From the Mountains

Day 1:

Straight off the plane from Singapore, into dry summer heat of New Delhi, landing in the afternoon, and transferring to a car for the drive to Hardwar. Normally, a four-hour drive if one leaves Delhi in the early morning, at that time of day it took 6 hours - over 1 just to get out of Delhi in the slow-moving traffic.

Checked into the Ginger Hotel just north of Hardwar as night fell. This is a new hotel chain for mid-budget travellers, which is an enormous market niche in India. They advertise that their hotels have ''smart basics.'' The model is European, with no room service or bell service. There is a pantry on every floor. Basically DIY. It has flat plasma screen TVs in the room, and Wifi Internet - which wasn't working.

Day 2:

Left at 9.30am. A gruelling, twisting 6-hour drive later, from high cool ridges down to warm valleys and up again on hairpin bends as the road snaked into the high mountains. We pull into the Himalayan foothills, Uttarkashi, in a sudden storm of hail bouncing off the windshield and rattling on the roof.

Walked down to the Shivananda Yoga Ashram on the banks of the Ganga. Deep channel, deep green water in the twilight, flowing imperceptibly on the surface but then crashing down some rocks downstream. Black stones rounded by the forces of these mountains, this water.

On the opposite bank the forest brooded in the early evening on steep hillsides, terraced fields and hamlets. As dark descended on the valley someone on the hillside opposite lit a fire to keep warm or perhaps to cook. The tiny orange light flickered through the trees.

As night fell, fat drops of rain and rumbling thunder overhead. Roiling clouds, but soon they drifted away and presently the crescent moon appeared.

It's cold. Coming from Bangkok/Singapore/Delhi with jet travel and an aircon vehicle insulating me from the environment and transporting me the fastest possible way from one ecological zone and culture to another in my own bubble, I feel it for the first time tonight. I am out of the bubble!

There isn't a sound in the valley, not even a dog barking.

Day 3:

Reached Gangotri, the starting point for a trek on foot to Gaumukh - the largest glaciers in the Himalayas and the source of the Ganges. It is not yet crammed with pilgrims and tourists. The valley has only just opened, it is late spring. The weather is fine!

There is a faded poster on the wall of the hotel with an idyllic landscape, and the words

All things must change..

To something new,

To something strange

After lunch, I set off to see Swami Sundaranand, a Hindu monk. Walking through the bazaar and across the river as it crashes through the gorge brings back memories of my trip here in 1998, where we stayed at the forest rest house. I pass it by; it has a set of brand new solar panels, which is a good sign.

The Swami had visitors from the United States in his little cottage but made space for me anyway.

Forked out US$ 200 to buy two autographed copies of his book, one for me and one for a friend, but it was worth it; at least this Swami is trying to do something about the mess around him. Like all the Swamis here, he is full of gossip about the others, and I found out all about the backgrounds of some other famous ''Swamis'' who have set up shops, hotels and ashrams in Gangotri. Enough to make your hair curl!

Day 4

Set off at 8am; I carried one of my two smaller packs with water and camera equipment and a spare fleece shirt and jacket. Applied sunblock and wore my white Tilley hat.

The sun is harsh at that altitude, and the air dry. Gangotri's elevation is around 10,000 feet. As I began labouring up the first steep section of rock, I thought I must have been mad to propose to my editors that I visit Gaumukh, where the glacier melts and gives birth to the Ganges. What was I doing here, at age 47, when I last did this at 38 and found it tough then?

But then I have always advocated to sceptics of global warming, that they should get their boots on and go take a look for themselves instead of listening to lawyers and lobbyists in suits and the obligatory science sceptics. So, here I was, and I had to do it, I couldn't very well turn around and make a complete fool of myself.

But I soon settled down into a rhythmic plod, and even with pauses for pictures of the awesome mountain scenery, and for water and raisins and chocolates stashed in various pockets of my cargos, made it the 8 km and 1,000 feet up to Chirbasa in good time - four and a half hours. I was thankful for the week of 'hot yoga' training in the mornings in Bangkok, and the 34 floors in my apartment block which I climbed a couple of times.

On the trek, the rush of the river and around random rock corners, pockets of absolute silence.

Spare rockscapes broken by tiny grottos of green where it is a pleasure to sit in cool shade for a few minutes, but not long enough for your muscles to stiffen.

Water in a spray coming off a rock face and drenching the trail, a free drink and shower with the droplets dancing in the sun.

Gnarled birch trees clinging to the slopes, mountains white like sentinels ranged against the sky, pristine distant snowfields gleaming on faraway high meadows.

At Chirbasa, a pine-wooded campsite on the way to Gaumukh, I found the exact spot where I had camped in 1998 - and a great spot it is on the banks of the river amid scattered coppices of pine. In 1998 a herd of bharal - Pseudois nayaur, see http://www.ultimateungulate.com/Artiodactyla/Pseudois_nayaur.html - would come out in the daytime and graze and sun themselves on an open green space on the other side of the river; since then that space had been wiped out by a big landslide and was now strewn with boulders.

