ABSTRACT
The Himalayas give rise to many forms of walking. For some people walking in the mountains is part of everyday lives, while others walk them for leisure during their spare time. Amongst the different kinds of mountain wanderers are the pastoralists who traverse the whole region as part of their livelihood and for whom walking is the main technique of subsistence. The Van (forest) Gujjars are one of many pastoral communities who, throughout history, have walked the altitudes of the Himalayas with their herds in accordance with the changing seasons. While for most of the Himalayan pastoral communities the walk of transhumance has stopped – if not for the animals then at least for the majority of the people – for the Van Gujjars, who are specialized pastoralists, the walk continues, involving men, women and children moving with their herds of milk buffaloes. The walk goes through a terrain intimately known and consisting of movements and places apprehended through an embodied knowledge possessed by people as well as animals. This is – to quote Merleau-Ponty – ‘the simultaneous patterning of body and world in emotion’ (1966, 189). It is a use of the body brought into being through a common history where movement has always been undertaken on foot at the rear of the herd as part of the great pastoral migrations through the region.
