Ghost Homes

 Someone once said: “A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.”

So true,

A house that is not a home

Ghost homes are houses in the mountains that are left vacant by the owners, to be visited a few times each year or not at all. I am writing of Binsar WLS, but this could be equally true of other houses in the hills.

just locked up...

...or dilapidated

...to be visited on festivals

If they are opened a few times a year, then it is generally done so on a festival, as the mountain folk are normally very religious. These are people who have left for better job opportunities in the cities. Or their children who have left for as these villages offer few opportunities.

...another house falling apart

The first to fall is the roof, grass grows between the slates and water seems to seep in. Then the beams fall, the beams are of pine and water is fatal...

...and another

...the last to fall seem the walls, these are traditionally of mud and stone, and without cover of the roof, the weather plays havoc with the walls. The windows look out sightlessly on a patch overgrown with weeds. 

the house-owner keeps his belongings...  

...in a small part of the house. The part he has covered in corrugated iron. Traditionally there is no glazing on windows, simply planks of wood, keeping the house warm in the severe winters of the mountains.

The walls of brick and mud still stand, but the roof and beams 
are dilapidated

Maybe slate quarries are in the Wildlife Sanctuary and so inaccessible. Maybe t raditional building methods are expensive, the materials difficult to difficult to find, and the craftsmen, the few that are left, very difficult to come by. It could be a combination of all these factors.

...homestays are mushrooming

Who doesn't want a slice of the tourist pie?  Views this way and that, almost every village has multiple homestays. Members of the families who want to watch what they want to, do so on their mobiles. Yes, mobiles have percolated into every nook and cranny of their lives.

Huge and fancy houses

A disturbing trend is these homes are long-leased to people from the plains who build incongruously huge houses with retaining walls in the ‘balmy surrounds’ of a wild life sanctuary; for bragging rights perhaps?

Home is not a place…it’s a feeling

Life in the Mountains - Part 2

 “The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.” - Thomas Wolfe

Trishul in clouds

Views of the Kumaon Himalayas, like this, are only for us The Great Indian Tourist. For life on the mountains must continue, earlier the seasons dictated the pace of life, now it is calendars and global warming.

Mules are used where the walking track has been
widened

Building a house at the end of a walking track is difficult, all the supplies have to be brought by mule or by hand. Now that cutting and selling wood is not feasible (it’s mostly pine which is not good for construction), the building has to be of modern materials got from outside. Pathways have to be found for mules, where earlier a man trudged, now mules go.

A very tired mule

 Mules did four rounds where I was staying, hauling sand, and cement. The Tor rods were hauled all the distance by men. More and more people from the plains are buying or leasing traditional houses, tearing them down, and building unsightly monstrous behemoths in their place. 

the working man

Most of the labour is from other states, paradoxical though, as the younger generation from the mountains are leaving as there are no jobs to be had...

people who own houses, come infrequently...

...otherwise houses remain locked

clothes that have dried and are ready to be taken in...

Drying is with the sun, clothes are washed when it is bright and sunny and put out to dry. So are the vegetables, most of which are grown on the property itself. 

Pumpkins grown on the property, these are
being readied for Shivratri

And life must go on, the eternal cycle of drudgery. The Munni Devi's of the mountains gather firewood, look at the sky, if it is a clear day...

gathering firewood

"Your faith can move mountains, and your doubt can create them." — Swami Vivekananda

Life in the Mountains

"Beyond the mountains, more mountains.” —Haitian proverb

 

Trishul wreathed in clouds

The local village people do not climb for a view. It is part of their everyday chores, from gathering firewood to going to school, to building a house,  it is a hard life. Especially for villages where one has to walk to get to.

Munni Devi gathers firewood...

...and walks away

Firewood is the sustenance of all villagers in the mountains.  Though gas has come, it is still in the nascent stages and is a luxury to use for heating. One saw a man carry an empty cylinder to be exchanged for a full cylinder, imagine carrying that back, two kilometres each way.

From heating to eating and everything in between,
it is done through wood. 

school is what it is

In village schools there are more kids than classrooms.  In the school one visited, there were three rooms for six classes. 

farming the land for what meagre crop there is

The children go to cities for jobs else they do what their parents did, look after cattle and farm. 

the daily menu...

School going children are a boon, as there one meal less to feed them as school gives lunch, though one wonders how filling or nutritious the lunch is.

Life is hard here in the mountains, harsh weather conditions, limited access to resources, and challenging terrain make it especially difficult.

Pangoot - a birders paradise

 

Pangoot Post Office

‘A rose by any name smells just as sweet’, so does Pangoot/Pangot.  The locals call it Pangoot whereas at many places it is spelt as Pangot.  The post office calls it Pangoot and so shall I through this blog.  

Streaked Laughingthrush
A very common bird and I found them everywhere...

...Striated Laughingthrush

This is my third time visiting this place, and the first time in winter.  Earlier I had stayed at The Great Barbet hotel, but this time I stayed in Kamal Joshi’s homestay. For blogs on my earlier trips there please go links Naina Peak and Brahmasthali -The Top of Kumaon (in June 2021)  and Pangot, Chanfi and Sattal: Walking with nature (in May 2022)

Red-rumped Swallow gathering wet mud for its nest at Pangot...

...White-throated Laughingthrush bathing and
drinking water at a bird hide. 

The number of homestays has increased manifold, there were two to three earlier but now there are many (more than fifteen?). Each has its hide, feeds birds, grow trees that attract birds, then trims these trees.  It has got so that there aren’t too many birds in the forests.

A Macaque looks inquisitively at me

There is substantial wildlife here too, many leopards (though I didn’t get to see one at Pangoot), barking deer (of which I got to see many), ghural (blue sheep) of which I saw a kid freshly killed by a leopard and the mischievous Macaque which were everywhere.

