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BOOKS
Himalayan
Blunders
Travels
through kingdoms India cannot afford to ignore
By
Amit Roy
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Kingdoms
beyond the clouds
By Jonathan Gregson
Macmillan
£14.99
Pages: 510 |
Jonathan
Gregson acquired his love of the Himalayas at a very early age. Born in
Calcutta into a typical British colonial family, his father took him for
a holiday in the mountains when he was seven. Pointing in the direction
of Bhutan, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, Hugh Gregson said, "Nobody
can go there." "Which naturally made me want to go there very
much indeed," records Gregson in his travelogue Kingdoms Beyond
the Clouds: Journeys in Search of the Himalayan Kings. Gregson is
an adventurous fellow. For his first book, Bullet up the Grand Trunk
Road, he risked what promised to be a fraught-with-danger motorcycle
ride from Calcutta right across India to the Khyber Pass. For his latest
work he has made it, often on foot, through the Himalayan kingdoms of
Bhutan and Nepal, and Sikkim, and managed to interview their respective
rulers.
Gregson's
argument: despite existing in the shadow of a huge, democratic India,
countries like Bhutan and Nepal have not become geopolitically irrelevant
and play an important part in subcontinental relations because of the
geography and population of the Himalayan region. Even more striking,
and this is entirely to the credit of Gregson's journalistic abilities,
he manages to subtly convert what could have been a mere travel tale into
an introspective, questioning argument on the present and future of the
former and current Himalayan kingdoms. "It did not show too much
tolerance there," he states flatly on India's annexation of Sikkim,
arguing that the unrest which allowed India to intervene on April 4, 1973,
was anything but spontaneous. "The Research and Analysis Wing of
India's intelligence services had been prepared well in advance,"
Gregson alleges. He also argues that the future of the Himalayan people
depends on whether India and China draw back from their experiments in
neo-colonialism. "Otherwise, much of what is remarkable about the
region will disappear over the next half-century."
It is clear
that Gregson, like many British explorers before him, has an abiding fascination
for the Himalayas. He first set eyes on the majestic range when he was
just 16 months old. Half a dozen visits, 10 years spent collecting material
and two years of research later, he was able to cull a pleasing selection
of familial and professional anecdotes that add both personality and flavour
to his work: "After my father walked into Tibet in 1939 he remarked
that they leave dead dogs in the streets for months on end and grain in
granaries for hundreds of years. Nothing decays because it's so dry and
so cold."
Another
gem traces his affection for the king of Bhutan, His Majesty Jigme Singye
Wangchuck, to his schooling in England at Summer Fields in St Leonard's,
Sussex. Gregson was then 11 and the crown prince nine. "The future
king was rounded up with the usual suspects during a clampdown on inter-dormitory
warfare. I was called to the headmaster's study, stood by my story, and
in doing so, averted the hand of calamity." When Gregson, 47, and
the king, 45, met once again in Bhutan, "I addressed him as 'Your
Majesty' the first time. He gave me a bear hug and called me Jonathan
repeatedly and, after a while, I started calling him Jigme again".
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