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14 YEARS AT 4,200 metres
written and photographed by PINAKI CHAKRAVARTY
“We didn’t know until much later that we had burned ourselves around the stove, burned the socks right off our soles trying to get some feeling into the feet�/p>

FURTHEST RECESSES
Uncomfortable geography

It was just beginning to get dark as we skidded over ice at 4,200m, barely 50km from Bhutan and perhaps 150km from China, on the upper reaches of Arunachal Pradesh, in the furthest recesses of northeast India. Such geography isn’t comforting. We were high on the road to Tibet, and this groove on the top of the mountain �Sela Pass �was unloading all the wind and snow south of China. All it took was a pause in the drive, a slight slowing down for a photo and we were stuck, in the snow, on the slope of a glassy road. It was barely evening but getting dark fast, with the snow moving in. The vehicle wouldn’t budge. It was a Tavera, the kind of car you wouldn’t have dreamt of introducing into the West after the Eighties, but the type that residents of the Subcontinent, starved of many things the rest of the world take for granted, lap up. The miniscule wheels just spun on the icy slope, and all we were left with was the thin, desperate whine of the engine across the deserted mountainside. This didn’t look too good. It was well below zero, we were the only people foolish enough to attempt this road in this weather, and the nearest help, the army camp, was kilometres away. I was a stranger to these parts, more at home in the barren landscape of the Middle East where all you needed was water, a headcloth and the ability to walk to civilisation, even if that meant hiking for a couple of days. It was easy. Here, all I had was a pullover good enough for a Muscat winter, hiking boots and half a bottle of Old Monk. There was no point in hanging around the car any longer �we were slowly freezing, and trying to move the Tavera just made it worse. My hands felt like they were dying. There were a few buildings around but they were all dark, and I ran up the stairs of the closest one �a temple �but all I got was a padlocked door.

Deep frozen, I ran to the next shack, on the edge of the mountain, a little wood and tin shed looking out over the snow and the white of the mountain slopes disappearing below. It was dark, like everything else and my heart sank: we’d have to get back in the car, switch on the engine, and suffocate through the night. But I heard music as I reached that dark green wooden door, the unmistakable unapologetic din of Indian radio, somehow catching above the clouds, bouncing off the peaks. I banged on the door, once, twice, thrice, and then a female voice shouted from inside, telling me to push it in. I kicked at it and it flew open. A long supporting rod clanged down when I stumbled in, barely registering figures huddled around a wood stove as I blabbered half in cold and half with fear, asking if we could spend the night. And that’s how I met Anju.

ANJU
Playful tugs at the parka

She is 14, but like most girls in these parts has aged prematurely with poverty, backbreaking work and the weather. She ran that restaurant almost single-handedly, paying a rent of Rs.1,500 a month, making her living by preparing tea and feeding the tourists who passed through, but more often the Indian army soldiers who trundled by in parkas and snow shoes, looking for hot tea and matches and a bit of playful contact with her, half flirty, half brotherly, pulling at the hood of her parka. But Anju just smiles and pulls away and gets on with her work. As we stumbled into her dark dining room, I was just about aware of a couple of figures huddled around the wood stove, and a little black dog curled under the rough wooden tables. We were so cold we had lost sensation in our hands and feet and most other parts, and didn’t know until much later that we had burned ourselves around the stove, burned the socks right off our soles trying to get some feeling into the feet. Anju was used to this. Over her years at Sela Pass, she has given refuge to tourists, the stray army ranger and truck drivers, all victims to this little crook between mountains that channelled the wind that turned weather foul within minutes, turning the road into slush, icing over the grey lakes on the way to Tibet, sending endless strings of multicoloured prayer cloths jerking over the charcoal sky.

