Kharongcha and the Villagers

27 March (journal entry)

Quiet, besides the songbirds, crows and river flowing beneath the village. The men cough with raspy, chest-deep muscles and spit frequently. Their clothes are earth-colored and dirty, ragged from age. The dark fabrics contrast starkly against the colorful garb of the Indian city-dwellers, perhaps because of their active lives in the field and the hassle of washing clothes in the villages.



Most people have sturdy hiking shoes and alternate with plastic sandles. Dirt is caked under their short fingernails, hands worn and scarred from years handling grass and wood. Women wear brightly colored headscarves to cover their hair, which trails in long braids down their backs. Loose salawar kamizes of browns and blues. Bright golden jewelry adorn their noses and ears and occasionally their fingers. Gray woolen vests are popular by both genders, and the men wear woolen hats, lined with bright colors in traditional patterns.


A resident of Kharongcha with the traditional "Kullu hat" worn by the men.


The women of Kharongcha.

Most people are friendly and curious, starring at me but smiling or replying a quiet "namaste" after I initiate. Children are shy and run away or turn their eyes when I meet their stare.



There is a timelessness here. The villagers and my assistants don't wear watches, so they ouldn't meet a time if I told them. Yet Pritham humors me: "Breakfast at 9?" he says every night before we depart. The men constantly ask me the time and always looked surprised, no matter if it is early or late. Why should time matter when your life is controlled by the sun? Rules of logic only apply if others follow.

I struggle to find my place here in the village. I have no set tasks; I am an outsider with few connections. Free to wander, I feel lost. I also feel very guilty when Pritham and Dhani prepare meals for me. My liberal, equality-above-all values ring out against the hierarchy that is so apparent throughout India.

18 April

Before I left Dehradun for GHNP, many of my friends told me that the "hill people" of Kullu District are lazy alcoholics. Their reputation among urban Indians is very poor. Yet I have observed a greater work ethic among the villagers than among even the busiest professors at the Wildlife Institute of India. Motivated by the drive to survive, the locals wake by 5am and work well past sunset, taking short breaks only for small meals, chai and occasionally a quick smoke from their hookas to warm their bodies from the bitter cold.

The men build houses, dig in the fields to plant potato and grain, blast apart rocks to build their homes, and supervise sheep and goats in the pastures. The women are incessantly washing, ringing, hanging, cooking, feeding, nursing, cleaning, milking, and picking grass for livestock in the fields. The young children are left to tend to themselves, so busy are their parents. Only in the evenings do people sit on rocks at discuss the day as they watch their children play cricket along the village path. Laziness comes with security and authority, yet in the villages I rarely see stillness; there is an untiring, unquestioned rhythm of movement and bustle.


Bimla, Tat and Sita with Bimla's two children, Sunyean and Lalit.