Trekking On The Trachycarpus Trail. Part 3
The expedition to search for Trachycarpus takil
- final part by Martin Gibbons.
Martin Gibbons
Chamaerops No. 3, published online 23-11-2002
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On the roof of the world: Trachycarpus & the
Himalayas .
The story so far...
Last October, Martin Gibbons & Wilco Karmelk
went on an expedition in search of Trachycarpus takil. In the last
issue we read of their arrival in India, the train then taxi journey
to remote Pithoragarh, 600kms north-east of Delhi, and their frustrated
efforts to find the palms, which, although reported in huge numbers
in century-old horticultural journals, now seemed unknown to the
locals. Finally, incredibly, they located one beautiful mature tree,
and following that, the valley where small plants grew by the hundred.
But no more adults. They planned a final, comprehensive search of
the valley where they were sure the mature trees were to be found
Now read on...
We had a lazy morning in Pithoragarh, doing some
shopping for food, and generally relaxing. We had arranged for a
jeep to take us to Burapi and he duly arrived at 2pm. This time
the drive up the mountainside was even more dangerous than the first
time. The jeep had no first gear, so it was necessary for him to
take the hairpin bends 'at a run' for fear of stalling the engine.
Not only that but he insisted on driving on the 'drop side' of the
road. I was sitting in the back with the mountain on my right and
a sheer drop of 1000ft on my left. As we raced round the bends,
I could look down out of the window, into the void. Several times
we shouted at the driver to slow down, but he seemed to take little
notice. Sometimes I literally closed my eyes.
At one time we met a herd of cows on the road, but
instead of slowing down to let them pass, he drove hard and fast
straight at them, forcing them off the road and onto a tiny narrow
verge. It was a miracle that none of them fell off the edge.
It was therefore something of a relief when we arrived
at Burapi at about 4 pm. Wilko and I stayed the night here, ready
for an early start the following morning.
We set off as the sun was just peeping over the
distant horizon, at 6.2Oam. There were four of us: Hareesh, another
porter, Wilko and I. We were taken along a different track this
time, and the going was somewhat easier than before. Or perhaps
we were simply getting used to the altitude and the exercise. After
an hour or so we came across a small house, and we stopped for a
rest and some welcome chai. We were, as always, made very welcome
and treated like honoured guests. Also, as usual, we were surrounded
by curious onlookers. We began asking them about palm trees and
showing them the now well-thumbed photos of Trachycarpus and some
of the leaf bases we had collected from the big tree. One of the
men explained in halfmime, half-Hindi that ropes were made from
them. To our surprise Hareesh took some fibres from the bases of
the leaves, and, rolling them between the palms of his hands, soon
produced a foot or two of good strong rope, somewhat thicker than
a pencil. The significance of this demonstration would only become
apparent later on.
One of the men then said he knew of some mature
palm trees and agreed to take us to them. In fact three or four
of them accompanied us and we set off up the same track. After a
stiff climb of half an hour or so, we came upon 5 big trees of Trachycarpus,
which had been left standing when the surrounding land had been
cleared for cultivation. They were on an exposed hilltop and looked
quite stunning with the snow covered Himalayas as a backdrop. The
light here was quite intense, causing the leaves to have very short
petioles.
The man who farmed here chatted to us as we took
photos. His house was on one of the three summits of the Thalkedar
mountain, the temple was on another and the third was the highest
at 8200ft above sea level.
Since it was our intention to sleep at the temple
that night, he said he would shine a torch from his summit to ours
at precisely 7.30pm as a greeting. We spent some time at his house,
the garden of which looked almost English, with marigolds, African
marigolds, dahlias, a peach and an apple tree, and a patio of rough-hewn
stone slabs, where we sat drinking tea.
At length we took our departure and headed off down
the hill in the direction of the valley we wanted to explore. We
had some adventures descending its steep, sometimes precipitous
sides in search of the larger palm trees, which we felt must be
here somewhere. Small plants up to 4 or 5ft tall we saw by the hundred,
but no large ones. Hareesh kept on saying 'No big, no big'. With
sketches and mimes we tried to explain that these small plants came
from larger trees, mummies and daddies in fact, and we asked him,
'Where Mummy? Where Daddy?' but he insisted, 'No mummy, no Daddy'.
During a rest stop he got around to explaining why
there were no mature plants or big trees, and it was with sinking
hearts that we realized the awful truth: the young plants are cut
off at the base when they have 18" of trunk, to provide fibres
for ropes. 'All cut?', we asked, incredulous. 'All cut', confirmed
Hareesh. The stupidity of it is that no seeds are produced by the
palms before they are cut, the natives believing that new plants
spring up from the stump of the old one, which of course they do
not. One of the 100-year-old accounts we had read in the library
at Kew spoke of 'hundreds of palm trees' in this very valley. Presumably
they have been cutting them smaller and smaller ever since, and
now there are none. Rather like smaller and smaller elephants being
shot for their ivory, even before they have had a chance to breed.