DARK STORIES
Mumbling through cracked lips

Some prayers are answered and others not, and no one would ever guarantee you anything on Sela. Even the little temple is padlocked, for, as Anju’s brother said, “People would come and steal the idols when the weather turns bad and everyone goes indoors. And why not? Men have committed murders for Rs.50.�But Sela has stories that are even worse, buried under snow and rock, tales and truths and lies that you can hear through the ramshackle Indian army checkpoints, bunkers half buried under ice and wet earth, ammunition dumps with ‘The Power Behind the Punch�painted across their gates, the commando training school hidden beyond the slopes. It was 1962 and India was losing a war, losing bits of itself that it has never regained. The enemy had advanced through these northernmost valleys, all the way to the pass where we now sat huddled. Locals say that the army had retreated, all except for one soldier who, despite orders, had stayed and halted an entire battalion. Through a combination of superior altitude and raw courage, he had kept them at bay for 72 days before being overpowered and butchered. Bits and pieces of him were found later when the Indians fought these slopes back, and when Sela, his lover, discovered them she threw herself off the peaks, cementing the legend and lending her name to a spot already heavy with tragedy. But death is commonplace here, and most stories never make it further than the mumblings we heard through cracked lips over hot tea that we couldn’t feel as it burnt its way down our throats. Some people have died trying to get to safety, but most have perished by making the decision to stay in their cars, freezing and slowly choking to death, found the next day or much later. Others have been lucky, rescued by the army, put up by the busload in the temple, given shelter at the military outposts on the other side of the mountain.

FROZEN DIESEL
One night on the edge

We were lucky, lucky to have gotten stuck just metres away from Anju and not kilometres down the road, in the dark, with a half-frozen lake on one side. The problem with our car was that it ran on diesel, which freezes at a much higher temperature than petrol. Its insides had frozen through in the half hour it took us to warm ourselves into coherence, and we were stuck for the night, with the 14 year old mountain girl and her wood stove for company. We weren’t having fun. The wind seemed to blow right through the wood walls, half-cracked windows and corrugated roof, unsettling the soggy calendar, rattling the cheap crockery, sending little ripples across the surface of the regulation blue-infused kerosene kept in an old mineral water bottle. Anju picked out a handful of instant noodle packets off her shelves and cooked them in the tiny kitchen a few feet away from us, and we gulped them down more for the heat than for hunger. We had to feed the fire every ten minutes or so, as the effects of the last pour of kerosene died midway along the planks of damp wood stuck in the stove, and I wondered how we would spend the night. Sitting down on the plastic chairs kept most of the body too far away from the fire, except for the feet, so we had to stand up, occasionally turning towards the fire whichever side was getting numb. We slept in Anju’s bedroom that night, two grown men to a bed, with the hostess and her brother next door.

The room was below the restaurant: the house had two levels, each with access to the ground, being built on the slope, and we froze in the minute it took to slip over the rocks to the bottom floor. The bedroom walls were plastered with layers of newspaper for insulation, with a massive kerosene heater between the beds, and layers of necklaces, hair clips, rows of lipsticks and greeting cards strung one below the other �the interior decoration trademark we would find through the private rooms of the Northeast, from the ancestral homes of Assam to the shanties of Arunachal. The night passed painfully, through a haze of kerosene fumes, men coughing, cold, stuffy air, the prickle of heavy, dark blankets piled over each other, damp beds and the occasional murmur from Anju, half comforting, in the next room. Champa the dog woke up as I got out to sunlight blazing off the snow in the morning �she had spent the night outside, wedged between the doorway and the snow. I had been sure she would freeze to death, but she was just a little stiff, and got rid of the frost by rolling over the snow until she was happy enough to start running around.

Anju hadn’t fared as well. She woke up late, long after we had warmed up and started to freeze again. The night had been tough even for her, caring for her brother, cooking for us, looking after the little dog. We shuffled out of her way, half in awe, stomping awkwardly across the wooden floor. Indian Army soldiers got our car started, and the road ahead turned up to Tawang, and then on to the highest peaks before the international border.

ARUNACHAL
A fickle promise

It might have been April, but the lakes were half-frozen slush, patchy grey in the shadow of the clouds, brilliant black and white in the sun. Somewhere along the way we must have touched 17,000ft. At that altitude, even in summer, the mind seems to wander. The only thing keeping you intact is the fickle promise of good weather, and we knew it wouldn’t last long. Instead, somewhere between the yaks, howling mountain dogs and roadside plaques in memory of those who had perished along the way, we turned tail and came back. Arunachal Pradesh translates from Sanskrit into ‘Land of the Dawn-Lit Mountains��a reference both to its geography and its reach more to the east than any other Indian state. Such landscape is magnificent �you just have to know when to back off to avoid being a part of the stories it nurses on an overcast day.