5 Aug 2007
By Chandan Mitra
Travelling by road is simultaneously an exhilarating and exasperating experience in India. Regular readers of The Pioneer, Darpan and now, Exotica would know that I love long road journeys, usually driving myself. Last week, I took some days off mixing business with pleasure to scour roads less travelled in one of India’s most picturesque States, Uttarakhand (Uttaranchal sounded so much lovelier and musical, but that’s another matter).
The business part was to finalise arrangements for the forthcoming launch of The Pioneer’s seventh edition from Dehra Dun, scheduled for mid-September. The pleasure aspect was spending a couple of days in and around Ramgarh in the Nainital district to scan vignettes of pristine beauty in the Himalayan foothills.
Fortunately, most places we visited are still unspoilt, although Ramgarh and its immediate environs are fast acquiring the obscenity of South Delhi neighbourhoods. This is the fallout of an invasion of people with wads of ill-gotten money scampering to grab property. I hope and pray this incredibly serene, secluded retreat does not go the Shimla or Manali way.
After two delightfully relaxed days in Ramgarh, we decided to travel to Dehra Dun not by the conventional route via Moradabad, but the cross-mountain track through Ranikhet, Gairsain, Karnprayag, Devprayag and Rishikesh. Locals tried hard to dissuade us pointing to the vagaries of the monsoon months, which invariably bring landslides, flash floods and related hazards.
But much as I remain nostalgic about UP, I detest its roads and overcrowded qasbas. Driving even through so-called highways in the western part of the State is a nightmare because people who seem permanently camped on the roadside are an obdurate lot, cyclists and two-wheeler drivers are worse, tractor-trolleys by definition unruly, and the sight of emaciated horses being mercilessly whipped by ekka-drivers even as the underfed creatures are made to gallop with a load of at least a dozen people, disturbs me immensely. Give me a bad hill road any day, in comparison.
And bad it was in the end. The first part of the journey from Bhowali junction to Gairsain, though, was spectacular. We passed through the breathtakingly scenic valley at Ganai, replete with a magnificent river in full monsoon flow, exuding the seductive charm of a sensuous young woman. As we proceeded, we gazed upon the unusual sight of a fierce waterfall emerging from a steep mountainside. It looked like the unkempt tresses of a silver-blonde that swiftly disappeared into the resplendent foliage of the hillside after dropping precipitously for a couple of hundred feet.
A riot of colour ruptured the tyranny of green as we climbed further. Flowers – maroon, flamingo red, yellow and purple -covered the genteel slopes. The gurgle of brooks regularly punctuated the overwhelming sound of silence. In the distance, quaint birds gave out mating calls and I spotted a gigantic albino kite take flight from dizzy heights, presumably having spotted an unwary prey. Nature was in command; man so irrelevant to God’s scheme of things here.
Almost reluctantly, we reached Gairsain once touted as the Capital-to-be of a yet-unborn hill State. The nondescript village was chosen by the original architects of Uttarakhand as the future Capital because of its geographical location straddling the geo-political entities Garhwal and Kumaon that are locked in perpetual sibling rivalry. There are decrepit signboards on the way proclaiming this to be “Rajdhani Kshetra Chandra Nagar (Gairsain)”, so named in memory of Chandra Singh Garhwali, the sepoy who led a revolt in Peshawar against British rule in 1931. I was certain that if nothing else, we would find a sarkari tourist facility there and my hunch was right. Gairsain is a sleepy village with the usual cluster of shops and motor mechanics and Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam’s Tourist Bungalow built in shimmering glass and concrete sits awkwardly at its entrance. We walked in to find not a soul on its premises, used the toilet and left without confronting anyone – the babus who were evidently on “duty”, judging by the sheaves of paper lying on the manager’s table, must have been enjoying an early siesta. A forlorn billboard proclaiming the presence of a well-known Delhi property developer was the only other sign of Gairsain’s missed opportunity.
It’s just too far from anywhere to be the State Capital irrespective of its geographical centrality. By that logic, Bhopal or Nagpur, certainly not Delhi, ought to be India’s Capital. Still, Gairsain is beautiful and I do hope it finds place among Uttarakhand’s tourism destinations some day.
With a dynamic and focused Chief Minister like Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri, I am certain Uttarakhand will go places. His stewardship of the Surface Transport Ministry during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Prime Ministership was exemplary; Gen Khanduri was the executor of the Golden Quadrilateral project, which, despite the ineptitude and widely alleged corruption of his successors, is making a huge difference to contemporary India wherever it has been completed.
That is why I was pained driving through incredibly damaged tracks on the stretch between Gairsain and Karnprayag, especially a 12-km nightmare from Adi Badri to Simli. The ordeal did not end once we reached Karnprayag, bang on the route to the pilgrim centre of Badrinath and ski resort of Auli. While the drive was significantly better after some time and we reached Devprayag via Rudraprayag and Srinagar in good time, thereafter the road has simply ceased to exist. Evidently, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) undertook to widen the road connecting Devprayag and Rishikesh but abandoned the work with the onset of monsoon. As a result, humungous boulders and massive trees have descended on what used to be the road, officially National Highway 87, making it almost impossible to negotiate especially after sundown. Considering the density of traffic on this route, it is criminal to leave people to travel at their own risk on a road bordered by steep hills on one side and the raging Ganga on the other.
Upon inquiry in Dehra Dun, I discovered that the Government of India has not released stipulated funds to NHAI which, in turn, is unable to pay the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to speedily complete the project. Yet, even the Bhowali-Karnprayag stretch, covering nearly 200 km, has been assigned to NHAI as it now sports the NH 87E (extension) label. What is the point of asking NHAI to take over corridors that it cannot adequately maintain? And why starve BRO of funds to rapidly complete road projects that are crucial both to tourism and defence? I share Gen Khanduri’s anguish over the UPA Government de-prioritising India’s highway hopes. We can cry hoarse over China building a metalled road to the Everest base camp, but the fact is that they have built some splendid six-lane expressways throughout their country. Our present regime, on the other hand, thinks road-building is immaterial because it feels proverbial Hindu fatalism will accept just about every sloppiness. That kind of negligence causes 80,000 deaths every year on our fatal highways.
News Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com
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