Michael Benanav for The New York Times
Yasin, age 6, son of Jamila and Dhumman, keeps a water buffalo calf in line.
THE rutted road, part paved, part dirt, was a border between two worlds. To the left, a patchwork of villages, farms and fields covered the fertile plains between the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. To the right rose the rugged, forested wilderness of the Shivalik Hills. Dehradun, the bustling capital of the northern state of Uttarakhand, was just 20 miles away, but felt much, much farther.
This October, I, along with a translator, Debopam Battacharjee, hitched a ride down that road on a dairy truck loaded with empty milk cans. When it stopped after about an hour, we continued on, hiking for another four miles. Then we turned right, up a rocky streambed, toward the hills and into the jungle. I was looking for some friends who live there, at least part-time.
They are a family of nomadic water buffalo herders. Three years ago, I had joined them on their annual spring migration from the low-altitude Shivaliks where they spend each winter to the high Himalayan meadows where they graze their livestock in summer. Their tribe, the Van Gujjars, has moved up and down with the seasons for about 1,000 years. But in 2009 their age-old migratory lifestyle was facing a serious threat: the ancestral pastures of thousands of Van Gujjars had been absorbed into national parklands, and park authorities were poised to enforce a policy banning the nomads from using them. I wanted to document the migration, partly to preserve a glimpse of their traditional way of life while it still existed, partly to raise awareness about their struggles. And, yes, partly because it just seemed as if it would be an amazing thing to experience. Through a small Dehradun-based nongovernmental organization called the Society for Promotion of Himalayan Indigenous Activities, I was introduced to a Van Gujjar family, who agreed to let me go with them.
Living and traveling together for 44 days — moving as a caravan through busy towns and silent forests, sleeping on roadsides and mountainsides, crossing rivers and alpine passes, sharing the joys and tribulations of the trail — we became close. I was awed by how deeply they cared for their animals; they thought it was hilarious that I would try almost anything that they did, whether it was drinking milk directly from a buffalo's udder or attempting and failing to lift the huge bales of fodder — leaves or grass — that their teenage girls have no trouble carrying. I stuck with them even though the migration lasted weeks longer than expected, as they decided en route that they couldn't risk going to their lands inside Govind Pashu Vihar national park but had to drive their herd to an unfamiliar meadow.
When I returned to the United States, I missed them with a surprising and lingering intensity. I went back to visit in 2010, and was glad to have a chance to see them again this year.
Which is how I came to be hiking up that streambed with Debopam in October. After a few miles we reached a hut of sticks, mud and grass. It sat in a clearing surrounded by trees, near a trickling creek, far beyond the reach of power lines, cellphone service and schools. Its one room, with a partial wall separating a mud-hearthed kitchen, sheltered the family of Dhumman, a lanky, bearded tribal leader known for his integrity and fairness, and his wife, Jamila, who manages the household with an eternal sense of humor, as she delegates tasks to their seven children, ages 6 to 23.
Like other members of the tribe, this family's world revolves around the care and feeding of their buffaloes, which they view not only as their essential source of livelihood — they use and sell the milk — but also as family members. Recently, when their favorite buffalo became sick, some in the family were too worried to eat.
We arrived as dusk fell. Only a few of the children were around, along with a group of buffalo calves. Everyone else was in the jungle, climbing tall sal trees and lopping off leaves for the buffaloes to eat. By the time the rest of the family showed up at the hut, it was dark. Our greetings were warm in a ghostly kind of way — with one dim, battery-powered LED lantern as the only light, I could hear the voices I knew so well, but could barely see the faces they belonged to.
