1st Quarterly Report

I know I asked the right questions about mountain huts and wilderness because three and a half months in, there are no easy answers. Thinking about intellectual questions even as I enjoy the pink glow of sunset on snowy peaks is not new to me, but there is more complexity surrounding the meaning of wilderness in Switzerland and India than I imagined when I wrote my proposal.

My first night in a mountain hut was at Aescher Berghotel in Appenzell. It was the Swiss national holiday and the celebratory fireworks matched my mood as I began to understand the Swiss system. There certainly is a mountain hut system run by a single organization, the Swiss Alpine Club, but I realized that narrowly defining my project liker that would leave out so much of the infrastructure available to hikers and climbers in Switzerland. So I happily trekked to and stayed at Berghotels in tiny alps and isolated, privately run inns as well as SAC huts.

My success in Switzerland was finding out about these different kinds of mountain huts and figuring out how to creatively arrange my own hiking circuits. I did not visit the most famous tourist destinations like Jungfrau in the Berner Oberland or the Matterhorn in Wallas. Instead, I went to the little huts--the ones Swiss people visit-- the ones that, according to their log books, haven't seen an American in years. The looseness of the Swiss system and the wide availability of services for hikers allowed me to be spontaneous, planning only day by day. I walked alone most of the time, silently passing through deserted alps and past cows with clanging bells (ok, silent except when I was belting out "the hills are alive..."). My mind was racing, though: could I really call any of the places I walked wilderness? There were branded cows and goats everywhere, indicating the presence of farmers and, more importantly, the fact that someone owned the land. I crossed countless fences---wooden, wire, electric-- and walked on well marked trails not only at altitude but also all the way down into villages. These were trails to get places, not tourist trails to see places. There was nothing wild about this landscape. Even an eerie howl turned out to be no more than an alpine horn player giving an afternoon concert to the misty mountains.

I explained my project to my friend Claudia, a Swiss mountain biker I met at Aescher on my first night. Claudia speaks English well, but she didn't understand what I meant by "wilderness." I have her my crudest definition: wild nature, untouched by humans. "Oh yes," she said, "we have some of that much higher up." After hiking hut to hut in Appenzell, Ticino, the Berner Oberland, and the Valais, I came to agree with Claudia. There is some wilderness "up there," but it wasn't where these huts were. I was in farm country--the presence of hikers does not disturb the cows or their farmers (and their purchases are certainly welcome). Importantly, it is the farmers tolerating hikers, and not the other way around. For the Swiss, wilderness begins when it is too high for the land to be used as summer pasture for cows. Wilderness is the land on crampons and ice axes, where daily climbers make daring ascents to peak summits. There was no question in the minds of the Swiss media who reported on the numerous climber deaths that took place while I was hiking in Switzerland. These victims had ventured into the uncertainty of wilderness, where no hut can protect you from the elements.

I left Switzerland with confidence--I had built up strength by carrying my pack over high mountain passes and I knew how to schedule my time to see the huts that I wanted. My failure in India was my inability to do what I had done in Switzerland: independently organize my time. Two bouts of illness undermined the strength I had built up and government regulations concerning foreigners on treks hampered the spontaneity I had while hut hopping in the Alps. Eventually, of course, I did go on the treks that I wanted--I saw the Himalayas from three different states: Ladakh, Sikkim, and West Bengal. But at times, I felt that my Watson spirit was lacking because I had to wait for permits or for other travelers instead of setting off for adventures on my own.

My experience with the limited access that I had to trekking regions naturally influenced my perception of wilderness in India.

As I had anticipated, there were villages scattered throughout the Himalayas, even at high altitudes. Like Switzerland, grazing animals were the surest indication of human presence. There was a variety of lodging available to trekkers depending on the trail and time of year. I stayed in wooden shacks with warped plank walls and just a space to roll out a sleeping bag on the Dzongri trek in West Sikkim. I stayed in a solid stone building with bed frames and an indoor toilet on the Singalila Ridge trek outside of Darjeeling. The biggest factor affecting the trekker experience was whether the lodging was built specifically for trekkers or was simply a part of a local family home.

In the mountain hut systems I visited, the rhythm of life was determined by the locals, not the trekkers. At times I was eating breakfast as one of the family, on a wicker stool by a fire in the dirt-floor kitchen. And even if farmers did not run lodges themselves, they still interacted with tourists, selling snacks and drinks in small shops nearby. And the physical evidence of those goods -- the plastic wrappers along the trails and the scent of burning trash -- was everywhere.

A wilderness utterly lacking in human presence is something to be guarded against here in India. Roads reach past 18,000ft outside of Leh, the capital of Ladakh, making what would have been extreme wilderness at altitude another access point to the border for the Indian army. The difference in political situations between Switzerland and India certainly affects the meaning of wilderness here in India. The trekking regions I visited seemed to be dangerous wilderness areas not ebcause of the risk to human life, like in Switzerland, but because of the possible threats to national security. An empty landscape is one to be guarded against in the border regions of India, even the supposedly non-threatening ones. The regulations that frustrated me, like needing to hike with another foreigner and needing to hire a guide, seemed intent on monitoring the actions of foreigners in the wilderness regions. And I registered my passport at army check posts innumerable times while on the trail. Certainly not all of Indian wilderness is near a border, but based on the places I visited, it seems that like Switzerland, wilderness in India is where things turn dangerous. In both countries, there are the same considerations like villages in remote areas and icy peaks requiring crampons, but the political situation added another dimension to my understanding of wilderness in India.

I am looking forward to taking more chances in my planning of treks in the coming months as I head to South America tomorrow. As I visit more mountain hut systems, my understanding of wilderness becomes more and more complicated. I am glad that there are still so many unknown factors out there to challenge me.