Trailing indicators of destruction

THE TRAILS LESS TRAVELLED
Trekking the Himachal Himalayas
Avay Shukla
Niyogi Books, 256 pages, Rs 995

Senior bureaucrats are rarely adventurous or rarely admit to being so even if they are. Going off on holidays or expeditions into the mountains may be branded as frivolities unbecoming of a staid and serious representative of the sarkar. So I was delighted that an Indian Administrative Service officer Avay Shukla took full advantage of his assignment in Himachal Pradesh to undertake some of the state's most picturesque and delightful treks, including some lesser-known ones. I have no doubt that the quality of his administrative governance would have improved as a result. In The Trails Less Travelled, Mr Shukla has described, in some detail, 12 treks in the districts of Shimla, Kinnaur, Kullu and Lahaul and Spiti, covering 20-odd years. There are convenient and easy-to-read charts showing the trekking routes he has traversed, with key geographical features well marked. These will be helpful to those who may be enthused to follow in his footsteps to one of India's most scenically beautiful and culturally unique border states.

But Mr Shukla's book is more than just a trekkers' guide. He has a sensitive eye for the steady ravaging of our fragile Himalayan ecology thanks to indiscriminate hydro-electric power development on the Sutlej and its various tributaries, the mindless penetration of roads into hitherto remote and pristine forest areas and the sheer pressure of expanding population and the search for livelihoods. Having been an occasional trekker myself, I have seen the disturbing spoliation of one of the most rich repositories of bio-diversity anywhere in the world. It was depressing to read that this trend is more pervasive than one had imagined it to be.

Mr Shukla is to be complimented for giving his readers a fascinating introduction to some of the legends and fables associated with this sacred mountain space. As he points out, this is Dev-Bhumi or the domain of the gods and virtually every step one takes is like entering a world full of myths and fantasy. The Pandavas wandered in these mountains, while Shiva and Parvati have an alternate residence in the Kinnar Kailash.

Mr Shukla also displays empathy with the people of these hallowed mountains, their innate courtesy and hospitality and their deep connect with the pristine environment around them. These observations make his accounts of the treks that much more interesting and informative. The colour photographs bring alive some of the scenes described in the book, but surely there should have been room for more.

A few years ago, I had gone with some friends for a trek into the Great Himalayan National Park and Mr Shukla's book has a detailed account of more or less the same route we had covered in the Tirthan Valley. Reading it brought back many memories of what had been one of the most difficult and treacherous treks we have undertaken. The tracks had mostly disappeared under a thick mass of vegetation and several stretches were steep and slippery. It was only with the help of our guides, drawn from local villages, that we were able to negotiate the route safely. Mr Shukla has also written about having a similar experience though he seems to have had a more exciting trek than we had. We never came across any wild life but his party had an encounter with a black bear!

Mr Shukla's account of his journeys also constitutes a commentary on how state administrations, of which he has been part, have failed the communities living in these remote mountainous regions. In fact governance seems mostly absent from these areas and if there are schools there are no teachers, or if there are teachers there is no school building. He describes how he came across a village teacher, Shastriji, in the Great Himalayan Park zone, who ran his school from a cave that doubled as his living quarters.

In the Introduction to his book, Mr Shukla laments the fact that the journeys he describes to forbidding yet breathtakingly beautiful landscapes may become footnotes to history thanks to the rapid pace with which "the ubiquitous tentacles of development" are spreading like relentless cancer over this fragile ecology. He believes that in a decade or so "most of the landscape (and lives, culture and myths they contain) described in these pages would be altered beyond recognition" or "would simply cease to exist". This is a timely wake-up call from someone who has spent a career doing "development" and therefore should know, first hand, what a precious and irreplaceable heritage we are destroying. I imagine and certainly hope that he did his bit, as a senior official, to slow down if not prevent some of the damage. We must now do more to make the country aware of the price we shall all pay for this terrible and willful destruction of our rich patrimony.

The reviewer is a former foreign secretary and a regular trekker in the Himalayas