Ate breakfast in an open-air place by the river, and started off at about 11. Breakfast was a potato curry, a chapatti, an omelette and a cup of chai tea. Stopped to film a group of pilgrims washing clothes in the river – they were too impatient to start their journey to want to waste time talking to us, to be fair. Lots of "pilgrim muck" baking on the stones on the river's beach, and the sand sparkled with minerals. I saw a huge blue butterfly.
Stopped then to film men in a procession carrying Camga water in a colourful but heavy pitcher, with a big trumpet leading the procession. Everyone takes it in turns to carry the bier which holds the pitcher and they can't put it down until they reach Gangotri, which was 77km away when we saw them at 1p.m. Looking for Sunagar village now – the only place after Uttarkashi that sells diesel.
16:10 On the road again after buying diesel. We ate a mango to tide us over since there's no food until Gangotri. It's impossible to write on these bumpy roads – Welsh turns into Sanskrit!
Thursday 7 June
On the road. Trying to shave by candlelight was a new experience – gave up on the candle and did it through a combination of sound and touch. The village was already teeming with activity. Men in head-dresses were climbing on top of buses to tie down the passengers' baggage, a boy was having a dump at the side of the road, and a woman was cleaning her teeth by a tap.
Outside the village, three men were driving an enormous flock of sheep and goats. The road signs become more devout as we get close to Gangotri: "The Sweetness of Life is Devotion".
Have just crossed Jar Ganga, the highest bridge in the area, a kilometre above one of the Ganges' subsidiaries at the bottom of a very deep gorge. A tollbooth on the road with a boy in a hut holding a rope. I spoke too soon about the road signs – after the turning for Nepal we saw "Peep Peep Don't Sleep", then, more sinister, "This is highway not runway". It's difficult to explain in words the danger of the road. Just got a signal on the phone and texted home...
Friday 8 June
"Namasde, Gunja Pujari jee." I greet Pramodsemwal – the priest who blessed my journey down the river, and my home and family. His title is Gunga Pujari. It was good to share the experience with him – a long and complicated blessing involving herbs, fire, a mark on my forehead and a string tied around my wrist. The blessing is free of charge, but if I offer him money – 501 rupees – it's twice as effective. It's though to be unlucky to give exactly 500 rupees, so you add one each time. I wonder if this is how the guinea came to be 21 shillings for a pound?
Even though I got 2 hours of rest in the car, after I'd been filming all afternoon, I'm shattered. At least I can have a kip on the way back and avoid looking over the cliff's edge all the way!
Magic Masada
No chance to write today between filming links at the riverbank, general views and driving along potholed roads which make writing a real drag. Just arrived in Uttarkash and phoned home. Left a message as it's 7.30 here but 3.00 at home. The sun set a while ago but dusk is prolonged here, and it's till hot enough to raise a sweat.
We had lunch at one of a row of stalls built out over the precipice, and the cracks in the floor made it perfectly clear that there are hundreds of feet to the valley floor beneath us. We had fruit juice, pressed by hand in a contraption that looked like a bigger version of my grandmother's mincer. Then we had under ripe bananas, pineapple and mango, and 'Lays' crisps from India. Their logo looked like Golden Wonder but they never sold me 'Magic Masala' flavour. Nice chocolate biscuits too, called 'Hide & Seek'.
Whirling Fire with 'George Michael'
Haydn (the cameraman) was filming my personal blessing. The plan was for me and Haydn to wait for the panda (holy man) under the bridge, but time was passing and there was no sign of him. Haydn was worried that there'd be no room to film because of the crowd, and he went to look for another location.
Still no sign of the panda, so I tried to follow Haydn. The crowd was solid now and I could not push through. At a tap on my shoulder, I turned to see the panda – the spitting image of George Michael, with a large earring in each earlobe. Somehow he took me to Haydn – I had to take my shoes off to enter the holiest place, and tried to explain the ceremony.
It was divided into many parts, to bless the family again, and I had to recite the names of my children, wife and parents, repeating everything he said too, whilst holding a marigold flower, putting river water over my mouth (I was supposed to drink it, but no way!) and who knows what-all. He had a huge brass candlestick – almost a Christmas tree affair – about a foot and a half high. He lit it, took my hand and led me through the crowd to the river's edge.
The panda dipped towels in the river and put them on my arms to fend off the heat of the flames, and he guided my hands to form the shape of a wheel with the candlestick, which was almost a bonfire by now. Throughout, I was chanting 'Om Shiree Ganga Devaya Namaha' to make the blessing take more strongly.
Cats and matches
On the way back to the hotel, Raja, the driver, saw a cat crossing the road, which is very unlucky, apparently. Yu have to either: go on your way and accept the bad luck, stand still and let an unfortunate individual pass you, cross the cat's path and take up the bad luck, or light a match and flick it through the window – which is what Raja did! After a shower to wash the Ganges and the dirt from the pavements from my legs and feet (I was up to my knees whilst turning the fire with George Michael) we had the best food yet – dry and spicy.
Black waters
After lunch we went out into the countryside to the little village of Madarpur. Talk about another world – a brick road running through the fields, which are irrigated by ditches full of black water polluted by the leather industry in Kanpur. The sight of a car was obviously a rarity, and some of the children didn't have a scrap of clothing on. It was like being in another time – we saw a sari salesman selling his wares to a group of women over the handlebars of his bicycle. We also saw a cornflakes salesman on a bike.
The poverty in the villages is obvious, but they were a lot cleaner than the cities. Each one had a new water pump – the river water is no longer fit to drink, it seems. The buildings in Madarpur have room to live on their roofs, and there were many rope beds in front of the houses as well.
Buffalo and turtles
We followed the fishermen down to the river past the construction of tin boats, and a small temple. While the men were fishing, the children were collecting buffalo dung with their hands, with the older ones driving the buffalo across the river, breathing and puffing in the water. It was idyllic – but the catch was thin pickings.
The width of the river here is about the same as the length of a rugby pitch, and it's very shallow. The fishermen could collect the nets about 30-40 yards from the riverbank with the water only to their waists. There's no current to wash out the pollution and this takes its toll on the fish – and the village's way of making a living. They only caught two fish and a bunch of turtles. They netted more plastic bags than anything else, but instead of taking them away to burn them, they just dropped them back in!
The weather's been easier to work in today – still in the 30's apparently, but only half an hour of sunshine, if that. We'll see how tomorrow turns out.
Timber yards but no plastic
As we drove through the city to the first location, with no-one seeming to know Dhapka Ghat is, we pass through an area full of timber yards where wood products are made 0 stools, blinds etc., I got to thinking about the difference in cleanliness between the city and the countryside. I suppose it's a combination of poverty and isolation – all the plastic-wrapped goods don't reach the countryside on the same scale. I'm sure the fact that cars don't' bring their fumes and dust here keeps the air fresher – but maybe it's just that country people are cleaner and that's that.
It's taken a good week to get used to seeing so many swastikas everywhere from temples to ghats and on buses and lorries, but of course it's a symbol that brings luck to the Hindu people and they owned it first.
The filth and rubbish around the ghats in Kanpur has made us feel quite flat – not that it's worse than anything I've seen during the week, but Bario ghat was like a chapel being turned into a carpet warehouse – a run-down place which the river seems to have rejected, since the river's edge has pulled back a good hundred yards from it. After filming there, we moved away as a family was carrying wood to prepare for a cremation ceremony on the beach, and the corpse was riddled with blowflies from what I could see at that distance...
« Less
