Brahmaputra and the temples of doom

The boat lurched dangerously. A sudden change in the water current slapped us around for a few minutes, and the river began rising rapidly, unexpectedly. There were no clouds in the sky, no signs of an impending storm, no radio reports of rains upcountry. In fact the weather forecast promised a clear and sunny day in the entire region when we began our journey upriver in the morning.

“These days the Brahmaputra needs no rain, rhyme or reason to swell suddenly like this,” says Jadav Payeng, aka Mulai, a Mishing cowherd now famous as the Forestman of Assam. “As if the deadly floods caused by the monsoon downpour between June and September every year are not enough, since the last few years we have seen floods in the  Brahmaputra, with or without rains -- in summer, monsoon, winter. It is like someone is controlling the water flow but is not very good at it. I am certain the dam-building activity upstream is responsible, either dams in Arunachal Pradesh or Tibet, with Indian or Chinese  control. Whoever is responsible is blind. They don't know what they are doing to the thousands-of-years-old civilisation and still undiscovered biodiversity wealth downstream.”

He exchanges a quick, decisive glance with the other oarsmen and changes the course of the boat to drift back to the northern bank where we will wait on higher land till this bout of unseasonal flood passes. Jadav Payeng has lived on the river all his life; he criss-crosses it every day to go to his home island Aruna Sapori, where he single-handedly planted a 1,360-acre forest over 30 years, now named the Mulai Kathoni after him. He has observed the cycle of floods and erosion of the tempestuous Brahmaputra from close quarters. His forest, like so many others along the river, has been sustained by these seasonal, life-giving floods of the river and its many tributaries.

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Majuli - Lost Island

Neo-Vaishanite monks practicing drums at a Satra

On October 28 this year, from a plane between Guwahati and Jorhat, I witnessed  firsthand how  the Brahmaputra river,  reddish-brown and silt-laden, braided with hundreds of sandbars and islands, snakes its way through a  web of channels , creating a terrain of constantly mutating boundaries.

The 2,900-km-long river originates in Tibet as the Tsangpo, flows through Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang, and becomes the mighty Brahmaputra in the Assamese plains before draining into Bangladesh as the Jumna. It is prone to catastrophic flooding every year when the Himalayan snowmelt combines with wanton monsoon downpours. By September this year the river had swollen and flooded thrice, leaving a trail of destruction and displacement three times worse than last year.

Amongst the worst-affected was the riverine island of Majuli, considered the cradle of the Ahom civilisation, fountainhead of neo-Vaishnavism and my final destination for this leg of my journey across the Northeast.

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The wettest desert on earth

Cherrapunji aka Sohra receives about 11,777 mm (463.7 in) of annual rainfall between June and October but all those millions of cubic tonnes of water simply drain down the mountains into the Bay of Bengal via the plains of Bangladesh less than 250 miles below, leaving Sohra parched and thirsty every year. When the monsoons disappear Sohra is dry and there is no water to drink by November. By December the locals are at the mercy of the tanker-gods as is evident from the annual news picture of women and children clamouring for drinking water at tankers or trudging uphill with their pots to suck up some water from the depths of the mountains.

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Kaziranga's quandary

Until recently poaching was considered the biggest threat to Kaziranga's denizens, especially rhinos, to feed the great Chinese appetite for rhino-horn, which is considered an aphrodisiac. In 1992, 48 rhinos fell to the guns of poachers. Since that ghastly year there has been a constant decline in poaching incidents thanks to the valiant efforts of the forest department but poaching has not been brought totally under control. Today, the real danger to Kaziranga's animal populations is habitat destruction caused by what scientists call 'increasing anthropogenic pressures' or destructive human activity, which is slowly eroding the park's boundaries.

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Saving Sikkim's Shangri La

From Dzongu on the northeast borders of the Khangchendzonga biosphere reserve I proceeded southwest to Yuksom in the Ratong Chu valley, the official entry point to the Khangchendzonga national park.

Lorded over by the mighty and most sacred Mount Khangchendzonga, the third highest peak  (8,586 m)  in the world, Yuksom at 1,780m sits comfortably at the ankles of the great mountain, nestled in forests of broad-leaved oak, birch, maple, chestnut, magnolia, rhododendron, silver fir, ash and alder trees. Yuksom, in Lepcha language means the meeting place of three learned monks, who chose the first king, the Chogyal, to establish the Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim. Yuksom was the first capital of Sikkim and the village is an important historical destination littered with 17th-century ruins and some of the earliest Buddhist gompas of the region blessed by the great Rinpoche aka Guru Padmasambhava.

