The hamlet of Bhadra - Chapter 1 - Part 5 - The ancient lost temple and ashram of the Puranas
Chapter One — Part Five
The hamlet of Bhadra
By late afternoon the trail had narrowed into something less resembling a route and more resembling a compromise negotiated unwillingly between mountain and human persistence. The mud path curved around steep shoulders of rock, vanished briefly into dwarf rhododendron growth, then reappeared higher up beneath overhanging cliffs streaked black by old rainwater and mineral seepage. Above us the ridgelines had begun darkening already although the sun itself still floated somewhere behind layers of shifting cloud toward the western valleys.
The climb from Nandipara had exhausted me far more than I admitted openly.
At sixty-three, fatigue no longer arrived dramatically. It accumulated quietly inside the body like hidden snow gathering along unstable ledges. One continued walking out of stubbornness, memory, vanity, unfinished questions, and occasionally simple embarrassment before younger men. My knees had begun hurting several hours earlier. My breathing remained uneven after every incline. The trekking pole had ceased being expedition equipment and become, with some humiliation, a structural necessity.
The mule handlers, meanwhile, continued moving with infuriating competence.
Their loads creaked rhythmically as the animals negotiated narrow turns along the cliffside path. Tin vessels clinked faintly beneath tarpaulin coverings. One mule sneezed violently and shook its head hard enough to scatter droplets into the cold air. Somewhere behind me my cook was muttering complaints about altitude, damp firewood, and the declining moral standards of professors who insisted upon carrying steel trunks full of manuscripts into regions where ordinary people struggled to transport potatoes.
Yet despite the fatigue, I remember very clearly the strange stillness that descended upon our group during the final ascent toward Bhadra.
Perhaps it began because the mountains themselves seemed to close inward there.
The valley narrowed sharply. Pine forests thinned. The wind changed direction repeatedly along the ridges, carrying alternating smells of wet stone, animal dung, woodsmoke, and old snowfields hidden somewhere above the clouds. Even the mule bells seemed quieter.
Samara had grown noticeably more serious.
Earlier he had spoken freely during the journey — about routes, weather, livestock, forgotten landslides, and government clerks at Dharchula who never arrived when expected. But now his voice lowered instinctively whenever he mentioned the settlement ahead.
“Bhadra is not like Nandipara,” he said at one point without looking back.
“In what way?”
He tapped his walking stick carefully against a rock before replying.
“People there keep the old ways.”
That phrase could mean almost anything in the Himalayas.
I waited for clarification.
After several moments he continued walking in silence beside me, his staff pressing rhythmically into the damp earth of the trail. The wind had begun rising again along the ridge, carrying with it loose strands of mist from higher slopes. Then, without any dramatic lowering of voice or attempt at theatrical mystery, he said quietly,
“The old people say the settlement belongs to the yoddha ganas of Mahadeva.”
The mule handler nearest us immediately muttered, “Har Har Mahadev,” almost automatically, as though the conversation itself required ritual acknowledgment before it proceeded further. Another of the younger men touched his forehead briefly with cold fingers darkened by rope fibres and mule grease. I noticed these reflexes carefully. Belief in the mountains often survived less through doctrine than through instinctive gestures performed before thought intervened.
I asked Samara what exactly he meant.
He shrugged in that peculiarly Himalayan manner that combined uncertainty, inherited memory, practical acceptance, and complete indifference toward academic precision. I had seen the same expression among shepherds in Kumaon, old pilgrims near Kedarnath, and forest guards beyond Pithoragarh whenever one attempted to impose clear historical categories upon stories that had lived too long inside the landscape.
“They say long ago — maybe thousands of years, maybe more — the ganas were settled there by Mahadeva himself.”
He spoke not as a preacher, nor even quite as a believer, but as a man repeating an old geographical condition, something akin to saying that snow falls heavily beyond a certain ridge or that landslides occur after late monsoon rain.
“The warrior ganas?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Guarding what?”
At this he gave another small shrug.
“Who knows now?”
The answer disturbed me more than certainty would have.
For years I had studied how ancient frontier communities preserved memory indirectly. Ritual survived after language altered. Names survived after meanings faded. Sometimes entire belief systems collapsed into single habits or unexplained restrictions. A settlement avoided after dark. A cave nobody entered. A hill associated with fire. A valley said to belong to spirits, warriors, ascetics, or wandering gods.
And now here I was, breathless and aging on a Himalayan trail north of Nandipara, listening to an old villager speak casually of Shiva’s warrior retinues as though discussing neighbouring shepherd clans.
The mountains around us suddenly seemed older.
