I find myself inside a unique arena (I had been expecting a marshy field all along); two tracks dug up and filled with slush run parallel to each other for about 450 ft. with the spectators’ stands adjacent to the two tracks with a well defined boundary to keep the spectators in check. The chaotic scenes that I had been imagining in my mind all the while are put to rest; Koti Chennaya Kambala organized at Puttur, a small village in Karnataka, India, is a highly professional affair.

What is the fuss all about?

And this entire hullabaloo is for the buffaloes; paired with the help of a yoke they are lined up with their owners ready to enter the arena. Fresh after a pooja and a wash at the temple nearby, their black skin gleams in the blazing sun, they are decorated with fancy ropes, mirrors and some of them even sport amulets. The men are well sculpted; having a six-pack is no big deal here. Most of them are bare chested wearing just a modest lungi.(A kind of wrap common in South India.)

A man wearing a red turban and a matching lungi checks the buffaloes’ teeth with the air of a specialist. Checking for bad breadth? No. I later come to know that buffaloes are partitioned into different groups (small, medium and big I guess) according to the number of their fallen teeth. Ingenious, I must say!

An organizer is very happy to see my friends and me, mistaking us for reporters as all of us are sporting cameras. When we inform him that we are just hobbyists he sportingly gives us the scarves which the volunteers are wearing. “Go close and shoot” he tells us in Kanadda and that’s exactly what we do, we have an up, close and personal encounter with the buffaloes of Puttur.

…and the action begins!

We position ourselves at the starting line. An enclosure is made for the buffaloes waiting in line for their turn; it is difficult to control some of them who are raring to be free and have a go at the slushy track. The main race will only start in the afternoon now is the time for the first timers to show their skills.

The first buffalo pair looks every bit menacing their muscles taut, quivering with excitement and their noses flaring. Agitated by the incessant whipping and war cries of the lone rider (who is called Saarthi) behind them, they rush past us at maddening speed leaving a trail of water flying behind.

Splash, Splash, Splash!

All this happens so fast that I fail to retract my camera in time and so it gets a generous helping of the mucky water. A fitting start to a day that is going to be action packed. No serious damage done though, thankfully. After a few runs I am taking pictures with the ease of a photographer seasoned for kambala.

Some of the buffaloes cover the length of the track in a mere 10-15 seconds. I realize that running in water keeping pace with galloping buffaloes is no mean feat. Many a men fall in the slush, face down, unable to keep up with their more sturdy counterparts. But some men make it look really easy and I secretly wish to run in the slush; the muddy water does look tempting in this scorching sun. Maybe I’ll do this in Kadri Kambala sometime where there are races for women and children too sans the buffaloes.

All thanks to an underworld don

The area around the arena dons a festive look; bhel and pani puri the ubiquitous Indian street food are present here too, “Pepsi Coca cola” a stereo announces running in a loop continuously, the pao-pao of the candy-floss man’s cart adds to the din. We settle for a glass of sugarcane juice that as always is surprisingly refreshing.

Muthappa Rai looks down on us from huge posters, sporting a French beard and talking on a mobile phone. I find him good-looking quite contrary to the appearance I had expected when I had heard that he was a underworld don turned social worker. He hails from Puttur and is the organizer of the Koti Chennaya Kambala this year, which I later come to know, is the largest Kambala in Karnataka drawing a crowd of around a lakh people.

We now stand close to the finishing line that slants upwards; a simple braking mechanism to stop the buffaloes running at break neck speed. But still some of them crash straight into the crowd standing at the finishing line; some men rush with whips to control them and no harm is done.

As photography in the scorching sun is a tiring job, hunger pangs start making themselves felt in no time. There is some time for the main event to start, so we head towards a friend’s cousin’s place for lunch. I simply love the way these traditional homes are built, they are so inviting and cozy, and make you feel right at home. All characteristics of an ideal home I feel. The lunch is traditional Tulu(pertaining to Southwestern Karnataka) fair and is yummylicious. Revitalized, after the lunch and a little rest we revisit the arena.

Scampering for life amidst crashing buffaloes

The bands are playing elaborately; the main event has started. The buffaloes are burlier now; they run even faster and splash more water in the process. I want to get some head-on shots of the buffaloes so we join the freelance photographer with his bazooka like lens, who is already standing at the finishing line.

