I can't remember exactly where this photo was taken, but I think it must be around the village of Almora in the Kumaun region of Uttaranchal.


Kumaun is in India's western Himalaya where the Tibet China border meets Nepal. If you've been to the mountainous parts of India then you probably know how relaxing this kind of travel can be. I watched most of it blur by through my fingers while gripping the seat vinyl underneath my ass. (Hence the pharmaceutical mention in the previous post.) I do remember many summit stops at roadside shrines so passengers could do a kind of oh-shit puja before the brakeless descents into the valley. After awhile I just started walking between villages.

I ran into these guys on a road just outside of Almora travelled by little Nepalis in three-piece suits carrying refridgerator-sized loads on their heads, ladies in saris, toe-socks and sandals, kids with tiffins, goats and herders, etc. I'm not sure why these men were shovelling the road, given it was plastered with two feet of mashed-potato snow for 5 kilometres in either direction--and totally impassible by vehicles in any case. What interested me was the snow-removal method, which involves a main guy for the spade work and an lackey with a rope to assist with heavy lifting. Never seen anything like it. Not even in Vancouver, where we don't know snow from styrofoam peanuts.

BTW, I have a license to pick on Indians. If you want to verify it, just go to the white pages and look up "Gill." In Vancouver at least, you'll get two hundred pages of Harminders and Parminders. My dad used to wear scarves in the turban-like arrangement favored by the rope lackey, and for years I just thought it was my dad being weird. Not until I got to India did I realize there are another billion people who like winter headgear fashioned like this. And also to gag themselves while brushing their teeth.