Not spiritually older in the fashionable mystical sense sold to tourists, but geologically and psychologically ancient — old enough to preserve stories after the civilizations that created them had vanished entirely.
The ganas of Shiva had always fascinated me intellectually. In the Sanskrit traditions they occupied unstable categories — attendants, spirits, warriors, followers, embodiments of wildness, beings dwelling beyond civilized order. They belonged neither fully to heaven nor earth nor forest nor cremation ground. They moved at the edge of systems. Frontier mythologies across the Himalayas often preserved such figures with unusual persistence.
Civilizations domesticated gods over time.
Mountains did not.
Samara explained further that one could not simply walk directly into Bhadra without permission.
“They watch the upper paths,” he said calmly. “Always.”
“Why?”
“Because that is their custom.”
The answer carried finality.
We eventually reached the last ridge before the settlement — a strange saddle-shaped hilltop where the mud trail widened briefly between two massive cliffs rising darkly on either side like weathered gateways. Beyond that point the land sloped downward toward a hidden basin partially obscured by drifting mist and smoke.
Samara raised his hand abruptly, signalling everyone to stop.
“We wait here.”
The mule handlers obeyed immediately without argument. Even the animals seemed strangely subdued.
For several minutes nothing happened.
The wind moved continuously across the saddle carrying cold vapour from unseen snowfields somewhere higher beyond the ridges. It did not blow steadily but arrived in irregular currents, descending suddenly through invisible channels in the mountain walls before dissolving again into stillness. Each gust carried a different scent — wet stone, old pine bark, distant animal smoke, and occasionally the faint metallic sharpness that seemed peculiar to very high altitudes where snow, rock, and sky appeared to merge into one another without transition.
We stood there waiting in near silence.
Far below, through intermittent breaks in the mist, I began distinguishing shapes that slowly resolved themselves into long dark structures roofed with corrugated metal and heavy timber weighted down by loose stones against the mountain winds. At first the settlement seemed less constructed than assembled reluctantly out of whatever materials survival permitted. Nothing about it suggested permanence. And yet such Himalayan hamlets often endured longer than modern concrete towns in the plains.
Thin strands of smoke drifted upward from one of the huts, moving almost vertically before flattening against the slope under crosswinds. Somewhere below, a dog barked once and then stopped abruptly.
Bhadra.
The last settlement.
The edge of mapped habitation.
The phrase itself produced a curious sensation inside me — not excitement exactly, but the unsettling awareness that beyond certain points geography became increasingly dependent upon memory, rumour, and oral continuity rather than surveyed certainty. Modern maps disliked ambiguity. Mountains cultivated it.
And somewhere beyond these ridges, according to fragmented legends, broken references, wandering ascetic narratives, and obscure Purāṇic annotations copied by forgotten scholars decades before my birth, there might still survive abandoned routes leading toward the lost temple and ashram I had spent years attempting to locate through texts, cross-references, marginal notes, and geographical correlations so improbable that several academic colleagues had gently suggested retirement had affected my judgment.
Perhaps they were correct.
I removed my gloves briefly and rubbed warmth back into my fingers. The cold entered quickly at this altitude once circulation slowed. My knuckles ached faintly. Below us the dark roofs of Bhadra appeared and disappeared repeatedly beneath drifting mountain mist like something uncertain whether it wished to remain visible to outsiders at all.
Then Samara touched my elbow quietly.
“Look.”
Near the third long hut a figure had risen suddenly into view. The movement was so abrupt that for a moment I thought the mountain itself had shifted. A young man perhaps — difficult to judge from a distance — wrapped in dark woollens and carrying what appeared to be either a staff or an enormous battle sword across his shoulder.
He stood motionless for several seconds observing us.
Then he turned and walked quickly toward the first hut.
Nobody in our group spoke.
The silence that followed felt curiously formal, almost procedural, as though we had unknowingly entered an older administrative system operating beneath modern governments and border maps.
Eventually another figure emerged.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
He stepped out from the first long hut and stood facing uphill toward us. Even from that distance his physical presence appeared striking. He wore a thick woollen coat belted tightly at the waist, and his beard spread outward heavily across his face in a manner that made him appear less like a villager and more like some carved guardian figure left standing outside an ancient temple.
Then his voice carried upward through the cold air.
“Samara!”
The old villager beside me immediately straightened slightly.
The tall man called out again in a dialect I only partly understood, asking his business and purpose for arrival.
Samara gestured for me to remain where I was.
“You wait here, Professor-saab.”
Without further explanation he began descending the slope alone toward the settlement.
