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In search of an old canvas

Nineteenth-century Scottish travel writer and artist James Baillie Fraser rediscovered his talent for drawing at Nahan, as a ringside viewer of the theatre of the Anglo-Nepal War. A British curator and a local recently retraced Fraser’s steps

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Puneetinder Sidhu

As a frequent visitor to Kotkhai in Himachal Pradesh, I have jounced up to Shararru Pass a number of times, rarely tiring of the sweeping spectacle that awaits. Dominating the distant horizon, across the craggy Pabbar and Rupin Valleys, are the jagged Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarkhand. Six-thousander massifs Bandarpunch and Swargrohini serrate the skyline west of the seven-thousander Gangotri group. To the foreground is Rupin Pass, connecting Sangla with Uttarkashi, and the ridges of Nainital. To the panoramic left lies Hatu peak, with Jorkanden, another six-thousander in Kinnaur, rising behind it. At an easily accessed elevation of 3,000m, Shararru is an hour’s drive from my lodgings in Rukhla.

A sketchbook and some notes

On a recent visit, I tried to imagine the scene that awaited James Fraser when he clip-clopped to the pass one June noon in 1815. He subsequently recounted vividly in a travelogue, “Many half devoured bodies and skeletons of the wretched Ghoorkhas yet lay on the spot where they had fallen.” He has described further the half-finished stockade the Gurkha chieftain Kirtee Rana abandoned in the aftermath of the Jaithak Fort in Nahan falling to the East India Company troops. It was in Jaithak, while he waited for his younger brother William, the lately appointed political agent, to join him that ‘the devil of drawing broke loose and there was no holding him’. An artistic unfettering evidenced in his detailed sketch of The Ridge and Fort of Jytock. One of an eventual 20 aquatints collectively printed in 1820 as Views in the Himala Mountains.

Jumnotree, the source of the River Jumna

James’ arrival from Calcutta in March 1815 had coincided with the end of the ongoing Gurkha War. It also corresponded with his flamboyant sibling being tasked with penetrating and surveying Garhwal. While William was summoned back to Delhi, James continued towards the sources of the Ganga and Yamuna with his entourage. Sketching and updating his journal daily with detailed observations about the topography, fauna, flora, architecture, people and curiosities he encountered en route. On July 20 the same year, he arrived at Gangotri, becoming the first European to reach the ‘centre of the stupendous Himala’. His meticulous notes in a leather bound diary, complete with padlock, were later published as Journal of a Tour through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himala Mountains, and to the sources of the Rivers Jumna and Ganges.

Happy happenstance

In 2017, Devanshe and Michael Lidgley, the hosts at my farm stay, had walked into The South Asian Collection Museum in the English city of Norwich. Housed in a restored Victorian-era skating rink, this repository — managed by the SADACC Trust — is home to the private collection of Jeanie and Philip Millward. An array of 19th-century prints, with a familiar people and landscape, had surprised the Lidgleys into a closer inspection. One particular pastel-hued print held their rapt attention. It was called House of Rana of Cote Gooroo. “Imagine if you were to find your great-grandmother’s painting hanging on a wall in a stranger’s house. That’s how we felt when we saw Fraser’s depiction of our valley and the palace of Kotkhai, as it was 200 years ago. It was surreal,” recalls Devanshe, whose family of horticulturalists has lived in Rukhla for generations. “We were astonished, pleased, confused, amazed, enthralled, and excited... all at once. As well as curious to know more about the sketch and the painter,” added Michael, wholly unaware of this Fraser brother’s existence until that day.

On the trail

This revelatory connection, of an intrepid and curious Scotsman with a remote Himalayan region, led to a SADACC-funded initiative helmed by Dr Ben Cartright, the museum curator. To locate, and photograph, the exact points of view Fraser sketched from. For two years since, the Lidgleys have juggled their summer time between managing their farmstay and chasing local histories in the wake of James’ pencil-wielding footprints. The resulting notes, recordings and visual documentation will find a permanent place in the digital oral history archives of the SADACC Trust.

This October past, Michael and Dr Cartright concluded a two-week trek — led by Ashutosh Mishra of Snowscapes — to Yamunotri and Gangotri, after having triumphantly canned the last of all but one Views in the Himalas. “The only one we couldn’t pinpoint is ‘Assemblage of Hill Men’ with Churdhar in the background. We suspect it is somewhere near Rajgarh, but there aren’t enough clues in either the print or the Journal,” a chuffed Michael shared on their triumphant return. Ben, just as pleased, said, “Reaching Gangotri and bathing in the holy river, like James Baillie Fraser did just over 200 years ago, was a very moving experience. The effort it has taken to achieve our goal makes you realise what an epic undertaking Fraser’s was; it felt like the end of a pilgrimage.”

James Fraser

Jottings in Nahan

Turning to the north, this vast range of hills is seen, with the peak and fort of Jytock (Jaithak Fort) rising from and terminating a rugged range; on part of which the tents of our army were seen, speckling the brown hills; and beyond, snowy peaks bounded the landscape.

Casting the eye nearer home, the scene was not less warlike: ...the irregular ground was taken advantage of, whenever it yielded space for a tent, and all the verge of the hill was spotted with them.

— Journal of a Tour Through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himala Mountains

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