Walking River Luni: the salty lifeline of Rajasthan – Moving Upstream

Hassan Shahnowaz Islam is an actor and environmentalist from Assam. He’s pursuing a master’s degree in Environmental Studies (Conservation Practice) at ATREE in Bengaluru.

“As the days passed, I walked from sandy soil to mostly a rocky surface covered with grass. The change in landscapes was so slow that I didn’t notice it at first. Through walking, I started to notice the small and gradual shift in landscapes and landscape ecology. There is always something surprising. Like, after seven days of walking through arid spaces, I was surprised to find freshwater in a pond. It felt overwhelming.

Through the journey, I have stayed in many places, whether it’s a Hindu household or Muslim or even in Ashrams. I realise that what people need is respect. Food and water, love and kindness creates bonding. These are like water. If these flow, then it creates bonding. It joins life as it happens from landscape to landscape and it nurtures life.”

Madhuri Sharma is an architect with Bayalu Collective based out of Bengaluru. She works with contextually relevant architecture and crafts research. Her work in Kutch and Tamil Nadu has influenced her sensitivity to community work and participatory design, especially with pastoral communities of arid regions.

“When we are taught about rivers in school, it is almost always expressed as two lines, two edges with blue in between. This walk has completely changed this naive perception, because it’s impossible to have two ‘lines’ or ‘edges’ to define any river’s extent. It’s a constantly dynamic, changing gradient of wetness, even on its dry days.

Downstream we see how the perception of the river land is that of a jungle, with the oldest and healthiest looking wildlife growing there and upstream it becomes a pungent, neglected nala. I think the point of this fellowship was to also humanise the river, understand that it lives in people’s daily lives and memories and beyond just geographical terms and bounds.

I remember how the first few days of the walk were slightly overwhelming because we were still getting used to it and there was a sense of constant awareness of our physical and mental selves. The constant uncertainty eventually went hand in hand with the confidence that we can figure things out. By the end, we started enjoying the uncertainty, and the adrenaline rush of being surprised by a completely new phenomenon only grew.”

Saurav Vaishnav works with Ooloi Labs that builds products for social change. He aims to develop an interactive game based on his walk.

“Step by step we covered 100+ kms, sharing a part of ourselves with the people we met and taking in the parts which they shared. In these fleeting moments and interactions, we learnt quite a lot about the landscape itself. Walking in the river, across fields, through villages and so on really helped me absorb and understand the river and landscape, which sometimes shapes the lives and perspectives of these people and sometimes just looms in the background, as a setting in which the stories of these people unfold.

It was a new way for me to understand a region, as a wanderer who is aimlessly (seemingly at least) traversing this landscape and the lives of its inhabitants. Just like each step added to the distance we traversed, each anecdote, each comment made by people we passed by, added to the larger understanding of the landscape, the society and the people.”

Vandita Sariya is a multi-media journalist with Carbon Copy. She covers climate and environment issues.

“There is so much adventure in every nook and corner of this world. I can’t believe I’m saying this and one half of me is rolling her eyes but yes, there’s magic in this world. I’ve always believed that people make people and people break people. The ones I met on this walk, built the way for me brick by brick without realising, just by being themselves. It’s been wild, it’s been liberating. 

Not because I was close to wild animals or anything, but being in an uncontrolled environment, at complete mercy of strangers, you go where the road takes you. It felt so light to just float along the way.”

Avisha Jain works as the Rajasthan Facilitator at National Coalition for Natural Farming (NCNF) where she works with the community on agrarian issues through CSOs and other stakeholders in Rajasthan.

“In the past 2 weeks, we walked in and along the river – with and without water, highways and villages and every day was different on its own.

If I talk about the best experience in this whole journey, it has to be the first time we walked along the river with water in it. This was a long walk of around 2-3 hours of calmness and fear stitched together. That day, I could hear the leaves blowing, the stagnant water in the river striking the surface and gently flowing back because of the wind, birds chirping.

Although, all these did give calmess to the heart, but my mind constantly saw a lot of footprints and the fear of animal attack was making me look back again and again. I never imagined that seeing a human at this time would give me a big sigh of relief and assurance of my safety.

Later, this became a usual sight: where we walked along the river (with and without surface water) where we could see unidentified footprints of human and animals, but the only presence we heard or saw were those of buzzing houseflies.”

Suraj Singh works as a Project Coordinator with Urmul Seemant Samiti and for the past four years has had sustained engagement with pastoral communities in the Thar desert.

“The area from Sindhari to Nakoda Gola, where we saw the most water, was also the most exciting part of the journey for me: this was a hilly area, the river had clean water and we saw fish, deer, nilgai, owls among others. I do remember vividly the peace and contentment I felt here – being amid nature and listening to its music.

People asked me many questions: “What is your relationship with this girl? Have you two run away? What is your caste? Why are you walking the distance?” We would answer these questions in a strange mixture of broken Marwari and Hindi. This was enough to elicit their cooperation and faith, following which, after offering us food and shelter, they’d also give us a lot of love.

There were some bad experiences too, these experiences would become reasons for our laughter later on. We found strongly patriarchal societies in most places, but also a household that was led by the strong females of the family. The journey was exciting, and such ups-and-downs made the experience even more special.”

Kuhoo Chandra is a jewelry designer based out of Uttarakhand where she works on sustainable jewelry that raises awareness about Himalayan flowers.

“I have experienced so much love, generosity, care, patience, and understanding from people that don’t even understand my language properly. A part of our culture that can only be learned from experience. 

I feel like I have seen a pinch of the world that in some ways is still connected to what it means to be human. To care for the animals, to live in harmony with nature, understand its temperament, to touch the soil and not feel soiled by it, to value water, trees, grains, traditions.. I have seen strong women with chiseled arms, beautiful men with pretty earrings, children who are still innocent, cows with calm eyes, dogs who don’t need to bark.. and I’ve seen that many stars after a LONG long time!”

Satish Malviya is a journalist from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh and writes in Hindi on environment, human rights and democratic issues. 

“I found hosts from all castes and economic backgrounds to be generous and simple. Many of them offered lunch on their own without me asking for it; and many offered to stay for the night. When my glass of buttermilk was empty, they filled it again; and when it emptied, they filled a third glass. Host after host offered a millet roti (flatbread) soaked in ghee. It amazes me that they were doing all this for a stranger.

When I came to the river on the last day of the journey, a scene took me far back in time and that scene further strengthened the memory of home. A mother was crossing a dry, sandy river with her children under the blazing sun. A boy was on his back and the girl was walking behind her holding her bag. My mother also used to take us across the Betwa river in the same manner.”