This is as adventurous as it gets! I point my camera on the buffaloes till I feel they are at a safe distance and then scamper inside the crowd for protection. The men look at me amused and sometimes I have the eerie feeling that the buffaloes too are eyeing me curiously, but then it is just a feeling. None of the buffaloes crash on us but we do have some close shaves.

Contest of a different kind

As the evening matures it becomes even more cool and pleasant; the floodlights cast obscure reflections on the track. The dignitaries have started to arrive and the speeches on the stage run parallel to the commentary in the arena. Now comes the part for which I had been waiting for all through.

Kambala is not just about completing the stretch of the track in the least time, that is one aspect of the race. There is another unusual aspect too. In the middle of the track some markers are placed at the height of 6.5 and 7.5 feet respectively. The idea is that the splashing water should rise to this height. And for this the Saarthi has to stand on a plank attached to the buffaloes.

As the first pair with the Saarthi on the plank arrives it is a most bizarre sight. The blurred outline of a man is visible through the diaphanous film of water rising all around the buffaloes. The man himself seems to be hanging on to nothing but air and when they approach the middle of the track, where the markers are placed, the water astonishingly rises to great heights and manages to touch the 6.5 ft mark. I feel that the man has fallen into water by now but as the pair approaches the finishing line I am shocked to see that he is still there hanging on to the buffaloes.

Leaving in the middle of action

Many buffaloes thus pass by, but none touch the 7.5 ft mark. But there is enough time; the competition will go on through the night ending only on Monday evening. And that reminds me that I have to be in office tomorrow. The night seems promising, Yakshagana , an opera like art form of Karnataka, is also supposed to happen and I’ve been wanting to watch one for quite sometime.

Loath that I am to leave I wonder at the juxtaposition of the two different lives I seem to live on the weekdays and weekends. I’ve been really lucky to have watched Kambala; the one in Puttur is amongst the last to happen during the Kambala season, which starts from Dec. and goes on till March. Information about the Kambala schedule is hard to get by on the Internet, but I promise myself to come back for the Kambala next year, if not Puttur some other location. After Jallikattu, a bull taming sport that happens in Tamil Nadu India, and the action packed Kambala, I want my tryst with rural sports to continue.

by Suruchi Dumpawar

A road named after an American general who oversaw its construction at the height of World War II has the potential to bring India and China closer together. Running from India’s northeast through Myanmar to southwestern China’s Yunnan province, the 1,736-kilometer Stilwell Road, if reopened, would boost overland trade and travel between India and China and also pull the regions it connects out of poverty.

India, Myanmar and China are working to give this historic road a new lease on life. Repair of the road – some stretches of which are not motorable or simply don’t exist – is in progress. It is hoped that the three countries will soon decide to reopen it for trade and travel. 

A reopened Stilwell Road would provide a land link between two of the fastest-growing economies in the world – those of India and China. It would link two landlocked regions, India’s northeast and China’s Yunnan province. 

Goods from India’s northeast headed for China or Southeast Asian countries are currently shipped via Kolkata, the nearest port, through the Strait of Malacca and on to China. It takes at least a couple of weeks for goods to reach China. “If they go via the Stilwell Road our goods would reach Yunnan in two days,” Pradyut Bordoloi, Assam’s commerce and industries minister and an ardent advocate of reopening the road, told Asia Times Online. It would reduce transport costs by more than 30%. 

The Stilwell Road will link northeastern India not just with Yunnan but with other parts of China and Southeast Asia as well. The Chinese have constructed a network of roads connecting Yunnan with other provinces. “And there are roads branching out from the Stilwell Road that provide connectivity to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and so on,” said Abhijit Barooah, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry. 

India’s northeastern region connects with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China by a 4,500km international border but connects with India only through the Siliguri Corridor, a mere 22km wide. Ninety-eight percent of the northeast’s borders are with other countries, and only 2% with India. Yet this region’s trade with other countries is minuscule, limited to informal trade. While cross-border trade is almost non-existent, the northeast’s trade with the rest of India, which is done through the narrow Siliguri Corridor, has failed to take off. 

“If the border is opened up for overland trade with neighboring countries, the northeastern region would benefit. It could be pulled out of its current economic backwardness,” said Bordoloi. 

Barooah said, “Even if 10% of India’s shipment to China and Southeast Asia were to be routed through the Stilwell Road, its impact on the northeast would be dramatic.” 