Day 5

Dipendra Singh was my guide and cook provided by Ibex Expeditions (www.ibexexpeditions.com run by my mountaineer and explorer friend Mandeep Singh Soin who is working tirelessly to persuade India and Pakistan to stop maintaining troops and firing shells at each other on the melting Siachen glacier.

Dipendra, an upbeat Nepalese, assured me that at the pace I had maintained the previous day, I could make to the glacier in three hours, which meant I could be back in Chirbasa the same day. That was preferable to camping at Bhojbasa which is halfway to the glacier. Bhojbasa has some facilities for pilgrims and trekkers and an ashram where one can sleep, but it is a dismal barren place where you have to face icy high winds and dust all day.

So I took one man, Suresh Kumar who has been doing this trail for 14 years, and set off for the glacier at around 7.30am. In the mountains you must start early because invariably, afternoons bring a change in the weather, with clouds and possibly rain or sleet and snow depending on how high you are. We saw Bhojbasa from above, and I was thankful for my decision, for it is indeed a barren place.

Ironically it is named after Bhojpatra trees - a species of birch - of which thanks to people, there is a grand total of ONE that remains, lonely on the empty mountainside. There are efforts at afforestation (see the outstanding efforts of Dr Harshvanti Bisht, http://www.gangotri.prayaga.org/work.php) but it is difficult to propagate species in such a harsh environment.

We found two foreign trekkers at the glacier, right underneath the ice cliff. Suresh hurried to warn them to step back a bit; there have been many casualties here, and broken limbs, from blocks of ice and boulders falling on people taking a dip in the icy water. I washed in it, and gathered some water for friends who had requested some. Ganges water from the source is the holiest of all, they say.

Standing bare bodied for a few moments in the sun was a wonderful, liberating experience in that landscape. I took several pictures of the glacier, but it is challenging to capture its essence because it is such a big mass. The mouth is semi-circular. Spires of ice glowing in the sun reminded me of Superman's cave from the first movie.

We spent about two hours at the glacier. The weather was changeable; there was snow up at Tapovan, a two-hour climb from the glacier. so we didn't venture up. The peaks of the Shivling and Meru mountains, were obscured by clouds. We walked back into a fierce icy wind howling up the valley, bent and covering our heads and faces. It was exhausting, and it was with a sense of relief that I got back into camp at Chirbasa just before dusk.

Day 6

Took the opportunity to relax at Chirbasa all day. Wrote up some notes and read through Swami Sundaranand's book. It was a change from being on the road for days on end without a break. Did some Yoga to keep in shape, stretch the muscles. It is a fantastic experience to do Yoga in those surroundings!

Day 7

Made it back to Gangotri which had transformed in just a few days. The bazaar was now full of so-called sadhus, ascetics who shun a normal family life in pursuit of salvation. But being a sadhu is like a career option here, all you have to do is sit on the side of the road and wait for handouts from pilgrims. While there are a handful of genuinely enlightened sadhus in the area who have been around for years and have followers, most of those who hang about the bazaar and walk up and down to Gaumukh and back are merely itinerants living off pilgrims.

Many pilgrims had already started arriving in big tour buses and the bazaar was thronged with people.

I had seen enough, now for Part II of my trip.

Day 8

An awful drive, from the coolness of the mountains down to the oven-like heat of May in the north Indian plains. The car I had, did not have an air conditioner. The less said about the trip the better, except that I wanted to get to Delhi as fast as possible, a day ahead of schedule, in order to do some writing, contact some global warming experts and then catch a plane to Kolkata on Day 10 for the next leg.

To the Sea

Day 10

An early flight out of Delhi brought me to Kolkata in the late morning, where Anil Mistry met me at the airport. Anil works for the wildlife NGO Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) - http://www.wpsi-india.org

He runs a tiger conservation station in the Sunderbans, on the island of Bali II where he was born. That was to be my base.

We had a quick lunch in Kolkata and then continued in the vehicle to Shonakhali, a three hour drive from Kolkata. There we boarded a boat hired from the Tagore Society for Rural Development - http://www.tsrd.org

There is a different kind of silence here, the towering rock and ice escarpments of the mountains replaced by a vast blue cloudless sky and a warm humid breeze as long as you are in motion on the river. If you stop, there is a stillness and in the afternoon heat you begin to perspire even if you sit and do nothing at all.

The silence here is broken only by the growl of the boat's engine as it forges slowly upstream on the turbid Bhogol river. Here the two great river systems of the Ganga and Brahmaputra merge and empty into the Bay of Bengal. The mud banks are lined with low vegetation, mostly of the 32 species of mangroves and 30-odd other associated species.

The landscape is reminiscent of old Satyajit Ray films : low clay huts clustered behind mud and brick and bamboo embankments, banana fronds and coconut palms against the sky. Here and there, a brilliant red sari hung out to dry like a random splash of paint on a monochromatic landscape.

In most places, the village huts are below the high water mark, protected only by the handbuilt embankments or bundhs. 'There have been many cases of sudden submergence'' Anil says.

