Manali Missives 3/2013

Manali Missives 3/2013

Lena & David Reichardt’s Blog

Welcome to the second Manali Missive! As I, David, write in a coffee shop cum corner store called “Super Bake” we have been in Manali for about 3 weeks. While Lena has started work as a doctor in Lady Willingdon Hospital I await a scoping conversation with Bishop Samantaroy of the Church of North India’s Amritsar Diocese, to which the hospital, the Manali Masihi Mandali church, the DayStar school and its associated daycare centre all belong. We have moved into and furnished a 2 bedroom flat in the middle of the Church's half hectare compound just off the main shopping plaza in central Manali. 

Super Bake is one floor up and overlooks a kind of courtyard in a shopping precinct just outside the compound’s back gate. The cappuccinos are pretty good here. It’s probably no coincidence that a middle-aged western man sporting a local hat and the kind of thin, cotton wrap-around robe that makes me think that he may have adopted some of the local religious customs, walks in. Like me he is interested in coffee! Unlike me he is as beautifully brown as many of the local residents! Hot on his heels are two young, east Asian tourists, one wearing a white face mask so popular in those cultures. Spying my laptop the other asks me about WiFi facilities. My computer detects 8 WiFi hotspots within range, including Super Bake’s own, and “Vicereine”, the Hospital’s source that I use. Twenty metres away is the white goods store where Lena and I bought our refrigerator, front-loading washing machine and several smaller items. Downstairs are a couple of outlets for Airtel, the telecommunications company we have started using.

Below a couple of young women walk by. One is dressed in a traditional Punjabi dress. Baggy pants with a drawstring around the waist, a long-sleeved shirt the length of a skirt and a scarf worn backwards is my crude, male description, but formal punjabi dresses look spectacular! The other has replaced her pants with jeans. Women seem to be adopting a hybrid, north Indian cum western look for casual use. Men, on the other hand seem to dress either in a wholly westernised or a totally indigenous way. Two teenaged girls who have just come in for a coffee would not look out of place at Nadia’s in Carlingford Court, particularly given the number of Indian immigrants in western Sydney these days! As I sat here writing yesterday afternoon the flock of schoolgirls and attendant boys who descended on the place behaved just like the congregations of youngsters one can see all over Sydney every weekday afternoon.

This describes one, modern face of Manali. Although the quality of building construction does not match Australian standards, mazes of wires loop alarmingly between buildings and seemingly under-employed young men are everywhere, so are mobile towers, small cars and cafés. Mobile coverage is routinely of a higher standard than I am used to in Australia, and I can get WiFi in many places for free.

This small town has as many faces as a Hindu goddess has arms! Its dominant aspect is its setting. Situated by the Beas River in the Kullu Valley, 2,000 metres up on the southern, Indian slopes of the Himalayas, earth’s mightiest mountain range, wherever one looks row upon row of conifers march down impossibly steep mountain slopes. Lifted by the collision of the Indian tectonic plate with the Eurasian Plate, the Himalayan range runs, west-northwest to east-southeast, in an arc 2,400 kilometres long from just south of the northernmost bend of Indus river in Pakistan to just west of the great bend of the Tsangpo river. It varies in width from 400 kilometres in the west to 150 kilometres in the east. Three of the world's major rivers, the Indus, the Ganges and the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra all rise near Mount Kailash, sacred to Hinduism, to cross and encircle the Himalayas. Their combined catchment area is home to some 600 million people.

Hurtling down its course, wearing incessantly at the bed of boulders probably placed during the last ice age, the Beas River is a reminder of the Himalayas’ relative youth. Another is the other night's earthquake, a consequence of those collisions of tectonic plates. In contrast, Australia is a geological Methuselah, stable, and so worn down that much of it is exceptionally flat. From Silverton, out from Broken Hill, one can see the curvature of the earth. That thought would be incomprehensible in Manali. While water hurtles down the Beas River it often disappear in Australian rivers, and can take months to travel from source to mouth.

The Himalayas form innumerable meeting places for the world’s two most numerous people types, south Asian and east Asian. Two young women of the latter type making their purchases remind me that Tibet lies not far to the east. They have a lot to say to their Indian shopkeepers. In what language? Certainly not English! Westerners, of whom the British and their daughter cultures are the most prominent, are latecomers to this part of the world, and despite their power over the past few centuries they remain few in number. Although English is spoken by well-educated Indian professionals, “ordinary” people, such as most of Lena's patients and many church attenders, speak Hindi, India’s national language. But even Hindi may not suffice to communicate with locals. Up and down the Beas river several local languages bear little resemblance to Hindi, making communication difficult for Manali’s many internal immigrants. 

