Jana Toh Hai

I remember my body cursing me from every pore for going on a trek when I was out of shape. Actually my body curses me on steep inclines, period, but this time I had decided to go on a trek when a flight of stairs was a challenge. It had felt like I was struggling to emerge from a long, covid-induced hibernation and all the extra weight I had piled on. I had decided that the best way to recover from this daze was a kick-start in the form of a grueling trek.

Added to that, I have always believed in carrying my rucksack on treks. Many offload their rucksacks onto mules that run ahead of them and set camp, but I am one of those who takes pride in carrying it. Some of this comes from finding inspiration in the legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner. He was the first man to climb Mount Everest alone as well as the first to do it without supplemental oxygen and his climbing philosophy involves a firm belief in carrying one’s own weight. When I trek with people who have only a small bag to carry their water and some food, they know and I know that we are not the same. That unsaid feeling of superiority can be heady. As are the undemonstrated curt nods of mutual respect among trekkers who carry their full rucksack.

All this lasts for as long as the terrain is flat. Once the inclines begin, they team up with your body and interrogate your philosophy. The steeper the inclines, the deeper the interrogation. Look at the small-baggers, aren’t they just less stuck up people who are enjoying themselves unlike you? Smarter people. Happier people. Doesn’t Messner carry all his weight while the mules are still carrying your tent and food? And screw Messner. He does this for the record books. In your case, carrying your own weight should mean exactly that; there’s enough of it going around thanks to Covid.

The guides always make it worse. Their bodies are friends with these inclines. But you will never see them carrying their full rucksacks when there are mules to take them across. The most memorable guide was a man called Darban who we called Darban-da because he was middle aged. While we wore expensive waterproof boots, he wore hawai chappals. While we wore several layers to protect ourselves from the cold, he wore one sleeveless sweater over his shirt. I had also seen him carry three rucksacks for a day when some curt-nodders defected to the small-baggers after being confronted by a few steep inclines. If only he had the gravitas to pull it all off; but he was a troll.

One time we had just climbed a steep incline and stopped at the top of a ridge. I had just heaved my rucksack onto the ground with a sigh loud enough to be heard by the small-baggers when he asked me with evident concern, “Itna paseena kyon a raha hai”?

‘Nahin, bag bhaari hain na, isliye”, my bag is heavy, I said trying to hide my annoyance with a smile.

‘Main utha loon? Mujhe paseena nahin ayega’

‘Arre nahin’, I laughed off the suggestion.

Now I was irritated. He knew I didn’t need assistance.

We had entered a cusp between the steep ridge behind us and a valley ahead. The valley was a long stretch of meadow with hills on either side and snowcapped mountains behind them with a river flowing in the middle. The grass was monsoon green and flowers I had not seen before were carpetted on either side of the fast flowing glacial melt.

No matter how Darbanda chose to troll me about it, I was appreciating this setting better because of my rucksack. My body was demanding my attention like it does when I go on a run. Breath in, breath out. Left, right, left, right. Take in the terrain ahead. Take in the respite that a long stretch of valley offers after a difficult climb. Now take in the details of the valley through the endorphins flooding your brain. Carrying my rucksack plays a cobweb-clearing role in my head where after a point, only the basics begin to matter. Time stretches and expands.

“Darbanda, aage rasta kaisa hai”, another curt-nodder asks. Behind him was a group of unconcerned small-baggers taking selfies and pictures. This was a question that doesn’t interest the small-baggers as much but curt-nodders can’t stop asking it.

“Up-down, up-down”, Darabanda answered making waves out of his right hand.

The curt-nodder and I looked at each other and smirked. This was his standard answer. It was never wrong so you could never say he misled you.

And then he added with a shrug, “Jana toh hai”. Doesn’t matter, you have to go. You’ve got no choice. After a couple of hours, we would ask him again and his answer would be the same. Up-down, up-down, jana toh hai.

You’ve got to go. But I have often asked myself why. Why go on treks, with our rucksacks, with no option but to go up-down until we reach camp? We come here leaving comfortable lives in cities, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, redrawing the rules and settings by which curt-nodders and small-baggers alike will live and interact with one another for a few days.

