KHATI THE BEAUTIFUL PAINTED VILLAGE

19^th Oct 2018, the day one of my trek to Pindari, I woke up at the KMVN guesthouse Bageshwar to a bright morning and clear skies. The previous evening, Dharam Singh my guide had said that we would leave by 7 am by shared transport to a place called Kharknya from where the walk to the village of Khati was about 6 kms which would be our resting place for the day. Dharam Singh had promised that he would bring the vehicle to the doors of the guesthouse instead of us walking in the market place trying to find one. I guess he was probably trying to make my life easy. But it was 8 am by the time a vehicle arrived. Dharam Singh explained that he contacted another vehicle but it didn’t turn up, so it took him a while to locate another. I could see that neither Kharknya nor Khati is a frequently travelled to destination. The road passes through several small towns like Bharadi, Kapkot, etc., and there were more passengers for these destinations. We two and a vet doctor were the final ones alighting at Kharknya.

At Kapkot we requested the driver to stop at the Forest Department office so that we could register that we were on our way to Pindari. The recent decision of the Uttarakhand High Court banning all treks in the Himalayas wherein people pitch tents in the mountains has led to a lot of confusion. The Forest Department wasn’t permitting anyone to carry tents up the mountains, and one had to stay in some hotel or guesthouse. I paid a fee of Rs. 100 for registering myself and took a receipt.  

The vet doctor Himanshu Pathak shared some very interesting bits of information. He was going to Khati to check out a poultry farm which was funded by state government grants. The state government was trying to encourage more streams of livelihood for the population living in the mountains. He explained that wild animal attacks were a cause of concern lately. There was a leopard which was stealing goats and killing children. A villager near Bageshwar was the hunt of one such animal wherein local villagers had set a trap for it, however the animal wasn’t ready to be fooled and it went around the trap knowing that there was a goat inside but wouldn’t enter. The villagers had phone him and told him to bring along his tranquilizer gun but since he had already started his journey to Khati, he passed on the responsibility to his colleague at Bageshwar.  

For going to Khati there were two routes. One road went to Loharkhet and from there one had to trek up the mountain to Dhakuri which is at 2700 meters before descending to Khati, about 16 kms. Another road which is still under construction at several places goes till Kharknya and one has to walk through the forest. The road from Bageshwar to a spot called Mujwa Binayak, which boasts of a scenic spot overlooking a valley, a Ganesh temple and a fairly decent hotel, is pretty tolerable though there were disturbances. From there to Kharknya the road isn’t asphalted and is severely affected by erosion and landslides; it has been constantly under maintenance making it dangerous.

From Kharknya the actual walking to Pindari really starts. The road to Khati runs through a dense forest, with beautiful small waterfalls. It is more or less even, broad and doesn’t pose much of a challenge. Khati at a height of about 2200 meters above the sea level is a picturesque hamlet surrounded by tall mountains and dense forests on all sides with the looming ice-clad Himalayas to its north. It’s a very small valley of sorts and is just above the junction where the Pindar River and the Sunderdung River streams flowing from their respective glaciers merge together. Khati is on the left bank of the river, the land sloping towards the south in the direction of the river. The gently sloping land which is about 562 hectares has been claimed by population of 314 villagers for their 66 houses and agricultural fields (all figures as per the 2011 Census). Khati village is about 60 kilometers towards the north of Bageshwar the district headquarters, and is the first stop on route to Pindari glacier. 

As one turns the final bend on the path towards Khati, one is struck by the cluster of colourful houses at a distance. They are all clustered close to each other as if tucked away together in the midst of green trees. As one enters the village, there are a couple of boarding and eating facilities on its outskirts. KMVN also has a tourist rest house at Khati which is at the other end of the village towards Dwali. Apart from these, there is also a PWD guesthouse.  Tourists can easily find accommodation and food without any prior booking, or else they can pitch their own tents. However the phone connectivity is extremely poor, inspite of there being a Post and Telegram Office in the middle of the village. 

When in the village, one is awestruck by the multicolour painted houses. With a base of a bright colour, each house has a different theme painted on it, depicting persons of repute belonging to the owner family, local village scenes, and various kinds of patterns and designs. The walls and doors are painted with different colours. Most of these houses have two floors and a few of them are three storied. A few new one are made of clay bricks with cement concrete while most are made of wood and stone. Most of the houses are fitted with solar lighting since there is no electricity at Khati. Most of them have piped water and also in-house toilet blocks. For a small village, having these modern facilities came as a surprise, but this is all because of Hans Foundation whose members and volunteers,  a couple of years ago had set up camp at Khati for a couple of months and transformed the village. There are a couple of schools in the village primary and secondary and kids from all nearby places study there. Khati had a primary health center in the past and the village boasts of a small hospital building. But this is no more in use.

Khati used to have snowfall in the past and was inaccessible during the winter months. Of late however there has not been any snowfall for the past few years. Trekkers and mountaineers have always been using Khati as a pit-stop on their way to the Himalayas. The main occupation of the villagers is agriculture and they grow various crops along the mountain slopes. Several of them also cater to the tourists.

Another striking thing that one notices at Khati is the rampant cultivation of Charas. Charas or Ganja is the name given to a hashish form of cannabis which is handmade. It is made from the resin of the cannabis plant. After the main cropping season, before the onset of winter, the farmers allow cannabis to grow wildly on their lands. They then crush and roll the leaves of the plant with their bare hands into a thick pulp form and sell it to the brokers. Charas is a cash crop which fetches the farmer around Rs. 30,000 a kilo and all family members are involved in this trade. Over the centuries Charas has been consumed by the Sadhus as a ritual and therefore also has a cultural connotation. Even though declared illegal by the government the Charas cultivation continues openly. 

One also finds the younger generation of schooled boys and girls changing their occupation. Previously agriculture, goat and sheep rearing, joining the army and tourist guides to the Himalayas were the only source of income. Nowadays a lot of youngsters are moving down from the mountains to the plains to pursue higher education or jobs in the cities and towns. Life in the mountains is physically tough and devoid of all modern growth and also entertainment facilities which are provided by the internet.    

Khati gave me the impression of an idyllic very well knit village. The village plays host to foreigners trekking to the Himalayas and therefore is exposed to modern thoughts. And yet, since it wasn’t reachable by motor vehicle directly, it manages to remain on the fringe of modernity, in a buffer zone, which also isn’t an uninhabitable place. It has an exotic aura to it, being just within striking distance of the snow clad mountains, and yet just out of reach of crowded habitats. Its weather threatens to be severe in the winters and yet people survive to make a reasonable living all through the year. To normal imagination it is a raw place to live, and yet, to those who are easily satisfied it offers a sublime lifestyle.  It is my sort of dream place to retire to.