment!

It is a dismal, bumpy and bitterly cold ride. The few thin shafts of light streaming in through the truck’s armor, only serve to spotlight suffocating clouds of dust and wool. I am eventually let out at Rangdum Gompa, 10 hours away. Located on a saucer shaped grassland, Rangdum is surrounded by soaring peaks, the highest and most majestic of which is the magnificent glacier-clad fork of the Nun-Kun massif, shooting up 4 KMs from the northern head of the cirque. Rangdum is geographically the first village of the Muslim-majority Suru Valley but culturally, a part of Buddhist Zanskar. The precarious cultural fault lines inherent in such a situation gave way a few years back when suspected Muslim extremists shot dead three monks at the Gompa, sparking off vociferous demands by the predominantly Buddhist areas of Ladakh and Zanskar, for greater autonomy, including Union Territory status, for the region. Their demands were partially granted a couple of years back with the setting up of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. Union Territory status, however, still appears to be a distant dream, hinging as it does, on larger political questions hanging over the future of Kashmir.

I head up to nearby Panikhar to explore the verdant Suru valley which offers even closer glimpses of the magnetic twin peaks of Nun and Kun before leaving for Leh en route to my final tryst with the Zanskar – the Stok Kangri, one of the highest points of the range and the predominant feature of Leh’s western horizon.

Fear in a handful of dust
A disturbed sleep at Stok Kangri’s base camp is finally terminated by my guide as he peeps into my tent with a brusque “Shaab Chai”! . It is summit day and I face the intimidating prospect of an 8-hour slog up and down 1300 metres. Stepping out, I am greeted by an icy, howling wind that threatens to fly away with my flimsy shelter at any moment. Mercifully, the promised cup of tea soon arrives, getting enough circulation going in my benumbed system to prepare for the climb ahead.

We walk under the inky blanket of a beautiful night sky smeared over with a generous helping of stars. The brilliant moon highlights the forbidding profile of the lofty summit that I am hoping to conquer. After an hour spent traversing a high ridge overlooking the base camp, we cross a glacier to arrive at the foot of the mountain. An accidental glance upwards reveals the disturbing sight of the serpentine trail, zigzagging its way through some 1000 metres to the top of the peak. I reach for my bottle to digest my disbelief only to find the water frozen solid!

Half-way up the slope, I notice the first friendly rays of the sun peeping up from the eastern horizon. Reinvigorated by the arrival of our heavenly escort, we rapidly gain the top of the mountain’s south-eastern flank to watch the divine charioteer wipe out the sulky remnants of darkness with the gentle reddish glow of his early morning cloak, gradually uncovering the surreal landscape of crumpled earth that lies all around us.

We forge ahead along the ridgeline. The narrow flank with exposed sections of loose scree and slippery ice call for caution at every step – the lightest tread on the wrong patch of earth could mean plummeting hundreds of metres down the vertiginous slopes on either side. My lungs are stretched to their very limits by the ever-decreasing concentration of oxygen as the ridge punishingly noses its way upwards towards the summit. Eventually, after yet another lung-bursting scramble, I gratefully soak in the vibrant colours of prayer flags, beckoning me across the gentle snow slope that separates us! Vici!

Once my respiration returns to a semblance of normalcy, I get back on my feet to inspect the land I’ve trodden on for close to 2 weeks. The 6100 meter high vantage point of Stok Kangri’s summit offers an astounding 360-degree panorama of Himalayan majesty. The inchoate Zanskars dominate the Western horizon, crowned by the now-familiar Nun and Kun, beyond which lie the Great Himalayas. To the north stretches the other great mountain system of the sub-continent – the mighty Karakorams. The gleaming profile of its supreme lord, K2, is unmistakable even though the peak is half-hidden and well over a 100 KMs away.

Cutting across the eastern section of this soaring range flows in the old silk route from Central Asia. As I descry the tortuous road making its way through the seemingly impregnable mountains, I can almost feel the relief of goods-trains at finally stepping into the welcoming arms of the Indus valley after having spent months battling the whims of the elements. These feisty tradesmen have now been replaced by merchants of death, trading their deadly wares across one of the most absurd theatres of war in the world. “Siachen” screams my guide, gesticulating wildly towards the deceptive serenity of the white blanket spread in front of us…

The sun is getting stronger now - its fierce shafts strike deep into my head, hinting perhaps, that I have overstayed my welcome at these exalted heights. We make our way back to the company of mortals after offering prayers of gratitude to our accommodating host…

Vijay