Day 63/64: Indians meet Indians in the high Andes
Samar Halarnkar -
Sunday, June 15, 2008 9:27 PM
"We have only seen Indians before on the Discovery Channel!" exclaims Lorenzo Gonzalez as his sister-in-law (photo, above) laughs in delight. As we talk to them in their little provision-store-restaurant-garage in the Andes -- the second highest mountain chain on earth after the Himalayas -- we truly understand globalisation. Here in this remote Andean outpost, we meet these welcoming, amiable Quechua Indians who, thanks to the quirks of history, share a name with us.
We have run through Peru´s plains and are steadily climbing into the Andes as part of our three-day 1100-km haul from Lima to the ancient capital of the Quechua Indians, Cusco -- the seat of their fabled kings, the Incas. Lorenzo offers us our first real Quechua meal -- well, just me, the wife must settle for home-made bread and home-made cheese -- a broth of country chicken, noodles, a boiled egg in its shell and as an accompaniment, a spicy, heady paste of a local chilly called aji (pronounced akhi). You can see both in the photo below.
"Which part of India are you from?" Lorenzo´s sister-in-law -- whose name we never figured out -- asks the wife. Bombay? That is too much for her. She just smiles and suddenly says to an uncomfortable wife, "You are so beautiful." When I take a photograph of her, she laughs and hides in mock terror, "No, no, I am too ugly." But both are some of the most beautiful people we have met. Our driver Richard (in the first photo), a Quechua himself, finds this a good place to try his rusty Quechua.
We reached Lorenzo´s Ccollpapampa Restaurant, as it´s called, after three hours of steady driving through the bleakest mountain terrain I have seen. Unlike the lush Himalayan foothills of Kumaon and Garwhal, watered by the monsoons, the Andean foothills after climbing out of the desert are devoid of life, except for the ranks of cactus marching up the rocky mountainsides.
The soil is poor, and the wind is strong. Only after crossing 2,000 metres did the first patches of colour appear, purple flowers by the roadside and little bursts of green. The air, as you can see, turned crystal clear, scrubbed clean of desert dust.
We are at Lorenzo´s by chance. We had been pulled over for now-familiar police checks. After the officer asked for all our nationalities and checked papers, he told Richard, "The mountains are beautiful, but drive carefully." That´s when we all saw Lorenzo´s little outpost and decided to see if there was a toilet and perhaps lunch.
(Photo, above: at the police check)
"El baño? The toilet? Yes, sure, across the road," says Lorenzo. We go out and see a ramshackle hut far beyond a stone wall in a meadow. We scramble over the wall and find the toilet unspeakable. The girls go behind instead the hut instead. We are clearly far from any tourist route.
(Photos, above: Scrambling to reach the loo, and the loo itself)
I suddenly spot a strange, furry creature grazing. It´s a giant vicuña, says our guide Annelies. More than cows and sheep, the Andes are full of cameloids -- alpacas, llamas and vicuñas. This specimen seems without a herd, and I excitedly and slowly walk toward it with my camera. I am first watched warily, as the vicuña stops grazing. As I get closer, he gets decidedly testy and starts advancing toward me.
"Come back, come back," yells Richard. I´ve heard that vicuña´s mainly spit nastily, but I hastily retreat. Best not to tangle with a strange creature in an unfamiliar land. Later in the day, we run into herds of wild vicuña in a montane national park. Here´s an interesting approach to letting local communities maintain their traditions without harming conservation. The national park is not off-limits to the villages around. Once a year, the vicuñas are rounded up and sheared with great festivity, as they have been for hundreds of years. The animals are tagged by scientists and return to the wild.
As the day wears on, conversation all but ceases in our trundling Landcruiser. In about five hours, we have climbed steeply from 500 m to 4,500 m. That´s four vertical kilometres, and the effects of altitude are upon us. I have driven often in the Himalayas, but I cannot recall such a rapid ascent. We have reached a high-altitude plateau where the temperature suddenly drops. There is frozen snow by the roadside, and in a few hours it will be five below zero.
Except Richard, a mountain boy, we are all feeling the the altitude. Annelies has a headache and says the first time she went up into the Andes she had to be given oxygen. The wife is in particularly bad shape, the result of altitude, motion sickness and stomach cramps. I am not too bad, except my brain is feeling the urge to burst through my skull.
A breathtaking golden light, signalling the end of day, suddenly transforms the mountains, and we stop to just breathe the air and take a photo (see below).
As we drive on we see mountain lakes, more vicuñas -- and no habitation, save for an occassional hardy Quechua alpaca and llama herder. These are hardy people leading hard lives not too different from our own mountain folk and not different from the 16th century when the Inca kings ruled these lands before the Spanish took over. The Quechua make up a third of Peru´s 28 million people and their language is spoken by other Quechua across Bolivia and Peru as well. Their language has lent some words to English: Condor, puma, llama.
Just before the sun sets, I jump out of the Landcruiser and scramble up an embankment to take a photograph. When I return, I am gasping for breath.
(Photo, above: As the temperature drops to zero, a lone vicuña grazes unconcerned)
It is a long, hard day of driving, and we are feeling quite homesick. The drive continues well into the night. Mountain villages start as we descend. They are grey, hardy places with unpaved roads. Sometimes, cows block our path. There is much poverty, and many villages live by bartering goods. Yet, every village has the basics: electricity and footpaths. And yes, Bajaj autorickshaws continue across the mountains.
We are heading for a small hotel that no one in the Landcruiser has ever been to before. We travel along a river valley and finally reach what we suppose is the hotel (Our directions: watch for it when the river moves to your left, meaning, after we cross a bridge. There are no signs, and the gate is locked. The night is dark and cold. After much shouting and honking, an old man emerges and we are let in. Even in this remote place, the hotel is strong with the basics, as we find all over Peru: spotless white bed sheets, towels, blankets. A cook emerges and I wind up with a magificently grilled mountain trout lashed with aji. I can´t resist a glass of wine. Bad idea. I drag myself to bed. Richard and Annelies somehow muster the energy to head out to a big party in the next village. They report a live local band, lots of dancing, drinking and sloshed old villagers trying to invite Annelies to bed.
The next morning, we find that what seemed like a bleak stop is quite an atmospheric place (see photo below).
But we have nearly 400 km of Andean driving before we reach Cusco, citadel of the Inca kings. It´s just under 3,000 m so things should be better there, but only just. We start bright, early and fresh. Not Annelies, who´s suffering the effects of the local booze at last night´s party. As usual, the hours pile up, and Cusco always seems just over the next range of mountains. We stop for diesel and then lunch in dusty mountain villages. We fit in well, visually. Annelies, who in fluent in Spanish, is frequently stared at.
Richard, whose village is "five hours over those mountains", stops to buy local CDs, bands singing in both Spanish and Quechua. It all sounds startlingly like Nepali. Actually, the people, the men mainly, could pass as Nepalese or Khasi. The music is wonderful -- guitars and drums mingle with Andean harps and those haunting pan pipes (made famous in the west by a Paul Simon song, El Condor Pasa). The Quechua lyrics are hilarious. A man sings to his girl friend:"You have become so fat, what shall I now do with you..." Another sings to his wife who has run away on his horse:"You left me, that´s fine, you liar, but why did you take my horse? Bring back my horse...." Excellent diversions from the effects of our long journey and effects of altitude.
Night is falling again when, after three days on the road, we spot the lights of Cusco, our base for the next four days -- and our launching point for the journey to the legendary city of Machu Pichu. The air is thin, and even bounding up five steps leaves us short of breath. Tomorrow, we start the process of acclimatisation.