I was in the Great Himalayan National Park. It was cold, and over the rushing sound of the gray green Tirthan River, I thought I heard the distant call of a Koklass Pheasant, along with sundry bird and squirrel calls and the constant patter of rain on my anorak. I was tired, my muscles were stiff, and my feet felt wooden. Despite being a reasonably fit squash player for decades, I could hear myself breathe heavily. Around me, the forest was damp and mist laden. In my camera bag were a bunch of long lenses I never used over the two-day trek, and with every step, the bag seemed to get heavier.
Together with celebrated ornithologist-author Bikram Grewal, the legendary Sir Mark Tully (former BBCl radio news commentator), and Gillian Wright, writer and historian, two days earlier we had driven from Manali to Gushaini, where we met the affable Sanjeeva Pandey, then the indefatigable Director of the Great Himalayan National Park. That’s where our trek began, with Sanjeeva conducting us through his biodiverse paradise. The route, he explained on a map, would take us deep into Himachal Pradesh's Tirthan valley, from Gushaini via Ropa to Rolla, and finally to Chelocha where we would camp for the night, adding, ‘Tomorrow morning, if your lungs and legs permit, you could trek past Nada to snow leopard and tragopan country at 3,200 metres, where goral, Himalayan tahr, bharal (blue sheep), and ibex rule the slopes.’
Virtually every step of our walk-through paradise, the slopes were clothed with blue pine, chir, oak, and rhododendron, interspersed with bamboo and, here and there, wild marijuana! Along the route, we encountered dippers, forktails, redstarts, Mrs. Gould's sunbirds, flowerpeckers, tits, and raptors of all descriptions. Along the broad-leafed forested trails, leaves with neat circular holes in them betrayed the presence of Himalayan flying squirrels. At dawn and dusk, Sanjeeva said, their calls could be heard echoing across the valley as the rodents traversed their terrain by gliding gracefully from tree to tree, using air currents to adjust their trajectory for up to 100 metres at a stretch!
We followed the narrow trail along the course of the magical, grey-green glacial Tirthan River, to the accompaniment of birdsong. We had expected to reach before sunset, but a landslip had washed the goat trail we were following, leaving us scrambling in the dark, sometimes on all fours, across damp, cold, mud slopes, with near-vertical drops stretching into the darkness beneath us.
In the event, what should have been a comfortable threehour trek took over five hours. And while we frequently rested our aching legs, Sanjeeva requested the very young and fit guards accompanying us to gather some guchchis (morel mushrooms), which we wolfed down with goat cheese and wild rice.
The next morning, I woke just before daybreak, and while the others caught some much-needed rest, fortified by scalding tea and a stash of Threptin and digestive biscuits, I ventured up towards Chelocha, to breathe the air that bharal, Himalayan tahr, brown bear and snow leopards breathed. Carefully tucking the wrappers into my backpack, I had barely started walking up when I heard the shrill whistle of a cheer pheasant, just three minutes from the guard hut! As the morning wore on, the hills truly did come alive with the sound of music! Whistling thrushes, crested kingfishers, little forktails and the magical call of the Himalayan monal transported me to the real world, far from the noise and clutter of city life.
In the event, I ran out of steam within an hour and chose instead to sit it out, scouring the mountain slopes through my binoculars, watching red-billed choughs, golden Eagles, Himalayan griffons and warblers (which I could not have identified if my life depended on them). Each step I took, my heart seemed to beat louder in my oxygen-starved chest.
Try as I might, I could not sight the brown bear I so desperately wanted to see but could tell from their droppings that they were around. I was, however, blessed with the sight of four or five wild goats that the forest guard spotted at a distance of around 100 metres. They were Himalayan tahr which, unlike me, pranced up and down the steep slopes and sheer falls at will, defying gravity in search of fodder. Merged perfectly into their gray rocky habitats, they would throw me an occasional glance to make sure I posed no threat.
How I wished I had lungs like theirs, so I could walk across to the Pin Valley National Park and the Rupi Bhabha Wildlife Sanctuary.
Our return trek was uneventful but equally exhausting, even though the landslides had been repaired and no scrambling on all fours was involved. Every once in a while, I would walk on ahead to give myself a chance to sit quietly by the swift-flowing Tirthan River and drink its naturally mineralized waters. Occasionally, Bikram would signal me to stop and listen to birdsong, including, once, the strange, repetitive bleating call of a distant western tragopan that stayed hidden in its protected paradise.
A hundred metres further, I came upon a grotto of the kind that poets craft poems around. Green-fronted with vines and creepers, a black recessed rock, and its own private waterfall, the grotto was clearly a popular watering hole for local residents of the avian kind, of which I saw several. Fifteen minutes later, Bikram, Gillian, and Mark caught up and were equally happy to pause awhile, lighten their loads and drink mountain water. I was born in Himachal Pradesh, Shimla, and studied at Bishop Cotton School, one of India’s oldest residential public schools. The mountains are where I belonged, and mesmerised by the sound of the river and the smell of damp mud, I asked myself for the thousandth time why I chose to live in distant, polluted Mumbai when I longed for glacial rivers, mountain sheep dogs, sunbirds and tragopans.
Excerpted with permission from Go Wild: Stories, essays and comics that celebrate our Earth @2024Penguin