Reopening the Stilwell Road would be beneficial to Myanmar, China and Southeast Asia as well. China has been eyeing India’s northeast as a potential market for its goods. 

The Stilwell Road begins in Ledo, a small town in the Indian state of Assam. It weaves through thick jungles, then crosses Jairampur and Nampong in Arunachal Pradesh to reach the Pangsau Pass, after which it crosses into Myanmar. It then plunges through the jungles of upper Myanmar to touch Myitkyina before heading eastward to China, where it culminates at Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. About 61km of the Stilwell Road runs through India, 1,035km through Myanmar and 640km into China. 

Named after General Joseph Stilwell (1883-1946), who commanded the Allied forces in the India-Burma-China theater during World War II, the Stilwell Road was constructed by Indian soldiers, Chinese laborers and American engineers. It was a vital lifeline for the Allies during the war, as it was through this road that supplies were sent to the Chinese battling Japanese occupation. 

But within a few months of its opening, the Japanese surrendered and the war ended. After the war, the road fell into disuse. 

But the road has a history that goes back several centuries before Stilwell and others arrived on the scene, as it was originally the  route that migrants from Southeast Asia used to travel to India’s northeast. 
Sixty-five years ago, those constructing the Stilwell Road battled against a treacherous terrain. They had to contend with thick forests, steep gradients and hairpin curves, and they had few data regarding topography, soil, etc ahead of construction. Such data were acquired as construction of the road proceeded. 

While constructing the road was physically daunting and complex, its builders did not have to contend with the kind of political complexities and inflexible bureaucracies that the reopening of the road is now up against. 

Relations between India and China, which have been hostile for decades, have only in recent years begun to warm slowly. India’s relations with Myanmar have also not been warm. While the business sectors in China, Myanmar and India have been enthusiastic about the opening up of the Stilwell Road, bureaucracies in all three countries have stood in the way. 

Of the three, it is China that has pursued the idea of reopening the Stilwell Road with diligence. It has gone about repairing and reconstructing its stretch of the road energetically and has in fact already transformed this into a modern six-lane expressway. Chinese officials have also been persistent in their lobbying of officials in Indian and Myanmar officials to get them to repair the road and open it up for trade. 

India’s verbal enthusiasm over the Stilwell Road project has not been matched with action on the ground. Delhi has dragged its feet. An opinion widely articulated across the northeast is that New Delhi is the biggest obstacle in the way of reopening the Stilwell Road. 

Officials in New Delhi say India has security concerns. The northeast is an insurgency-racked region and there are “valid fears” that the road would facilitate movement of insurgents, arms and drugs. Then there is the concern that reopening the road would result in the Chinese swamping the northeast with cheap goods, undermining the local economy. 

These concerns are roundly rejected by northeasterners as “unfounded”. 

“The Stilwell Road is not a one-way street where only Chinese goods can come here,” said an Assamese businessman, pointing out that India too can flood the Chinese market with its goods. Besides, “Why should the northeast be denied access to cheaper Chinese goods?” he asked. 

As for the security concerns, Barooah said that as in other parts of India where roads are used by all kinds of people, including criminals and insurgents, this will happen in the northeast as well, “but we cannot stop building roads fearing antisocial elements or insurgents will use them”. He said improving road connectivity near the borders would in fact enhance India’s security, not undermine it, as these roads would facilitate movement of security forces as well. 

Those in Delhi who doubt the Stilwell Road’s potential for transforming trade point out that another road linking India with China that was reopened last year for trade has not met expectations. The road via the Nathu La Pass, which connects Sikkim with the Tibet Autonomous Region, has been a bit of a disappointment, with only 13 Indian traders and 29 business people from Tibet participating in trade. 

But business people in the northeast say the road through Nathu La cannot be compared to the Stilwell Road as the former runs through largely uninhabited regions. 

Of the three countries through which the Stilwell Road runs, it is Myanmar that is the linchpin of the project. Without its consent, the plan to link Ledo with Kunming by road is a non-starter. Unfortunately, it is Myanmar that has resisted the reopening of the Stilwell Road the most. This is partly because of the military junta’s traditional wariness of opening the country to outsiders. Besides, the road runs through territory controlled by Kachin rebels. 

What is somewhat heartening is that the three countries are repairing the parts of the road that run across their territory. China’s segment has been upgraded, India’s small stretch is being fixed and China is said to be pitching in to renovate the long stretches in Myanmar. Once the road is repaired, its supporters hope the issue of reopening it will be dealt with. Reopening of the road has the full support of influential people including academics, retired civil and military officials, and public figures. 