A further irony is that it is perfectly possible
to remove all the fibres from a mature tree without harming it at
all. We have done it a few times at the nursery: Start from the
bottom of the trunk and with a sharp knife cut through the old petiole
and then right round the trunk just cutting through the fibre. A
sheet of fibre about 40cm square will come away, with the old petiole
in the middle. Continue onto the next one up and repeat the process.
It's time consuming but not difficult. On a tree with a couple of
metres of trunk you can get up to 30 or 40 such squares. And of
course the tree will continue to thrive and produce more fibres
for you.
We tried to explain all this to Hareesh but it was
an impossible task. Our guess is that once every year or two a gang
of villagers make an assault on the valley and cut down every palm
that has half a metre of trunk. They would all then be gathered
together and stripped back at the village. What a waste!
As time was getting on we asked Hareesh to take
us to the temple. It wasn't too bad a climb and we reached it at
about 4pm. when, after a rest and some tea, Hareesh and his colleague
left us, to return to Burapi.
The solitude was wonderful then, on the roof of
the world, no one around for miles, the snow-capped Himalayan peaks
on the horizon, and only a few ravens for company. We lit a fire
and cooked a surprisingly good meal: potatoes, lentils and some
packets of soup, all mixed into a kind of stew. We watched the sun
sink lower and lower and finally dip below the horizon at precisely
5.40pm. The Himalayan peaks were the last things to see the sun
and it shone on fewer and fewer, Nanda Devi being the last to remain
illuminated by its now pink rays.
The temperature drops quickly when the sunsets and
soon we donned jumpers and watched the new moon rise and the stars
begin to shine, until there were countless millions of pinpoints
of light in the sky. At 7.30 we saw the promised torch light from
the distant neighbouring summit and flashed ours back in return.
We could just hear his shouted greeting, and rang the bells and
whistled in reply. We finished our stew by torch light, then cleared
up and settled down in our sleeping bags for a good night's sleep.
I woke to the sound of the ravens. The sun was over
the horizon already, and it was time to be up. We made a cup of
tea and sorted ourselves out. On our max/min thermometer we saw
that the temperature had dropped to 8¾C during the night. This was
October; it must get considerably colder in mid-winter. We left
the summit and the temple at 8.30am. We said goodbye to Shiva and
the ravens and decided the best way down to the valley. Then, taking
our last look at the fabulous view, descended into the forest.
We went down some way, and, as before, saw hundreds
of small Trachycarpus palms, but of course no large ones. It then
became too steep for us to continue without great danger, so we
went, crab-fashion, across to where the slope was more gentle. Even
so, it was quite steep and much of the descent I accomplished in
a sitting position, sliding down on my behind!
We soon came across the largest specimen we were
to see in the forest, hard under a huge and vertical cliff face,
and looking as though it, single-handedly, was supporting the whole
thing. Small wonder they had not cut this one down! It had about
one and a half metres (4'6") of trunk, thick at the bottom,
but tapering towards the top, and very long petioles, indicating
a need for more light.
However, these plants do not grow on the sunny side
of the valley, presumably because it is too dry. As the old description
had said, we found them only in damp, narrow valleys, and almost
always in full shade.
We continued the descent, in all some 1000 metres
(3000ft), by sliding, scrambling, slithering, climbing, and by lowering
ourselves using the plants for support. One way or another down
we came. We stopped for lunch, cooking some very welcome soup. The
vegetation was spectacular: huge incana oaks, massive rhododendron
trees, ferns, bamboos, and of course, palms by the dozen. Fortunately
the temperature was quite cool, at around 11.5¾C; otherwise it would
have been unbearable. The rucksacks were heavy, and often became
entangled in the roses and briars, which grew in profusion. Thorns
tore at our arms and faces. Sometimes it was so dense that we just
had to force our way through. It was incredible to look back up
and see where we had come down from, and at the sheer rock faces
we had circled round.
As we came down, the palms became smaller and less
frequent, their place seemingly taken by ferns. Horse chestnut trees
beginning to show their autumn colours made it look like an English
woodland. Soon we saw our last palm, as we reached the valley bottom.
We picked up a track, and followed it down a gentle slope for perhaps
a mile when we began to see signs of human habitation. Eventually
the path widened, and led us through a veritable forest of Pinus
longifolia. Soon we came to a small village where we had the inevitable
glass of chai, and from here made our way to the road, where we
waved down a truck to give us lift back to Pithoragarh.
* * *
So that, more or less, was that. We returned to
New Delhi, spending a day or two as tourists, but we had been spoiled
by the beauty and grandeur of the mountains, and nothing, not even
the beautiful Taj Mahal itself, could compare.
And what of Trachycarpus takil? Well, if it exists,
then we had certainly re-discovered it. But whether it is in fact
a distinct species, to my mind, is dubious. More likely, it is a
population of Trachycarpus fortunei, separated and isolated aeons
ago, perhaps by the Himalayan upheaval itself. The photographs and
specimens we brought back will be looked at and examined by experts
in due course, but I feel confident they will reach a similar conclusion.
For our part, we had had a wonderful expedition,
going to the very edge of civilization, and testing our abilities
and resolve at the same time. Whether 'Trachycarpus takil' turns
out to be just another variant of T. fortunei seems to matter less
now, somehow, than it did before we set off.
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