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Literary Review
Walking and talking
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Travel writing now is not what it was a couple of decades ago. The writer is no longer the pathfinder but has the task of placing travelling in larger contexts. Where does Bill Aitken fit in here? Over to ZAC O'YEAH.
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BILL AITKEN'S is the sort of vintage travel writing which is rapidly losing its relevance: the kind where a person just takes off and writes about some place. That may have been the way to go up to the 1980s, when the travel writer was still the pathfinder, the avant-garde tourist who reported back home to those who would follow. Travel was self-education, conditioned by the bourgeois Western notions of The Grand Tour of the 19th Century, or the RTK (Road to Kathmandu) of the 1970s. That generation laid the foundation for publishing phenomena like the ubiquitous Lonely Planet guides and their clones, which have erased all white dots on the tourist map.
Today the travel writer is pushed by publishers to venture into new dimensions because anywhere a writer would want to go, guidebooks have already charted out both the beaten track as well as what is off the beaten track. And you get droves of more or less initiated travelogues too. (I've even seen one by a chap who goes skiing solo across the South Pole, so if you thought about doing that — sorry, too late.)
Nowadays, the writer is expected to go with a concept: whether out in one's own backyard or flying to the moon, one has to put travel into a larger context. Help the reader make sense of our planet's multi-cultural mega-complexity. During the last decades the most important travel writing has been done by people like Amitav Ghosh or P. Sainath, who aren't strictly travel writers at all and subvert their readers' entire worldview. So on my bedside table, a book by an adventurous young Brit who goes on holiday to Afghanistan in the middle of burning war (An Unexpected Light by Jason Eliot), fights for my attention with Mother Tongues by Helena Drysdale, in which she travels with screaming kids and a perpetual domestic crisis in a claustrophobic mobile home, around Europe's "tribal" areas researching linguistic and cultural conflicts. These books are not necessarily better than earlier travelogues, but they challenge the reader in a different way.
Where does Bill Aitken fit here? His style is comparatively slow, the mildly spiced book simmers on slow heat and revolves around the traditional travel idea: follow a track up a mountain, see where it takes you.
But there's a twist. This is an autobiography in disguise. Aitken recalls memorable walks while he analyses his own life in connection to those walks. The first of these changed his life: his original idea — in 1959 — was to circumnavigate the globe, but he came no further than the Himalayan range where he has remained since. He stays in ashrams, and walks. He gets his Indian citizenship, and walks. Trekking is not just a casual interest here: it's half of this man's life.
The timeline reflects larger changes taking place, too. Bridle paths are replaced by motorable roads, new bus services affect life in previously remote hill areas, the resulting mass tourism poses a grave threat to the environment and contacts with the outside world change local culture. Aitken notices entire forests disappear because of the increasing need for firewood. He's concerned, he has "always responded to the village view that we are here as mehman, guests of the gods, visitors on this planet, not proprietors". However, some of his rants against incompetent politicians, development projects that backfire, and nouveau riche urbanites who persist in throwing plastic bags in as many pristine spots as possible, have been heard before. From that point of view nothing much new is added here. But he very appropriately lambastes certain questionable forms of travel writing, "Too often big expeditions and books about them are geared to success rather than enjoyment and the reader is short-changed by their obsession with height". And he shares this beautiful observation: "Instead of the greatness of the range too often can be detected the smallness of the beholder". I couldn't agree more.
The nice thing about Footlose in the Himalaya is that Aitken paints a picture of the mountain range on a large canvas, full of details that might escape the eye of the lesser trekker. When the urge strikes him he'll discuss cultivating methods; alcohol habits; merits of wild geranium vs. the potted variety; or absenteeism among village school teachers. Some ruminations border on the bizarre. Citing theosophist research he discusses the Indian cremation vs. a Christian burial, and notes that "Religions that bury their dead are likely to produce more ghosts than those who cremate their physical remains".
This book would be of great interest to any trekker or pilgrim, especially those heading for Uttaranchal where most of the book is set — though it does extend to Ladakh, Zanskar and other places. He dispenses pebbles of wisdom as he goes along, like the fact that bears don't usually live in pine forests. And that for a successful trek one should wake up and start early, since fords are easier to cross in the mornings. In fact, a river can shrink to one third of its size in the morning, compared to the roaring torrents — because of the melting glacial water — that Aitken encounters in the late afternoon.
So Aitken is wise, eccentric, and sometimes almost funny. But ultimately the litmus test for travel writing is whether one feels like joining the writer for a hike. And a bit of a chat, of course, but quietly so as not to disturb the fauna. Does Aitken pass the test? Just wait while I get my hiking shoes on.
Footloose in the Himalaya, Bill Aitken, Permanent Black, Rs. 450.
Zac O'Yeah is a Swedish travel writer.
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