Although mindsets at the official level remain an obstacle, the Stilwell Road could well become the road to riches for all three countries’ impoverished regions. 

by Sudha Ramachandran in Asia Times

We were headed to the villages of Dah and Beema (pronounced Beama) in Leh district and Garkun and Darchik in Kargil district, and the intention was to spend a week studying the secret lives of a tribe of pure Aryans. Some of the more inaccessible pockets could be reached only through trekking.

We rose early and started our jeep safari at 7 a.m. The 130-km drive passed through the villages of Khalatse (pronounced Khalsi), Dumkhar, Skurbuchan, Achinathang and Hanuthang. We crossed several high peaks before reaching Beema (14,350 ft). Every photograph clicked en route resembled a picture postcard and the seven-hour drive over rugged terrain was made listening to some soothing music.

The first glimpse of the Indus, from miles away, was a near-spiritual experience. A speck of light blue amidst sand dunes, rock and stone. A stream nestling in Nature’s palm. We finally arrived at Beema and took an ice-cold bath in the turbulent waters of this river steeped in history. The tranquility experienced while meditating on its banks, on a bed of round pebbles, is indescribable.

A group of women checked one’s bags on alighting from the vehicle. There is a self-imposed prohibition in these Brok-Pa (Ladakhi word for Aryan or white skin) villages. The sarpanch had asked the womenfolk to ensure that no alcohol entered the village. After a thorough frisking of the luggage, the three women, resembling Greek goddesses, allowed entry into the PWD guesthouse. The chowkidar, named Sonam Thondup, was an Aryan who knew a smattering of Hindi. Through a combination of sign and body language, one tried to develop a rapport with the hostile chowkidar, who made it plain that my visit to Dah was not welcome.

On seeing the inner line permit and letter from the collector, Satish Nehru, Thondup reluctantly gave me the guesthouse keys. There were no other occupants. The guesthouse is on the banks of the Indus and the view from the room was picturesque. The gurgling of the river was soothing music to the ears.

The next morning, one had to report at the sarpanch’s house for a purification ritual. This called for a 10-km trek over mountain streams, rock and stone. Thondup sent along two tough looking escorts. It took us almost two hours to reach Laisthiang — the sarpanch’s village.

The landscape began to change and a canopy of green could be seen. Walnut and apricot trees stretched across the horizon and the fields were full of grain, ready to be harvested. The staple food is barley, grown in terraced fields and irrigated by the mountain streams that rush to meet the Indus flowing below. The ascent was rather steep and the altitude nearly 17,000 ft. One kept replenishing body fluids by drinking the natural mineral water of the mountain streams.

There are about 1,000 descendants of the Aryan tribes and they live scattered around Gilgit, Hunza, Kargil and Leh. Being nature worshippers, they celebrate the Bononah (nature) festival and are strict vegans, which means they are not only strictly vegetarian but also don’t consume milk or milk products. This minuscule community bars both men and women from marrying non-Aryans, and polygamy and polyandry is common. Couples who do not conceive are free to choose other partners to give them a better chance of producing an offspring. Nearly 80 per cent of them marry in their own villages, while 20 per cent marry from neighbouring villages.

Two 500-year-old Juniper trees (Cilgi Deuha) crown the village of Dah, which is the venue of the tri-annual Bononah festival (held on a full moon night during October). The tribes symbolically draw energy from the ancient Juniper trees by hugging them after a ceremonial dance. They also worship the swastika symbol (clockwise) and the `Om’ (symbolising energy).

The trek to Dah from Beema took us three hours. It was a dangerous trek, as we crossed several craggy peaks, holding on to tiny crevices to haul ourselves up. We could hear gunfire across the Indo-PoK border. My inner line permit was checked at the army post. One wrong step on this arduous trek could have proved fatal.

We reached the ancient juniper trees by noon and hugged the trees to soak in their energy. After spending several hours in this picturesque place, it was time to visit some of the elderly Aryans. We shared a meal that consisted of jo (barley) rotibaked in an earthern oven, lettuce leaves, roasted potato, spring onion, boiled cauliflower and wild mint. Women cooked in an open hearth, burning fallen twig collected from the trees in their courtyard. There is a strict taboo against tree felling. The simple meal was fresh and extremely tasty. The following week the trek continued into the villages of Baldes, Samit, Garkun, Darchik and Hanu. The few thousand Brok-pa Aryans have over 5,000 years lived in these hostile terrain at 15,000 ft altitude, subsisting on a vegan diet.

