The Burdens We Carry

It was while drinking my morning tea in Govindghat, Uttarakhand, that I saw the massive bamboo basket with thick straps.

Key points

• I was there to trek to Ghangaria, nine kilometres up, where you rise from 5, 500 feet to over 10, 000.
• Grown men, women, and children, all able-bodied, sat inside baskets strapped to another man's back, carried up like luggage.
• When tourists flood in, to earn what they can before the mountain shuts them out again, the pithus come for this brief season.
• When he was the one asking for the work?, who was I to call a man's willing, sought-after livelihood degrading.
• It would be simple to call the pithu system exploitation and demand it end.

I was there to trek to Ghangaria, nine kilometres up, where you rise from 5, 500 feet to over 10, 000. Since there are no motorable roads, everything comes in on foot. The climb is steep, relentless. I carried my own backpack, almost 10 kg, refusing a mule. I struggled, feeling the weight of every gram with each step. So, I understood exactly what that climb demands.

What I saw on the trail was unsettling. Grown men, women, and children, all able-bodied, sat inside baskets strapped to another man's back, carried up like luggage. The carriers wore no proper trekking shoes. Plenty of had no water. While we offered them ours, they paused breathless. I'd guess the individuals being carried weighed 65 kg or more. I watched one man trudge upward, bent almost double, each step looking like his last for the day.

What complicated the situation was that the pithus weren't forced into this. They touted actively, walking alongside trekkers, calling out, asking if they could carry a bag, a person, anything. This wasn't forced labour. It was a trade, offered willingly, sought out and competed for.

Ghangaria stays open only four months a year. When tourists flood in, to earn what they can before the mountain shuts them out again, the pithus come for this brief season.

One part of me was angry with the individuals being carried: why come on a trek if you cannot walk up the trail yourself, and have to be carried? But another part pulled back. When he was the one asking for the work?, who was I to call a man's willing, sought-after livelihood degrading. My indignation had nowhere to land. It reminded me of hand-pulled rickshaws, banned in a number of places on the same grounds: one human hauling another for capital has no place in a just society, no matter who is asking for the work.

I remarked as much to a local in Ghangaria. He shrugged. 'At least they create capital, ' he noted. I pushed back. Surely the administration could create other jobs. He was educated himself, he informed me. There simply weren't jobs to be had. This region is landslide-prone, cut off for months, brutal to reach. We ourselves had been stranded on the road for 16 hours while getting back. Building anything here means fighting the mountain itself.

I don't have an answer. What I have is a basket I can't unsee, and a question that obtained harder, not easier, once I realised these men were choosing this work, chasing it, and competing for it. It would be simple to call the pithu system exploitation and demand it end. It is less simple to ask what happens to the men who need that four-month season to survive the other eight.

I do know this: when the only dignified choice on offer is hauling a stranger up a mountain or having no income at all, the difficulty is never the man in the basket. It is everything that leaves him no better option.

In short, the Burdens We Carry is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.