Reaching The Last Frontier

Perhaps a lot simpler way to put it here would be…there is but no doubt that it is our self-identity that makes us unique and distinguishes us from everyone else. That’s what keeps us comfortable. The sooner we embrace ourselves, accept our flaws, the sooner we rid ourselves of insecurities and become comfortable with who we are. The sense of purpose equips us with what we must live out as. The Almighty created each of us differently for a reason. Therefore in a bid to embrace who you are -Love yourself.

The rugged terrain was getting darker and the snowfields around increasing in width as these clouds of thoughts engulfed me while I climbed one of the most notorious roads in India in a swaying vehicle up towards the Tibetan border in Himachal Pradesh. The thoughts deepened as the altitude increased and the Baspa river beneath narrowed up. Funny as it may seem most of the vehicle full of people in their different individual time adventures were alienated temporarily, but had gleams of pleasure smiles smeared on their faces as the impetus of traversing the rugged landscape changed with every hairpin turn of the road ahead.

Guess once the importance of self identity gets rooted, setting out to find and explore the self starts getting interesting, especially if you’d been in a desperate search for the perfect seat where you could sit through an entire day and do a fearless self-examination and purposeful expansion of your own identity encompassing the max-possible range of human scope at that point.

The busy heated plains and my life orbit had gotten unbearable for a while hence as an anti climax — here I was, travelling up 600 kilometers from the national capital on rugged roads to find and settle down on an imaginary seat of introspection high up there somewhere for as long as I could.

Occupying a corner seat with her huge backpack Gabriela Martinez was unhappy she’d lost her altimeter in Lata — a small village, on her way back from the Nandadevi sanctuary trek. A Colombian intrigued by the mystery surrounding forbidden Nanda Devi, who’s been planning this journey for the last 4 years and was in her last leg before she headed home. Over the next hour, her evocative description of her findings over the last few days of the real reason why Nanda Devi has been off-limits to mountain lovers for so long, made our journey factually wholesome as we closed in on the Tibet border.

Three years after India’s defeat to China, at the height of the Cold War between the western and eastern blocs, it was considered essential to keep a tab on China’s growing military might. In 1964, China had conducted its first nuclear tests in Xinjiang province. The CIA in 1965 decided to install a nuclear-powered surveillance gadget on the summit of Nanda Devi at 25,643 ft in a covert operation with the Intelligence Bureau of India where it could overlook and report on what was going on in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Deciding on a remote sensing device atop Nanda Devi could keep track of any further tests, the operation moved ahead. Installing the device, however, meant carrying up equipment weighing around 56 kgs, including an 8–10 ft-high antenna, two transceiver sets and the most vital component, a system for nuclear auxiliary power generator. The generator’s nuclear fuel consisting of seven plutonium capsules which came in a special container.

When they returned in May 1966, all the equipment — including the deadly stock of plutonium, which was about half the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima — was missing. It has never been found since. Theories and fears abound, but nobody seems to know what happened. The plutonium capsules, which is estimated to have a longevity of over a hundred hundred years are still buried somewhere in the snow. The area has been virtually closed for decades. Barring a few exceptions, such as army or IMF sponsored expeditions, nobody is allowed to climb or explore Nanda Devi, purportedly for environmental reasons.

Later after a successive attempt in installing another similar device developed a snag after less than a years operation, a team went to retrieve it from the Nanda Kot Dome where the device was installed in the summer of 1968. They were shocked to see no signs of the entire equipment. They dug a couple of feet and saw an amazing sight. There was a perfectly sound cave formed with the hot generator at the centre. With the continuous heat emitted from the generator, the snow had melted up to 8 ft in all directions, creating the spherical cave. This junk was later airlifted by the Americans but wider ramifications of the missing nuclear-powered generator’s loss may point towards the plutonium-238 core oozing radioactivity into the adjacent headwaters of the sacred Ganges for anything up to the next 40 years, more so now with the glaciers of the region melting at unpredictable speed due to environmental changes all across the planet.

Amidst all of this my thoughts about a brief inner journey was lost till the vehicle reached India’s last inhabited hamlet at dusk. After an acclimatizing sleep that night in the little frozen village, early next morning I started on a solitary hiking trail towards the Tibetan border which lead me to an appropriate spot. Getting down on all fours to drink some water from a stream that came from the molten snow of the mountains ahead I sat down to think myself through the possibilities of a much sought introspection.

The brief skin contact with the streams water made a shocking tweak to the obscured consciousness I couldn’t deny, the chill seemed a little less and the ever throbbing head a little light. The view in front opened up clearly as I managed to focus my eyes on the farthest point which would probably be somewhere in Tibet considering the air distance. As the vision cleared thoughts of counter-intuitive assumptions about some statistical odds from the previous hours started drifting in. I’d been climbing with my left foot first every time I climbed up due to the illusion of putting forward a tougher second balancing step with my right, with the constant prediction that the random rock-scapes that I encounter with every step are not really random. That bias is funny and needs to end I thought as another illusion from yesterday came in about how I had asked a young woman to do what is correct for her inspite of the fact that she didn’t want to do so.