Music and dance are a way of life for them. Both men and women wear colourful costume, decorating their hair with flowers, and are full of joi de vivre. They live in harmony with nature, and are cheerful and stress-free despite living in small rock shelters. They trek long distances.

Almond, apricot and walnut form part of the diet along with endless cups of black tea fortified with barley flour.

The weather in September is pleasantly cold, though temperatures in January can plummet to -20 degrees Celsius. There are an unusually large number of Aryans above 70 years. Many are active even at 90.

Their striking features include blue eyes, aristocratic noses, fair complexion and flawless skin. They appear ethnically distinct from Ladakhis or Kashmiris. They do not marry outsiders and restrict their contact with the outside world, seemingly happy in their isolated existence. Married women braid their hair, which gives them a resemblance to Greeks. One of the women photographed at Dah could have easily been mistaken for a German tourist. She was blonde and had high cheekbones, rotund face and unmistakable German features.

The Aryan tribes believe in prophecies and the recording of dreams. Most of the elderly Aryans meet in the morning at the Juniper grove and discuss their dreams. One of their folk songs sung at the Bononah festival is translated as follows:

In the beginning there was water all over the earth and some of it froze. Dust settled on this patch of ice. Later, a small patch of grass appeared on the frozen patch and, soon, a juniper tree sprouted from the earth. The whole universe was created by Chag (fire), Ser (water) and Yun (earth).

Written by/Copyright held by :Murli Menon (zenlp)

Years of travel have made me long for exotic spots, places at the edge of the wilderness, where one might find a few creature comforts along with a chance to discover something new about human nature. Can such longings ever be satisfied? I found the answer recently, on a trip to the Nilgiri Mountains of southern India.

I went there with only the vaguest of expectations — glorious days hiking in verdant meadows at above 8,000 feet, and long nights by the fireplace, Kingfisher beer at hand, falling asleep over books of ancient travels that would wend their way into my dreams. It did not quite turn out as planned. An encounter with a tribal people resulted in one of the most memorable trips in recent years.

I arrived in Ooty in early January, fresh from a foray in Sri Lanka. Ooty, the British contraction for Udhagamandalam, is a hill-station set on a high plateau amid spectacular mountain ranges. To get there, I took a bus from the city of Mysore, a ‘Deluxe Coach’ that teetered to one side as it bumped along through the dry jungle of the Bandipur and Mudumalai game sanctuaries. The trip was not without its rewards; at one point, as the driver stopped to pay toll, a young Nilgiri Langur (Trachypithecus johnii) leaped onto the steering wheel, its dark eyes alert and shining, its spiky white mane giving it a strangely punk look. People feverishly snapped pictures, but then the driver swatted at it with a film magazine, and the disappointed creature bounded out of the window into the forest.

As the bus began its climb up into the Western Ghats, wheezing and bumping up along the hairpin bends, the forest gave way to grand escarpments rising out of the shimmering plain, their sides clothed in a mantle of evergreen forests. The furrowed slopes of tea-estates started to appear, and then close-ups of women plucking tea, and small vegetable farms with men standing in the fading sunlight tending their carrot patches. In the tiny villages perched on the edge of the terraced hillsides, barefoot children ran alongside the bus, waving their cricket bats at us. We passed young women walking carefully in flashy slippers, baskets of produce perched delicately on their heads, and young men holding hands and waving.

From the Ooty bus-stand, an auto-rickshaw took me across a rather tentative road to my hotel, the Regency Villas. The hotel sits on Fern Hill, the estate of the Summer Palace of the Maharaja of Mysore. The cottages, all painted in pink, are refurbished hunting lodges from the days of the Raj. The walls come adorned with faded photographs of Mysore royalty gathering on the premises in Victorian times, posing next to slain lions and Englishmen in solar topees. I fell asleep wondering which visitor had slept in my creaky cot a hundred or more years earlier.

The Nilgiris, I knew, were home to a number of hill tribes, including the Todas, who, I had been informed, practiced polyandry, and also the Kurumbas, who were sorcerers. To find out more, I caught a bus to the Tribal Research Center, on the road to Mount Palada.