Brown-fronted Woodpecker....

...Rufous-bellied Woodpecker

Woodpecker Point was aptly named, a small pond in the forest, about two kilometres from Pangoot, earlier I had been going there regularly and had seen many birds and animals.  This time too I went there twice, but no dice, as apart from the different types of Woodpecker drumming away looking for insects under the bark of trees, I saw nothing.

Snow at Cheer Point

On one day I hired a car, old wine in new bottles, the driver was Harish, an old friend, but he had bought another car. That day we went to Cheer Point (pronounced chir) and drove beyond looking for the elusive Cheer Pheasant and Koklass, we saw neither but it was a lovely snow bedecked drive.

A school boy looks wistfully at the nala as he crosses the bridge at Chanfi...

Then I went with Harish to Chanfi and Sattal, another birders paradise where I photographed the elusive Forktail and locals crossing a bridge over a stream. 

White-throated Fantail at the studio

Mountain Bulbul wondering what this photographer is at, one can see bits of the studio. 

White-throated Laughingthrush having a bath at a pool near a hide

Earlier one homestay had a hide, now so many have hides that very few photographers come to the ‘studio’.  The ‘studio’ is a few twigs placed across a running stream where birds come to bathe and drink water. On the way I saw one of the ubiquitous  Kalij Pheasants in the bushes.

Kalij Pheasant (female) in the bushes

Barking Deer at Sattal

While going to the ‘studio’ in the evening that a got a record pic of a Barking Deer, there were two of them and when they saw us, they clambered up the mountain behind.

Brown Wood-owl

At Sattal I hooked up with a group to see a Brown Wood-owl some distance away from the stream. 

The sarai had about seven separate rooms

Once I walked down a road that went on to a village in the distance, and  it was a lovely walk with a sarai (for want of a better word) a place where travelers used to spend the night.

Kavadias hurrying to where they have to go

It was Shivratri on one of the days that I was there and Kavadias were busy carrying holi water (from Haridwar?) to their villages.  Generally pleasant people (as almost all hill folk are) they didn't mind their pictures being taken.  

Niraj and his friend as we climbed up to China Peak. , 

One day I took my companion Niraj, and his friend another young boy, and climbed up to China (Naina) Peak.  With me huffing and puffing up, these two youngsters ran up like mountain goats.  From Pangoot it is about 20 kms round trip, 12 seeming vertical kilometres while going and the return is 8 very steep kilometres.

Chandan Singh Ka Dhaba

It was, regretably, time to return, so Harish and I started at 10.30am, and stopped for an almost mandatory lunch at Chandan Singh ka Dhaba.  Only meat-chawal (meat curry and rice) cooked on a wood fire, is served and it is so crowded there is nary a place to sit. From when I went before, the meat-chawal is not the same, maybe because his son makes it, maybe because I have a jaded palette, maybe because he is so famous that he couldn't care less...maybe, maybe...

Farewell to the mountains, till we meet again

Mukteshwar - a great view of the Kumaon Himalayas

 

The rays of the sun illuminate Trishul and Nanda Devi.  I could see peaks to the left and right of this massif.

Maybe it was so destined and I just couldn’t get my breath back, the complete Kumaon range was so clear.  Complete with Badrinath and Kedarnath to the left and Panchacholi to the right before the range went into Nepal. But then I am getting ahead of myself.

Part of the view from my room

When I reached Mukteshwar it was snowing, actually snowing!! The snow would melt as soon as it touched the ground and it was magical. The next morning it was clear but cold, I got my eyes full of the Himalaya. I then realized that the view from Vineet’s Homestay (where I was staying) and the KMVN rest house was the best.

A langur pondering about its next meal?

Mukteshwar is dominated by the Veterinary Institute, I could not go anywhere without encountering some branch of this institute. The Vet Inst and langurs were all pervasive.

A family of Langur monkeys.
Other hill stations are dominated by macaques, (colloquially bunder) but Mukteshwar has predominantly langurs  

 

Madan, my guide, on the many walks i went for

Madan, came at about 10 am and took me for the first of the “jungle walks”. There are a lot of forests around Mukteshwar and so we went on many jungle walks. Though I suspect he was a "guide" for the many tourists that infest the place in season.

Oak forests abound

Large parts of Mukteshwar were built by the British and so the houses were archaic, with chimneys and corrugated tin roofs. In fact, major parts of Mukteshwar were made by them, though now “modernization” is creeping in. 

Sunset silhouettes the western part of the range 

I could never get enough of the view of the mountain range, whenever it was clear I would go out and look at the peaks. Though a clear view of the peaks meant strong winds and often  inclement weather. Mostly the clouds would rise and by midday obscure the view or make the range hazy. 

Bhaalugaad Waterfall

On two days I did the touristy thing, one day hiring a car and driving to the Bhaalugaad Waterfalls, a major tourist draw in season judging by the cafes and "adventure" activities along the route. Being mostly bereft of tourists at this time, very early and "out of season", I had the waterfall to mainly to myself.  It is a nice place when alone.

Mukteshwar Post Office

Post offices did thriving business in the days that people wrote letters and actually mailed them, now speed post and other schemes have taken over. This post office was made in 1905, I wonder what stories the walls could tell?

A Methodist Church I found along the way

On the second day I walked (with my guide of course), about 15 kms, going to Chauli Ki Jali, Mukteshwar temple and ending at the “organic goat farm” (whatever that is), on the way back we took a small diversion to see a Methodist Church. And yes...they do need donations for the roof...

Sunrise over Trishul with clouds about to obscure the peak

I was walking every day that the weather permitted which was almost five days of the week I was there. When the Great Indian Tourist is not there, making it "a home away from home" it is an achingly beautiful place.