When I think about this question I think of the Roopkund mystery. Roopkund was the first Himalayan trek I had been on with Darbanda as a guide and the fascination of the trek was that it culminated in a mountain pool (kund in Hindi) on the Trishul massif sixteen and a half thousand feet above sea level that had human bones. Many of them have been heaped into piles around the pool and others surface from time to time as the snow melts and the ice thaws. Theories, conspiracies and myths have been rife about who the bones belonged to. During the pandemic, I read an article by Douglas Preston in the New Yorker about the mystery. He wrote about the various stories that the bones have led to starting with their discovery during World War 2 by the British when they worried that they belonged to a group of Japanese soldiers attempting to infiltrate. When the bones were found to be much older, the stories got more interesting - “The army of the failed Tibet expedition of Bakhtiyar Khalji in the thirteenth century”, “A pool where holy men committed ritual suicide”, “Proof of the existence of an unknown trade route between India and Tibet”.

That section of the Himalayas is famous for avalanches, hail and snowstorms. The article concluded with the most likely theory that the bones belonged to pilgrims since this was on the route to the Nanda Devi pilgrimage – perhaps the hardest in India. But there was a shocker in store; DNA analysis has recently revealed that while most of the bones belonged to South Asians who died over a thousand years ago, a third of the samples were of Greek men and women who died only sometime in the 18^th century. The South Asian bones can be explained as deaths during the Nanda Devi pilgrimage but so far there has been no clue or theory that has been able to explain what a group of around hundred Greek men and women were doing so far up the Himalayas some three hundred years back.

When David Preston interviewed archaeologist Stuart Feidel who “hates unsolved mysteries” about the Greek DNA on Roopkund, he said,

“It makes zero sense that a party of male and female Greek islanders would be participating in a Hindu pilgrimage around 1700 or 1800. That’s because, one, there is no documented presence of any substantial Greek communities in northern India at those times, and, two, there is no record of Europeans converting to Hinduism or Buddhism in those periods.”

So if they were not on a pilgrimage then what were they doing up there? With the help of DNA analysis and carbon dating, this question is what the mystery of Roopkund has morphed into today.

Then I think about the groups I’ve gone on Himalayan treks with and the reasons behind why urban men and women from different parts of India and abroad were at Roopkund over the years with no pilgrimage in mind. Are they a lot less mysterious than the reasons behind why a group of Greek men and women were in Roopkund a few centuries ago?

“Because it’s there”, was George Leigh Mallory’s famous answer when he was asked why he wanted to climb Everest. Mallory’s answer doesn’t tell us that his mountaineering has to be seen in the context of a time when ‘expeditions’ and ‘conquests’ were sown into Empire’s fabric. Yet I don’t doubt that stripped of everything, there is a kernel of truth in what he said. “Because they are there” has to be a part of the explanation for why people climb mountains, go on pilgrimages and explore trekking trails. More so for a time when the Greek company on Roopkund or the pilgrims before them could not have received the widespread adulation that Mallory expected had he succeeded. Besides, roads, paths and trails may be there, but they have a way of disappearing if not regularly walked on. Journeys make paths as much as paths make journeys.

“Because they are there” may help us understand why go there, but why leave here? Why exchange comfort and predictability for hardship and unpredictability over a few days? Many rational folk would say why indeed. Bilbo Baggins argued - convincingly I think - with Gandalf making this point asking him to look for a crazy Took to go on an adventure instead of a sensible Baggins.

But for those of us who go on them, one possibility is that these journeys – like running – maybe a more primal instinct. Of a time when we would travel in groups, carrying our belongings, looking for new pastures, keeping an eye out for wildlife, setting up camps, campfires, while allowing hardships to play the role of catalysts in forging connections. On these journeys we simulate a way of making time and space for new people in ways that we cannot when we are yoked to labour. We grow and change a little. We brave frosty winds and unending rain by huddling in the dinner tent and lift each other’s spirits through songs and stories. We rid ourselves of the internet, of screens, of books and city lights that makes the stars visible again. We sleep early, wake up at the crack of dawn and go up-down, up-down because they are there and our bodies remember.

In his book The Old Ways, Robert MacFarlane mentions a Spanish saying, “Caminar es atesorar! : To walk is to gather treasure!”. So maybe when we walk together, we gather more treasure.

Don’t get me wrong though; Greeks up in Roopkund in circa 1700 as though Darbanda was telling them “jana toh hai” is still absolutely bonkers. But there is a chance that if experts like Mr Stuart Feidel - who hate unsolved mysteries - are able to help us understand why we go on these journeys today, they may be able to better accept that we will never know what exactly those wretched Greeks were up to.