Bengaluru: If you’re getting to Kalap, you would have to drive 200 kilometres out of Dehra Dun and leave your car behind for the last 11. The only way to reach this remote little haven is on foot and that’s the way it has always been.
Photojournalist Anand Sankar heard about the little settlement by chance and set off at once, on his own, to see what the fuss was about. Sankar took the first ever photograph of Kalap, before which it had the very unique distinction of being the most un-photographed place on earth.
Nestled in the mountains at 7,500 feet, Kalap provides you a stunning view of the River Supine. Nature is all it has in abundance, however. The Kalap that Sankar saw was quite different - all that the village had to call its own was a ramshackle little government school, where the children went. The villagers, who spoke their own Garhwal dialect that even their immediate neighbours would have trouble understanding (this is the case with most of the villages in that area), had never seen a doctor before. In short, they represented a community that had long since given up on anything better than immediate survival.
Sankar was hooked. The Bengaluru boy quit his job in 2013 and moved to Dehra Dun, the closest point of civilisation to Kalap. “It was a long series of circumstances that led me there,” said Sankar. “I have known the villages for a while now and tried to give them a boost in many different ways.” There was so much wanting that Sankar had to start with putting his priorities in order. “Tourism became the first thing on the agenda.”
Sankar began a zero-infrastructure tourism programme, for photographers, writers and trekkers. “We will put up no infrastructure for the tourists,” he explained. “There will be no hotel or homestay, no restaurant even. You would have to live with the villagers, as they do.” Bringing a doctor to the village was the other most pressing demand and to his dismay Sankar found that nearly 40 per cent of the villagers were suffering from tuberculosis. “It's caused either by malnutrition or a compromised immune system. The former is the case in Kalap,” he said.
This is mainly because the agrarian traditions have greatly dwindled, largely due to the ration card system! “Rotis and their locally grown millets used to be their staple, but that has changed now,” said Sankar. “Today, they just line up for their rations. That’s the problem with these schemes, really. The people have lost their incentive to grow their own produce, they would much rather fill their stomachs with subsidised grain.”
Remarkable as this may seem to any urban-dweller, money is fairly useless up in Kalap. The villagers still work with a barter system. “It would have been charming thirty years ago,” agreed Sankar. “Today, it’s just depressing. The barter system is a mark of the poverty in which these people live.”
The village now has its own solar power grid, thanks to Sankar, who got things done. The project has been done in partnership with E-hands Energy Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based company that funded Phase 1 with its own resources, thanks to which 20 houses now have electricity. They are also setting up a part-time Montessori school, which will work alongside the government-run institute. “We don’t want to push the government into shutting down their school, but we do want them to raise their standards a bit,” he said. “If the kids are smart, the teachers will be forced to do more. That’s what we're hoping for,” he said.
By October, Kalap will get its first clinic, too. “The idea is to provide basic healthcare and nutrition to the villagers.” Malnutrition has led to a host of other problems, compounded by the lack of a healthcare system. The traditional system of midwifery is also on a decline, making childbirth a real danger, too. If there is a problem, said Sankar, the stronger members of the community tie the sick person to their backs and run down the hill!
Publicity has been kept low-key, with intent. “We started a blog, but I don't allow more than two or three posts a year,” said Sankar. That's what makes Kalap worth a visit, though — its remoteness. It’s quite possibly one of the only places in the world where you can legitimately go to lose yourself.
Sankar can be contacted through http://www.kalap.in/
