Working in India: Ponda Views (Part 4)

One of the great things of living in the Himalayas (or at least their foothills) for two years was the views that greeted me every morning when I left my room in Ponda for work. Views like this:

Looking southwest from my room at Ponda.

And the winter version:

Ponda view in winter. Precipitation would fall as rain below the snow line.

In the two photos above, you can see a large bare patch at the bottom, just to right of centre. This is a large landslide. Just above the bare area, several abandoned houses still stand, amidst what I suspect is the remains of a small apple orchard. The snow-covered area up and slightly to the left is another, smaller, landslide. Landslides were common, and frequently interfered with the roads and telecommunications to the area. Here is a closer look at the slide:

Large landslide seen from Ponda. It has grown over in the years since it occured.

Following are some of the other views from, and around, the Ponda camp where I lived for two years.

Wisps of fog would often stream over tops of ridges on the mountains around us.

View looking north over the expatriate camp. The camp was built on the side of the hill, and required several lines of retaining wall to provide enough level space for the camp.

Close-up of the mountain ridge in the background of the previous image.

A young boy poses for a photo with the mountain south of Ponda in the background.

Large fire across the valley from Ponda.

Man-made forest fires were not an uncommon sight in the spring, as local residents tried to renew the grazing areas for their sheep and goats by burning the grasses. These fires often got out of hand, like this one, and continued on into adjacent wooded areas and could burn for days. In the absence of wind from the sides, the fires would tend to go straight up the mountain until they ran out of fuel near the top or where the treeline ended, whichever came first. This fire was just south of Ponda Camp, but on the opposite side of the valley, and was probably the largest fire that I witnessed during my time in India. Goats and their human keepers were some of the most destructive forces in the Himalayas, besides Mother Nature herself. The goats would strip hillsides of vegetation, causing severe erosion, and their owners would light fires like the above. Trees would sometimes be killed by these fires, and when the dead trees could no longer hold onto the side of the mountain, they would sometimes come tumbling down. In one case while I was there, one of these falling trees hit a bus on NH 22, and knocked it over the side killing (if I remember correctly) upwards of 20 people. The driver who took me back to camp that night had passed the accident and tried to help - his shirt was spotted in blood when he returned to the office.

Satluj River looking north east from Sholding. The green water of winter would give way to increasingly brown waters in the spring and summer, as the river went from maybe 300 cubic metres per second to roughly 2000, and sometimes up to 8000 cubic metres per second in a flood.

One of many sunsets I witnessed there.

Power transmission lines take power west from one of the hydroelectric projects further up the river.

Bands of cloud made for interesting photography on many occasions.

While I don't miss the isolation, I do miss these views.

Working in India (Part 3)

Also in my first months in India, a bunch of us ventured once again up the Satluj River, but we turned south near Karcham and headed up the Sangla Valley. It would have been March or April, probably, and there was plenty of snow left on the mountains, and even down in the valley itself. 

Sangla Valley.

One work-related scouting expedition had us looking for a potential new source of aggregate for our crusher plant, to add to our concrete. There was a source of river-deposited rock up one of the northern side valleys from the main Satluj valley, at a place called Katgaon, north-east of Wangtu. From Wangtu, we climbed the Wangtu-Kafnoo Road through several switchbacks.

Looking down at a washed-out bridge from the road above Wangtu. The watercourse in the photo is only a tributary to the Satluj, which runs left to right just outside of the top of this photo. Abutments for a new bridge we were building can be seen just beyond the wreckage of the old bridge.

One of the roads above Wangtu, looking east.

A small tributary stream.

On our way to Katgaon, we investigated the first of two potential quarry locations. It was scenic, but didn't pan out.

View from a potential quarry. Nice view, but it wasn't selected.

The second location we scouted, at Katgaon itself, required us to cross the river and do a bit of hiking.

Probably not at Katgaon itself, but this gives you an idea of the typical villages that seem to grip every moderately level portion of the hillsides in this area of the country.

We had to walk up what was literally a goat path.

Working in India (Part 2)

I regret now that I didn't do much travelling within the country during my two years in India. For the most part, my travel was limited to the trip back and forth to Delhi every 5 months or so for my time off, which I spent outside of the country. That said, I did make three trips further up the Satluj River during my time there. The first was necessary, to have my residency paperwork updated, while the second and third were purely sightseeing with some of the other ex-pats on the project. There was actually a fourth "sight-seeing" visit that I took, but I will cover that one separately for reasons that will become obvious. In addition, there were a number of work-related scouting expeditions during which I managed to take some photos of the landscape.

The regional administrative centre was in a town called Reckong Peo / Kalpa, which is less than 50km up the Satluj River from where our offices were in Sholding, but it probably took at least 2 hours of driving to get there. The condition of "National Highway" #22 left something to be desired for most of its length - it was subject to frequent landslides and washouts. 

The road near Wangtu - actually a fairly good bit, all things considered.