At the Center, I found a number of model huts, sparse but carefully maintained, along with a few tawdry stuffed birds, spears, and hundreds of botanical specimens in small labeled bottles, presumably the sorcerer’s materia medica. The Director, Dr. Jakka Parthasarthy, apologized for the poor condition of his museum, a result of a lack of government funding. He told me that polyandry among the Toda was rare these days, and that their practice of infanticide and the ritual deflowering of maidens were long extinct.

“If you’re interested in the Todas, you really should visit Vasamalli,” he said. “You’ll find her in Kash mund.”

Kash mund was a mund, a little Toda hamlet of huts and one-room houses, along with a well and a tethered long-horned buffalo. It sat quietly, this ancient hamlet, behind the forbidding wall of the vacation home of Vinod Mallya, the plutocrat responsible for Kingfisher Beer and now Kingfisher Airlines.

Mrs. Vasamalli, a middle-aged lady in a white sari, was lighting little clay lamps outside her tiny residence as a gesture of farewell to the sun.

She explained that the word “Toda” was derived from the word “Tud” in the Toda language, meaning “sacred tree”.

“Our culture is based on a reverence for nature,” she said. “No hunting, no internecine warfare. We are a pastoral people, who have traditionally survived by dairy farming, thanks to the buffalo.”

“How many Todas are left?”

“About fourteen hundred. Maybe a few hundred in five years. Unless you count the ones who are inter-marrying.” She shook her head. “But those ones don’t follow the clan customs.”

A young man walked in. He was tall, with a smooth, angular face, and a look of refinement and quiet dignity.

“This is my eldest son Ponnian,” she said.

As they spoke to each other in Toda, I heard a variety of wet sibilant sounds and tongue-twisting ‘r’s, spoken with an almost recitative formality.

“He’s sweaty because he’s come straight from the golf course,” she said, ruffling his hair.

She explained that Ponnian had started out as a caddy several years earlier at the Ooty Golf Club at Wenlock Downs. He was now a scratch golfer, given free clubs and access to a trainer, and was now by far the best player in the southern region.

Ponnian had recently graduated from college. He told me he was hoping his degree, golfing skills and other athletic achievements (he was also a marathoner) would help him get a job in the Army.

“Would you like to come with us for a festival tomorrow?” Mrs. Vasamalli asked. “It’s the salt-water ceremony, for the buffalos.”

We set out around eight in the morning, driving in a Mahindra Jeep towards Emerald. The road circled lazily around a tea-estate, swung through valleys speckled with yellow gorse, and then climbed up through a region of dense eucalyptus groves.

“This is just great!” I said, inhaling the delicious scent of eucalyptus through the open window.

“The eucalyptus trees are a menace,” Ponnian said. “Australian imports, first brought by the British. Everyone, the Forest Department as well as the estate owners, has been planting them like crazy ever since. They drain the subsoil, and have made most of our sacred streams run dry.”

“Our dairy temples have to be built near streams,” Mrs. Vasamalli explained, as the jeep stopped for us to don the brilliantly-patterned, hand-woven shawls that were required for the ceremony. “It’s only if we perform our rituals properly that we can go to Amunawdr.”

“Where is that?” I asked.

“Further west, do you see it?” Ponnian said. “It is a sin for a Toda to point to any of our sacred peaks.”

I spotted a massive peak, tinged with blue shadows, with two smaller siblings nestling on each side. Between them, valleys shimmered into the distance.

“The souls of the buffalo go into one valley, those of humans into the other,” Mrs. Vasamalli said quietly.

“We don’t have the right to visit most of our sacred places,” Ponnian said.

The road ended at the bottom of a hill, and we had to trek up the last mile, climbing a steep and grassy slope. At the top was a mand consisting of a row of eight tiny brick houses, built above a brook. I could see an ancient barrel-vaulted dairy temple below, made of bamboo and mountain grass. It was an extremely modest structure, but Ponnian had told me how, to keep them in good repair, he and his mates had walked fifty miles to find the increasingly rare variety of mountain grass.

A long line of Todas could be seen descending the slope towards a pond below, followed by two herds of buffalos guided by young Todas. Ponnian explained that the Todas had come from far and wide for the ceremony. Though it was a working day, there were nearly a hundred of them in their shawls, lean and tall, striding purposefully towards the pond.