We stopped at a school (Bijoynagar Adarsha Bidyamandir with around 1,200 students ranging from Class 5 to 12) and met headmaster Sukumar Poira, who is also the chairman of the Bali Nature and Wildlife Conservation Society which was started by Anil before he joined WPSI.

In his office Anil has a faded picture of a tiger found sitting in the morning, on the thatched roof of a village hut.

Day 11

We set off at 5am, dawn like blackened beaten silver on the sweep of the broad river. We hope to bat the heat (at 5.30am the sun is already up above the horizon). We walk out on the slippery concrete jetty coated with green moss. As the engine throbs into life we swing out into the middle of the river, a cool breeze in our faces as we head north toward Hemnagar on the Raimongol river which borders Bangladesh.

More Satayajit Ray redux as we sailed stolidly (the boat was sturdy and slow, not like the speedy longtails you get in Thailand) from island to island, visiting communities affected by rising sea levels and sinking islands. There is no shortage of them here. I was struck by the lack of development in the area, which surely must be to the great discredit of the Sunderbans Development Board, and successive ministers in charge of development in the Sunderbans.

At Hemnagar, a village of 1,200 people, the embankment has had to be moved inland twice in the last five years. There is no compensation, no safety net for people who lose their homes and land to the waters. Local Upen Mondol is among a group of men I speak with. He looks out at the river and says 'It doesn't look good, in a few years the Sunderbans may be gone.''

Day 12

Another 5am departure for another tour of islands. Great excitement as we spot a pair of Irrawaddy dolphins. This is a species on the very edge of extinction. The two were playing by the shore, but they (and some others we saw later that day) seemed to have a highly developed sense of danger; it seemed the moment I picked up my camera they dived and kept away from the boat. Of course it is next to impossible to tell where they will surface next.

There is something incredibly sad about the Irrawaddy dolphin, because it is a species in lonely decline, scattered in far areas of the Asia-Pacific. Check out http://www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Orcaella_brevirostris/more_info.html

Which says it has a patchy distribution in the shallow, coastal waters of the Indo-Pacific from northern Australia and the Philippines to northeastern India. Freshwater subpopulations occur in three river systems: the Mahakam of Indonesia, the Ayeyarwady (previously Irrawaddy) of Burma, and the Mekong of Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam. It is also found in completely or partially isolated brackish water bodies such as Chika Lake in India and Songkhla Lake in Thailand.

Odd how the populations are so fragmented. At one point, they must have had contact with each other.

We pass Morichjhappi, a place made famous in Amitava Ghosh's outstanding book The Hungry Tide. I have a problem I must confess, about this book : the title has made it impossible for anyone writing about the Sunderbans to use the word 'hungry''.. yet it is the most appropriate word to describe the rivers and the tide!

That evening Anil and I sit on a bench on a headland, a cool breeze coming off the river, and talk about wildlife and global warming. I tell him I would rather sleep out here than in the stifling hut, but he says there is a risk from tigers. They regularly cross rivers several kilometres wide.

Day 13:

We leave at 5am to go back to Shonakhali, where the car is waiting to take us to Diamond Harbour, where we are to catch a boat for Ghoramara island, which is at another end of the Indian Sunderbans. It is a long haul, some 5-6 hours, but going around by sea would have taken twice that time.

An old wooden boat was waiting for Anil and self, along with a local guy who is a friend of Anil's. Two scrawny characters were masters of this dodgy looking boat.

It was now around 2pm and the boat had no cover at all. It was unbelievably hot on the open sea. I just hunkered down under my Tilley and tried not to move. One of the guys yanked on a rope and the engine started with a thunderous roar and belch of black smoke, while his sidekick pumped frantically to get evil-looking water out of the bottom of the boat.

About 10 minutes into the journey Anil, who grew up running boats up and down the Sunderbans, started yelling at the boatman to stop the engine. He had detected that water was not flowing through the cooling system and the engine was about to seize.

A little bit of tinkering thankfully solved that problem, and after a mere five minutes of bobbing aimlessly in the open sea, we resumed our journey to Ghoramara where we jumped off into ankle-deep mud and set off in search of village headman Ajay Patra.

We were scheduled to go to neighbouring Sagar island and spend the night there, but having seen the condition of the boat and assessed the story at Ghoramara, I made a decision not to spend more time there, and we set off back to the mainland.

Halfway there the boat's engine just gave out. We bobbed around in silence, the only sound the waves lapping against the boat. I looked around to assess how far one would have to swim to reach one of the marker buoys put out for fishing boats.

It was Anil who saved the day, otherwise I would have been living out the script of The Life of Pi.. The crew disappeared below the wooden floorboards and there was the ominous sound of banging from below as one of them whacked on the engine with a monkey wrench. All of us peered into the dark depths, unable to see a thing, but Anil had the right ideas and shouted instructions.

After about half an hour of this, the engine started with its usual cloud of black smoke. By 10pm we were back in Kolkata and the field trip portion of the assignment was done.

In around 10 days I had gone from ice coating the roof of the tent at Chirbasa in the mornings, to the stifling heat of the mangroves. Intense!!