Similarly, the great mountain range both divides and includes many religions and cultures. The really high country tends be inhabited by Buddhists. We've all heard of the Tibetans, but the Ladakhis and Bhutanese are also Buddhists. Mountains are important for Hindus too - the Nepalis are mainly Hindu - but while mountains feature strongly in both the Muslim and Christian scriptures one wonders, given the preponderance of the 3 largest religions on the plains, whether Buddhism has not in a sense retreated to the hills as did the Hebrews, seeking refuge from the Philistines. Perhaps this is what the beginning of Psalm 121- "I lift my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help" - is about. Whatever the truth of that matter mountains produce hardy folk. When we arrived at Lady Willingdon Hospital the tiny Nepalese watchman ran ahead of our vehicle, stopping to make sure we kept up, and guiding our driver to our block of units. He then grabbed our luggage, two heavy pieces at a time, and ran repeatedly up the two flights of stairs to our flat! 2,000 meters altitude was probably in the lowlands for Lok Bahadur! Perhaps he was a Gurkha!

A week ago Grant Campbell, an American who has lived here for 5 years, led me up one of the adjacent peaks, reconnoitering a route he wanted to take 35 young people on the following week. The ascent was tough, the descent worse, and the pain in my thighs for the next few days reminded me that I am no longer young, but the view on my first Himalayan hike was more than adequate compensation! From up there Manali's many faces - multi-storeyed buildings separated by narrow lane ways, tents cheek by jowl with prosperous hotels, templesl westerners, each, seemingly, on their own path to salvation, or meaning, beggars and hawkers gathering around Volvo buses, the traffic with its noise pollution and exhaust fumes, and the groups of locals and young honeymooners congregating in the plaza to see and be seen - disappeared. All I could distinguish was the conifer forest on the western side of the Beas River. We are charged 5 rupees to walk through this, and assured that the money will be used to ecological restoration. It's worth it, just to avoid the petrol fumes on the main road. And that returns me to the point of being here. Just as elsewhere around the world this magnificent landscape is under threat from humans. 50km north of Manali is Rohtang Pass. At just under 4,000 meters in altitude it connects Kullu Valley with the Lahaul and Spiti Valleys, and is one of the Himalayas' main high altitude passes. "Rohtang" means "pile of corpses", which refers to the large number of people who have died trying to cross the pass in bad weather! These days, however, Rohtang Pass is characterized more by the piles of rubbish left by the crowds of newly rich Indian middle class tourists who have driven there in their Suzuki Marutis, Tata Nanos, or ridden on their Hero Hondas or Enfields. The Himalayas are suffering from other forms of pollution too. The otherwise beautiful the Beas River stinks of human faeces at close quarters. That decreases the availability of drinking water and increases the range of communicable diseases in the valley, issues that Lena combats in her work in the hospital. Another issue in the Himalayas is deforestation. While India's new middle class express their freedom to travel many people in the Himalayas still subsist at a medieval standard of living. To cook food and keep warm they burn the most accessible fuel - wood. But trees also fulfil the vital function of holding soil in place on steep mountain slopes. Deforestation upstream in the Himalayas has allowed monsoonal rains to wash topsoil into the vast river delta we call Bangla Desh, exacerbating that country's regular problem with flooding. 

So does the rising sea levels caused by climate change. But climate change is also affecting the high Himalayas in the way that is perhaps most serious. After I preached last Sunday a glaciologist introduced himself. Having noted that this was the first time he had heard his area of professional expertise linked with his faith he confirmed that as elsewhere around the globe glaciers across the Himalayas are in retreat. If they finally disappear the more than 600 million people nurtured by the rivers that flow from them will be left without sufficient water. That will cause enormous suffering and social dislocation.

As an honorary ecotheological consultant  I shall work with Indian colleagues to inform schools, churches and other groups of interested people of the ecological threats this region faces, why humans are causing them and what can be done to combat them. Already significant work is being done in this regard but, as in Australia, a great deal more needs to be done. Lena will continue as she has started, working in the hospital. Although there is a large variety of work she is now the hospital's designated paediatrician. She is also putting her diploma in obstetrics and gynaecology to good use.

That is probably enough for now. Please comment, so that we will know better what to write.

Grace and peace!

Lena and David Reichardt