How would you like to trust your life to the masonry "guards" on the site of the road?

Still, before NH 22 was built, I believe the main route was the narrow path showing as a line half-way up the mountain in this view looking west from our camp at Ponda. So I shouldn't complain too much.

Reckong Peo / Kalpa are situated on the west bank of the Satluj River, and look east towards the 6050m high peak of Kinner Kailash. The settlement is quite high up the mountain, although I suspect it plateaus a bit, as there is a fair amount of fairly level areas around the town.

It was kind of hard on the nerves to be so high up that you could look down on other high up settlements, without having a rail between your vehicle and the drop.

The "parade" ground outside the government building where we got out papers.

View from a schoolyard looking east towards Kinner Kailash.

This rock wall and fence is on the edge of a school yard, a fair ways up the slope of the mountain on the north bank of the Satluj. The cloud at the top of the photo is obscuring the peak of Kinner Kailash.

The schoolyard itself. Classes were held outside that day.

My next post will cover some other travels up the Satluj River.

Working in India (Part 1)

Fifteen years ago, in January 2001, I was leaving Northern India where I had spend the better part of two years living, and working on the Nathpa Jhakri Hydroelectric Project. Working for a Canadian construction company that was in a Joint Venture with an Indian firm, I had arrived in India in February 1999, less than a year after graduation from university. It was a bit of an eye opening experience to say the least. 

About five years ago, I posted many of my photos (scanned film and digital both) to my Smugmug site, but for this anniversary I thought I would post some of my favourite images here over the next few weeks. I will start with some of the general scenery that I captured on my trips to and from site.

Traffic in New Delhi, with what I believe is an abandoned mosque in the background. Check out the advert sign in the top right.

I didn't spend much time in New Delhi, as it was only a stopping point on the way back and forth to the project site. I would fly into Delhi, usually from Frankfurt, and stay a day or two at the company's accommodation house. Depending on the time of year that I was there, it was either comfortable (January/February) or inhumanly hot and humid (July/August). From Delhi, I was usually driven (always with a driver, I only drove there once myself) north to either Chandigarh or Shimla to spend the night (though once took the train to Chandigarh). The dual carriageway highway from Delhi to Chandigarh took 6 hours and was not for the faint of heart. 

Not a great photo, but check out the approaching headlights: a car going the wrong way on the divided highway.

Although to me just another stopping point on my journey, Chandigarh is a "planned city" which Wikipedia indicates was "completed" in 1960. The master plan was prepared by Le Corbusier and others. From Chandigarh, I would head up to Shimla on National Highway 22, a climb of 4 hours.

Approaching Shimla.

As I can attest, the climate in Delhi is not terribly comfortable for northerners, and the British apparently agreed with my assessment - they moved their capital in summer to Shimla, up in the mountains. I'm not sure Shimla was my idea of comfortable in the height of summer either, but at least it was less stifling than Delhi.

From Shimla, the trip to the project site continued on NH 22, and took either 6 hours (if a certain mountain pass wasn't closed by snow) or up to 12 hours if the road conditions dictated. NH 22 starts to behave somewhat like a snake on acid between Narkand and Bithal, and I suspect it was this section of highway that we avoided by heading up into the mountains. I had to take the lower road, and longer journey, at least once that I remember.

The workers camp at Jhakri, not far from the powerhouse (which was built under a separate contract by an Italian firm).

In contrast to the divided highway between Delhi and Chandigarh, NH 22 is a two lane (sometimes single lane) road that snakes its way along the Satluj River on its way to the project site and beyond. This road, too, is not for the faint of heart. Somewhere between Chandigarh and Shimla I would take off my seatbelt, on the theory that it became more important to exit the vehicle quickly if things went wrong than to be restrained from injury in an accident. Case in point:

View from NH 22 looking down at the Satluj River, with another road on the other side.

Thankfully, I never had to test that theory. In some places, the engineering that went into constructing this road was obvious and impressive.

NH 22 approaching Sholding. The office location is in the distance.

The rock in the Himalayas tends to be of fairly poor quality (e.g. soft), as the mountains are relatively new and time and nature haven't had as much time to wear them down (as they have with the Rockies). Travelling through these partial tunnels could be a bit nerve-racking.

After many sights such as the above, which apparently featured in a season of "Ice Road Truckers" (which I haven't seen), NH 22 arrives in Sholding (where the office was) and continues up to Nathpa (where the dam is) and beyond. 

Sholding (bottom left) and Ponda (upper right).

From Sholding, a small road switchbacks up the mountain to the expat camp at Ponda. Every work day during my two years there, I would make the trip down from Ponda in the morning to Sholding, and back in the evening. After that arduous first trip to Ponda, though, I was greated with a beautiful view from what would be my home for the next two years.

The view from my room (summer edition).

The view from my room (winter edition).

It may be these views that I miss the most from my time there.

Looking south.

Looking north.

It was always hard for me to understand that these were just the foothills of the Himalayas.