“The Forest of Snow” by Swami Ramananda Bharati
In Hindu mythology, the snow-capped region of Kailash in Tibet is believed to be the abode of Kailashpati or Lord Shiva. Mount Kailash is the source of four rivers and in its vicinity lies Manas Sarovar Lake. Derived from the Sanskrit word Kailāsa or Kelāsa meaning “crystal”, this mountain is sacred not only to the Hindus, but also to the followers of other faiths such as Bon, Buddhism and Jainism.
The Indian Hindu monk Swami Ramananda Bharati wrote a travel memoir of his visit to Mount Kailash in 1898. It remained unpublished in book form for 80 years until the Bengali version Himaranya came out in 1978. It has finally been released in English in a translation by Somdatta Mandal.
Situated in Western Tibet where the present-day countries of India, Nepal and China meet, Kailash has an extremely cold climate, one often life-threatening for travellers from the plains to the south. The book’s cover and the enigmatic English title The Forest of Snow aptly convey the climatic challenges—blizzards, rain and freezing cold—encounteredwhile walking the snow-laden routes, from Niti Pass to Gangotri, via Darchen, Dedifu, Gourikund, Dzugumpha on the western banks of Manas Sarovar, Thuling and Nilong Pass. In this forest of snow, even the animals—the sheep, goat, yaks and horses—are “white in colour, as white as camphor.”
Bharati, one of the earliest Bengali paribrajaks (wandering ascetics) to make this difficult pilgrimage, was preceded by Swami Akhandananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission, who travelled to Tibet in 1889. Bharati’s travelogue was initially serialised in a Bengali journal called Sahitya, and faded to obscurity with his death in 1901. Some eighty years later, the manuscript was recovered by Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay, a Bengali travel writer, and subsequently published in book form by Mitra O Ghosh Publishers.
The antiquity of Bharati’s travelogue whets 21st-century readers’ appetite to explore the narrative of his physical hardships, cultural inhibitions, social observations and numerous experiences. On the Himalayan ranges, located roughly 15,000 feet above the sea level, Bharati and his co-travellers survived on palm candies, Bhutia tea, barley flour and half-cooked meat. Being a Hindu sanyasi, he was initially reluctant to consume meat, and after much ado accepted it as a compromise to fulfil his pilgrim’s conviction. Discarding his monk’s attire, he wore long-gown-like-pajamas and laam, boots made of fur. Like other travellers and merchants, he hired two jhabbus (a crossbreed of yak and cow) for transportation.
Bharati embarked on his journey from Joshimath, a sacred Himalayan town in Uttarakhand (India)—the home of Adi Shankaracharya, the torch-bearer of the Sanatan Dharma (traditional Hindu religion) and advaita vedanta philosophy. His description of the local temples, particularly that of Nanda Devi, an incarnation of goddess Shakti, and the rivers—Dhauliganga and Alakananda—manifest his flair for travel writing. With an ethnographer’s eyes, he describes the villagers’ beliefs and customs such as their veneration for the Pandava brothers, the central figures in The Mahabharata. His elaborate portrayal of their culinary culture, religious vocation, festivals, marital customs and occupations shed light on the lesser-known social history of the Garhwali villages. Hailing from a conservative upper caste family, the world of these villagers must have perplexed him. Instead of expressing that overtly, he describes their life in a documentary style:
Here both men and women drink alcohol. They don’t have any restrictions before marriage; child marriage and multiple marriages are prevalent. The marriage rituals are conducted according to Hindu customs. However, that doesn’t prevent the women here from accepting other men. They have the practice of widow remarriage too.
In the latter half of the 19th century, while India was under British colonial rule, Tibet remained inaccessible to foreigners. It was not until 1903-4 that the British authorities were finally able to project force all the way to Lhasa. Both Europeans and English-educated Indians were suspected to be spies of the British government—suspicions often proven to be correct after investigation—and so entry was restricted by Tibetan officials.
Bharati obtained permission to enter Tibet on the basis of his spiritual identity but maybe due to astuteness. Having gathered prior information about Tibet’s anti-English policy and strict border-crossing laws, he refrained from carrying any English book or object. He abided by the Tibetan law of procuring a guarantor from among the chiefs of the neighbouring villages on the then border of British India. His guarantor, the headman of a village called Morgaon, escorted Bharati through the check posts by pledging to surrender his life and property to the Tibetan authorities if Bharati turned out to be a British spy. He recruited Vishnu Singh, an interpreter, who knew both Hindustani and Tibetan. Throughout the trip, Vishnu Singh and his nephew took care of arranging firewood, food and shelter, a role not unlike present-day tourist guides.
Bharati recalls that the primary concern of the Tibetan police was to control espionage and contagious diseases. After enduring severe cold and administrative vigilance, he reached Darchen and from there Mount Kailash, which stood high like a shivalingam. He expresses his divine ecstasy with that of a yogi’s insight: “the eternal lingam was looking out with his eternal eyes from the highest Himalayan peak to the entire world in its past, present and future.”
Known as the necklace of Kailash, the pilgrim spots in Darchen resonate with lore that Bharati narrates with a devotee’s passion. In Darchen, his primary stops were in the monasteries and caves, which were centres of religious and cultural syncretism. During one such sojourn, a monastery-cook mistook him for an Englishman and lodged a complaint about him. The issue was resolved at the chief lama’s behest, and honouring Bharati’s spiritual quest, the lama took him to a secret shrine where ancient manuscripts, brought from Kashi, were preserved in such a way that they could not be published. Written in Tibetan script, these Sanskrit scriptures were accessible only to the lamas. Bharati’s travelogue presents Tibet as a land of mystery and mystical experiences. Besides being a monk’s travel diary, in which dates are mentioned as per the Bengali calendar, it is noteworthy as a historical narrative. Besides enticing the readers with the topographical details of pre-colonial Tibet, it makes them curious about the sacred knowledge the Tibetan monks were guarding for centuries. In the late 19th century, the Bengali language was going through a phase of transition, its archaism being gradually replaced by the use of simple diction. Following that trend, Bharati used a conversational tone in the original text. Mandal retains the simplicity of his diction and style in her English translation. Her introduction and her translators’ note on the lost chapters in Appendix I increase the archival value of a half-forgotten yet historically significant travel-memoir.