She didn’t do what I asked her to and I thought now that’s probably due to this urge to do exactly the opposite of what someone wants you to, out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice. This is what happens silently all the time and sometimes things get so irritating that you end up giving subsequent negative judgments on multiple poor traits to somebody based on a single judgment of an undesirable trait. Allowing a single weak point or negative trait to influence perception of the person, brand or other thing in general. In other words how easily when we consider a person bad in one area…are we again perceptively likely to make a similar evaluation in other areas. Almost how battle lines are drawn leading to cold wars between nations.

So ideally a person with an expansive identity has fewer boundaries to their reactions as in behavior and more tolerance to differences and diversity in other people which means they are rarely or less offended by the words and actions of others. Just maybe…beyond survival, this is arguably and maybe the most important aspect of our existence as it guides every action we take for our entire lives. But what goes hand in hand with that is also the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people the better they perform. It’s like almost being a prediction that causes itself to become true. For example just a day back our driver was contemplating reaching our destination before dark, till sitting on the adjacent seat I unknowingly and genuinely told him how well he drove these treacherous roads and what a huge responsibility it must be to drive a busload of passengers for more than 20 hours at a stretch. We not only reached right before dark despite the huge headstart miss but he also invited me for tea with him as we reached.

A strong gust of wind was blowing snow off the peak in front with a cloud plume around the one beside it. These were part of the same range connecting Kinnaur to Gangotri and further on to Chamoli district of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. Hinduism and Buddhism don’t just co-exist in Kinnaur but they overlap. Both the religions have historically worked to strengthen the rule of the king of Bushahr in Kinnaur. Hindus believe that the royals of Bushahr are the descendant of Pradumn, the grandson of Krishna. According to the Buddhist theory, Raja of Bushahr reincarnates after his death as Guru Lama or Dalai Lama.

In Kinnaur district, it’s common for one village to have a gompa along with a temple and local people pay their respects in both every morning. The region was later influenced by the Hinduisation due to the close proximity of this region to Badrinath and Gangotri, right across the Dhauladhars in Uttarakhand. In fact the deity from the village temple is taken on human shoulders by a procession every three years to Gangotri which is a 61 km trek over the mountains otherwise a 500 kms drive. The Buddhist influence is brought to this region by the wandering shepherd and trading communities from over the Charang Pass beyond which lies Tibet. Unlike the people in the other towns of Kinnaur district, the original inhabitants of Chitkul have no trace of mongoloid features. Tall and strikingly fair, some researchers have traced their ethnicity to the Khamba tribe of eastern Tibet and some associate them to the dards of Northern Himalayas but the exact origin remains a mystery.

The lights the sights the chill the hill was as moving as the realizations as they were setting in slowly. Hope as always an unexplained way of accessing arcane or special knowledge about the world or the future within realms of extra-sensory perception kept increasing about better things to experience ahead but with the punishing chill in the bones I decided to abandon the spot I’ll recall all my life and head back to the warmth of society stepping ahead for the steep climb with random steps this time.

My heartfelt thanks to some extraordinary people and their spirit — the ever smiling super skilled driver who with less than 12 hrs rest manages to drive more than 22 hrs at a stretch in treacherous high altitude roads in all weather conditions, a 30 year old bong lad from Ranaghat in Nadia dist of WB, who braves the snow for nine months every year and runs a leased hotel in the little hamlet being the manager/plumber/electrician/carpenter/mason/cashier and cook, a village head who postponed his daughters wedding for a couple of years till a burnt mountain came to life again. After the bhojpatra forest on the slopes of the mountain in front of his log-house caught fire one night and took days to douse. His crusade led to the dousing of the fire with the help of the entire village with the waters of the Baspa and took about two years for new leaves and branches to regrow. My humble thanks to some superhuman freight machines who can carry loads over unimaginable terrain at steep inclines and teach the meaning of the word patience to many. Moms who would hike to any height in any weather to bring enough fodder to keep their livestock fed and happy as she does for her own child. Small businessmen who would charge much lesser than the mrp of goods sold to a traveller (repeatedly and embarrassingly for a range of essentials) b’cos the traveller ran short of currency change. A bunch of promising young hardworking models ready to risk a bone for the best shot, thanks to a Colombian fellow travelling writer who’s quest for knowledge enlightened many on the way…and many thanks to the Himachal Pradesh administration for having successfully banned smoking in the remotest of rural corners of the state they call Dev Bhumi.