The buffalos drank rather greedily. After they were done, each of the Todas cupped his hand in the water, and poured it into his mouth.

Outside the mand, a crowd of small children came running out in their Sunday best, followed by a crowd of rather striking Toda women, all with striking looks and long tresses. One of them sat down to get her hair braided.

“Wait, he’s taking your picture,” Mrs. Vasamalli giggled. “In your nightdress!”

The men meanwhile gathered by the dairy temple, in front of a bare-chested priest. After a short ceremony, they drank freshly churned buffalo buttermilk, served by the priest in small leaf cups. One of the men brought it over. It tasted pretty good, but then I am fond of buttermilk.

The men began dancing, a slow rotation with much banging of staves and cries of the sacred syllable “Ho”. As they danced, a pair of gorgeous flycatchers flitting above them, the Todas seemed to be part of an ancient pattern, one with the trees and mountains and the eternal sky. Meanwhile, the women had started their own dance, with Mrs. Vasamalli leading the way, singing a playful song that invited a dear but reluctant buffalo to come and drink. I tapped my feet but did not join in, for I was guzzling on wild honey, fresh off the comb. Before shoving a slab of the sticky mess into my mouth, I was instructed to place a dollop of honey on my forehead, as a mark of respect to the bee.

The dancing went on for several hours, and was followed by a lavish vegetarian feast, served to me inside one of the houses, which, I noticed, was spotlessly clean. I ate heartily, grateful to the women who, I knew, had to fetch water all the way from a stream.

After the meal, the men sat under the trees, smoking and conversing of tribal matters, while the women stayed inside and caught up on family gossip. A child came up to me and taught me the basics of counting in Toda.

There are many other enjoyable things to do in Ooty, including visiting the Botanical Gardens, which even in winter boasts a marvelous collection of hundreds of rare orchids. Outside the Botanical Gardens, I ran into another threatened culture at the Tibetan market, run by refugees from the giant settlement of Kushalnagar, in the Indian state of Karnataka. I had a wonderful time drinking tea with them and talking about the Dalai Lama, who had honored Kushalnagar with a visit a few weeks earlier. Other activities I recommend include trekking, visiting the old British graveyard in St. Stephen’s Church, browsing the Victorian fiction in the cavernous Nilgiri Library, and dining on fine Indian and international cuisine at the Savoy Hotel and the Holiday Inn. And if you happen to go there, like I did, in the winter, to hike in verdant meadows and to read a tale of faraway travel by the fireplace, a Kingfisher or warm brandy in hand, please do give a thought to the Todas, who have been trying ever so hard to preserve their natural way of life amid the hubbub of modern India.

Arunachal Pradesh, a mysterious, magical and mystical land tucked away in the north eastern tip of India is one of the most compelling holiday destinations in India.

Arunachal has 26 major tribes and many sub-tribes living in 3649 scattered villages. Although a number of tribal groups constitue the total population, the density of population is very less. People are Mangoloid stock but each tribe has certain distinct characteristics in language, dress & costume. They have a rich cultural heritage. The People are simple, friendly and hospitable. Their colourful festivals are manifestations of their faith and belief.

Community knowledge is the essence of social capital of the poor people and plays significant role in conservation of biodiversity. 

Local culture, spirit, social and ethical norms possessed by local people has often been determining factors for sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity.

 Study indicates that Monpa tribe is having their location specific life-long experience and indigenous strategy for sustainable biodiversity (Paisang and pine tree) use and management at community level. This has been built up through regular practice and observations of local practices related with use of dry leaves of Paisang and pine trees. Women folk play a significant role in collecting and using the dry leaves of these local trees. Maize is a sta ple food crop in which use of dry leaves of Paisang and pine tree is predominant. 

In other crops like barley, wheat, beans, buck wheat, finger millet, coriander, bottle gourd, cucumber, soybean, pumpkin, bitter gourd, spinach, field pea, mustard species, garlic, onion and chilli the dry leaves of Paisang and pine trees are also applied as mulch and source of organic matter. The use of dry leaves of these trees helps the farmers to increase the soil fertility, control soil erosion and conserve soil moisture, thereby helpful in diversifying the local cropping systems and reducing the risk. Based on the types of crops, soil and topography, amount of use of dry leaves varies considerably. 

With the change in the social and cultural systems, government policy and infestation of Loranthus, the use and conservation of trees have been adversely affected.

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