For almost two centuries, the people of Yuksom -- the Lepchas and Limboos (hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators), the Bhutias (a trading community), the Chhetris and Bahuns (agro-pastoralists) and the Gurungs and Mangers (shepherds) -- recently converted to Buddhism, led a peaceful life mainly engaged in cultivating large cardamom and vegetables, rearing livestock and practising Tantric Buddhism in the shadow of the great mountain.

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Kaziranga -Is this a big five graveyard?

Crack of dawn, Kaziranga National Park. I am waiting for the rhinos to wake up and get on with their business of wallowing in mud before they launch into their daylong feeding mode. An elephant herd emerges from the tall grass and trundles towards a ‘bheel’ beyond the swamp we were watching. Sitting quietly in the jeep we watch the majestic creatures pass. Soon enough a lone rhino appears, and waddles to the swamp and settles down with a splash, momentarily spooking a hog deer and a wild pig. A gaggle of Bar-headed Geese flying towards us is cut off by a lone eagle swooping down into the grass between the wild pigs, swamp deer and wild buffaloes to grab unseen prey. 02Somewhere behind me is the mighty Brahmaputra and stretching in front of me, beyond National Highway (NH) 37, loom the Karbi Anglong hills.

I spot pugmarks in the jeep tracks ahead of us. As we edge closer, Gopalnath, the forest guard accompanying us, mutters “tiger”. A chital alarm call not far from us confirms the cat’s presence. The thrill of sensing a tiger before seeing one is still the best part of forest time in my book. After waiting a while, we move on, slowly, senses alert.

Kaziranga!

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Dam the Lepchas

As we wound our way up and down the steep roads of the Himalayan landscape and crossed the Teesta river to enter Dzongu, my host, Gyatso Lepcha, stopped his four-wheel drive in front of yet another boulder blocking our road, a result of the landslides that still shake the mountainside since the earthquake. Far away, towards the west, hidden behind the mist and clouds was Khangchendzonga, the third highest peak in the world and the guardian deity of the Lepcha people who believe they were created to protect and worship the peak. Dzongu extends across a mere 78 sq. km. geographical area. Its vertical terrain, rising from 700 m. to 6,000 m. above mean sea level, is a diverse, snowy, mountainous landscape with steep valleys, narrow gorges and flanking slopes clothed in dense forest. Three climatic zones prevail in this natural wonderland – tropical, temperate and alpine, each with its distinctive ecological touch. Bordering the Khangchendzonga National Park, Dzongu straddles the Himalayan and Indo-Myanmar biodiversity hotspots, that host many endemic vertebrate and invertebrate species, it is also home to about 4,000 Lepchas, the only residents of Dzongu. Outsiders, even from within Sikkim, need a permit to enter. Predictably, there were many ‘outsiders’ at the district administration office applying for a permit at Mangan, the last checkpoint before you enter north Sikkim. The majority were workers from the plains in their white hats, orange trucks, red bulldozers and yellow earth-movers, headed for the Panang-Panan Hydropower-project site. Outside the buzz was about the crores of rupees from the Central Indian Government and the millions of dollars from the World Bank earmarked for the state in the aftermath of the September 2011 earthquake.

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The Gods must be Angry

The Lepchas, the indigenous people of Sikkim, are shaken up. Literally. Many consider the earthquake of September 2011 and the destruction caused at sites of the Teesta dam project in their homeland, Dzongu, in north Sikkim, as a sign of the wrath of the gods for disturbing the sacred ecology of this unique Himalayan landscape.

There are only about 4,000 Lepchas -- a ‘primitive tribe’ as recognised by the state and ‘original indigenous inhabitants’ as acknowledged by the Indian Supreme Court -- still living in Dzongu. They consider themselves protectors of this amazing ecosystem at the foothills of the main deity, Khangchendzonga, the world’s third highest mountain. It is their relationship with the mighty mountain and ancient legends of the natural world they live in that is at the heart of their agitation.

For the past seven years, local inhabitants have been questioning the Teesta hydropower project and actively protesting against the 24 dams being built on the Teesta river. Many have undertaken 100-day hunger fasts demanding that Dzongu be spared.

Dzongu is an earthquake-prone and geologically fragile area; blasting and tunnelling in the mountains to change the course of rivers is not the cleverest way to generate electricity, say the Lepchas. They have quoted from climate change studies questioning the long-term carrying capacity of dams on the Teesta, given the rate of glacier melt and changes in weather patterns. They have pointed out that Dzongu, all of its 74 sq km of vertical terrain, is an important part of the Khangchendzonga National Park and that any conservation effort in these parts would be pointless without protecting Dzongu. They have listed the myriad species of butterflies, birds, plants and trees that survive in these mountains that constitute part of a greater Indo-Myanmar biodiversity hotspot. Tired, thirsty and hungry, they shouted their protests before being arrested and force-fed. No one paid any attention to their warnings. 

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