With a camera in Champion’s land

IN a black and white photograph taken more than 70 years ago on way to the Pindari glacier in the Himalayas, a majestic oak tree juts out of a corner (see photograph). The photograph was taken by F W Champion. This year his grandson James Champion captured the same oak. But not all elements have weathered the changes of time with as much resilience as this tree.

James’s three-month trek to the Pindari glacier, the same that his grandfather as conservator of forests in Uttaranchal took 70 years earlier, proved to be not just memorable for him but it’s also become a rare record of changes in the landscape, flora and fauna of the fragile Himalayan ecosystem. His visit was facilitated by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun.

Accompanying his grandfather in the October of 1936 was his grandmother Judy Champion, his father Nigel Champion (then eight), his father’s governess Kay Perry and a horse called Brownie.

Now in the October of 2006, accompanying James was his 78-year-old father Nigel and mother Nancy. The photographs of this year from the same spots and corresponding dates show the changes over the years: waterfalls have dried up, ramshackle dhabas have replaced wildflower in the meadows and a village has grown beyond recognition. Though these can prove to be invaluable records for a global warming expert, James is quick to point out that many could just be seasonal variations.

The trekking party this year decided to stay in the same rest houses his grandfather had stayed in — even though some of them were literally in ruins. In some, they found some rare treasure. A register in which his grandfather had jotted down his remarks. In another, they came across the descendent of a porter who had lifted the heavy loads of the entourage then.

At other night halts, they were happy to just walk the same narrow footpaths that F W Champion had once walked.

On October 9, 1936, FW had stopped at Khati village and taken a long shot of the village nestled in a valley. The foothills of the Himalayas rose on one side. It’s in this frame that James found that old oak tree. James found his bearings and clicked from the same spot, the same tree.

For three weeks, the trek stayed on the exact route, the same spots as the one in 1936. Kay Perry in her journal had noted that the PWD rest house at Dwali village was ‘’broken and dirty’’.

‘‘I would describe the rest house in the same way even today,’’ says James. In Phurkia, there is an image of a waterfall. James found it. Except, on the same date this year, the clean, white snow is missing from the bottom of the waterfall. In its place is dirty brown, craggy earth.

‘‘In most places, the lone rest house in my grandfather’s photographs is crowded in by dhabas and other dwellings. But all of them do exist,’’ remembers James. Retracing the Pindari trek proved to be the most memorable for the Champion family, before they set out to visit the places that FW had lived and worked in.

As Rear Admiral of the Nainital Yacht Club, FW had bought a flotilla of heavy wooden boats called Stella number 7, manufactured in 1911 in River Thames. Ten of these boats had been transported on porters’ backs from Kathgodam to Nainital. Much to the joy of the Champion family, they saw all of them lined up even today in what is now the Boathouse Club.

GOHNA Tal is another long entry in James’s diary. He was attracted to a picture of his grandmother fishing in a middle of what seemed like a deep, placid lake in Garhwal. When he visited it this time, there was no sign of the lake and he had to go back to the newspaper records to solve the mystery of the missing lake.

A sudden landslide in 1894 had created a natural dam, trapping the water from the Birahi Ganga river. The waters were known for brown trout and a rest house had been specially built for Sahibs who came for short fishing holidays. In 1977, another landslide moved the debris of the first one and the entire water drained away. When he visited the same guesthouse (now completely dilapidated), the chowkidaar was taken aback to see visitors. Even the beds had been carried away. ‘‘When we insisted on staying, the chowkidaar was forced to retrieve the beds from the locals. Later we took a walk on the dry, baked bed of the lake,’’ says James.

ONE of the founding members of the Corbett National Park, FW had roamed the dense forests, perfecting his novel nighttime camera trapping technique. He would go to the tiger haunts, which he knew like the back of his hand, during the day and lay wires and camouflage them. If an animal tripped the wire, it would fire the camera, releasing spoonfuls of magnesium, setting off a bright white flash, capturing the animal on film.

In a dramatic photograph, an enraged tiger is seen charging towards the camera, its eyes searing the night. ‘‘The diary explains that he knocked it off and then later mauled it, angry at being blinded suddenly,’’ says James. Fortunately, the film was saved and a glorious tale preserved.

Today, a modern version of the camera is being used in the latest tiger census. Laser beams that catch the tiger’s stripes from two sides have replaced crude wires to make the census more accurate.

‘‘The Corbett Park is doing a great job in conservation. The forest department has a relationship with the locals outside the park which is commendable,’’ says James. His family managed to see four tigers in their five-day stay.

Then there are other asides, one of them on FW as an officer in the British administration. He knew these animals as friends and James says: ‘’as conservator, my grandfather was also responsible for issuing hunting permits. Later, he old his friends that he never really disclosed the richest hideaways of these beasts to the hunting parties.’’

JAMES’S journey would have been incomplete without making a trip to the Dudhwa National Park on the Indo-Nepal border which had been his grandfather’s last posting as conservator of Bahraich. ‘‘Though I did not encounter tigers in a park known more for its rhino population, the centrepiece of my visit was meeting with noted wildlife conservationists Billy Arjan Singh and John Wakefield, who are both in their nineties now and who had actually met my grandfather,’’ says James. ‘‘It was very interesting to talk to two living people who claimed to have been inspired by my grandfather,’’ he adds.

James is now back to being a language trainer in the Netherlands. But he says his mind races ahead to the jungles of India, filming the lives and times of F W Champion.

Same time, same place, next year.