I watched the conversation from above while trying unsuccessfully not to imagine worst-case scenarios. Age, altitude, and excessive reading of obscure frontier histories had made my imagination increasingly unhelpful in isolated places.
The two men spoke for several minutes beside the outer hut. At one point the tall villager looked directly toward our mule train. Another man emerged briefly from a doorway and disappeared again. The younger lookout remained standing near the upper structures watching us continuously.
Finally Samara turned and waved.
The tall man also lifted one arm in acknowledgment.
Permission granted.
Our small caravan resumed movement slowly down the slope toward Bhadra.
Up close the settlement appeared even more austere than I had imagined from the ridge above. Distance had softened its harshness earlier, allowing mist and perspective to lend the illusion of rustic simplicity. But inside the hamlet itself there was nothing picturesque about Bhadra. It possessed the severe practicality of a place built not for comfort, nor beauty, nor permanence, but for endurance against weather and isolation.
Perhaps ten long huts altogether stood scattered unevenly along the slope, positioned carefully to break the force of winter winds descending through the upper valleys. They had been constructed low to the ground using thick stone foundations, rough timber beams darkened by smoke, patched corrugated roofing sheets held down with rocks, yak-hide coverings stretched over weaker sections, and stacks of drying firewood arranged meticulously against the outer walls. Every object appeared repaired repeatedly over many years. Nothing unnecessary survived here.
Dogs moved silently between the structures with suspicious yellow eyes, pausing often to study us without friendliness. They were mountain dogs, large-boned and wary, their fur thick with accumulated dust, ash, and winter shedding. One stood atop a pile of stones watching the mule train with visible professional distrust.
Prayer flags hung overhead in faded tangled knots from poles weathered almost black by snow and rain. Most had long ago lost their original colours. The cloth strips fluttered weakly in the cold wind like fragments of forgotten conversations still attempting to remain attached to the living world.
Everything smelled intensely of smoke, animals, damp wool, old leather, and survival. Not metaphorical survival. Actual survival. The daily negotiation between cold, altitude, limited resources, and the slow wearing down of human bodies by mountain seasons.
The tall villager approached us before we fully entered the settlement.
“I am Mitreya,” he announced.
His handshake nearly crushed my fingers.
“I am the head of Bhadra.”
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.
The remark produced laughter from several nearby villagers who had gathered silently to observe our arrival.
Mitreya stroked his enormous moustache with visible satisfaction, the gesture performed with such practiced dignity that I immediately suspected he had repeated this explanation many times before to outsiders arriving uncertainly into Bhadra. Up close he appeared even larger than he had from the ridge above — broad across the shoulders, heavily bearded, wrapped in thick layered woollens that carried the smell of smoke and cold mountain air. His face had the weathered hardness common among high-altitude pastoral communities, yet his eyes possessed an unexpectedly amused intelligence.
“They made me head because I am tall and frightening-looking,” he continued with complete seriousness. “Government people listen more if somebody looks important.”
One of the younger villagers nearby laughed openly at this, while another muttered something in the local dialect that produced additional amusement among the others. Mitreya ignored them with the calm confidence of a man accustomed to his own mythology.
“The actual chief here is Sharada.”
“Sharada?” I repeated.
The name seemed strangely gentle against the severe landscape around us.
Mitreya nodded immediately, and I noticed that the humour vanished from his face with surprising speed. He turned respectfully toward one of the farther huts standing slightly apart from the others near a cluster of stacked firewood and prayer poles.
“Eighty years old,” he said after some thought. “Maybe more.”
Then, lowering his voice slightly, he added,
“She remembers everybody. Even dead people.”
There was no irony whatsoever in the statement. No village exaggeration intended for effect. The younger men listening nearby also became noticeably quieter. One of them glanced instinctively toward the distant hut as though merely speaking her name required caution. I found myself unexpectedly intrigued.
In remote Himalayan settlements memory itself often became a form of authority. Written records disappeared. Governments changed. Borders shifted. Roads collapsed. Families migrated. But occasionally one elderly person survived long enough to become the living archive of an entire landscape.
He then turned immediately practical, instructing my mule handlers to bring the animals toward an empty long hut beside his own. They could stable the mules there, prepare their kitchen fire, and settle themselves before nightfall. If additional food or supplies were needed, his son Mandara — the young lookout who had first spotted us — would assist.
Samara, meanwhile, was ordered firmly to remain behind and rest.
“You walk too much for an old man,” Mitreya told him.
Samara grunted dismissively. Then Mitreya turned toward me once more.
“You will come,” he said quietly. “Sharada will want to see you herself.”
(c) Bharat Bhushan
17 May 2026
