Worlds scariest transportation – Chicham Village

Sitting  on  a small iron trolley box with her knees bend this young women have one of her hands tightly holding her baby who is evidently not more than a year or two old and the other hand clutches on the side bar. She is accompanied by a couple of school girls , a elderly women and two men. They also carry a gas cylinder , a case of eggs and some groceries . Jam packed in the box that  is held on air by a set of heavy ropes tied on the two pillars across the mountains , they are all set for a ride to the other side .

Now this is no adventure sport . Braving the fear of height and lack of any safety norms is no fun play  but a daily struggle for the people of Chicham , a remote village isolated from the rest of the world on the top of a mountain in Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh in India . Chicham is a neighbor of Kibber , known as one of worlds  highest  inhabited and motorable village.

From the time they have known people of Chicham have been using the treacherous mud path stretching  over the mountains to reach  Kibber from where they connect to the nearest town Kaza at a distance of about 30 Km . Considering the practical hurdles of using this path to reach Kaza for daily needs the government decided to build a bridge connecting the two mountains more than a decade ago. Not surprisingly the construction work was abandoned even before a quarter of the bridge was built and it now remains a monumental  block of concrete  . Few years back the appointed contractor showed mercy on the villagers and arranged  a rope way system to take the passengers two and fro over the two mountains and now that have become the main transport option of Chicham . The rope way function in such a way that it require manual support on both sides and mainly operates in the morning and evening. Not to say there is no safety measures or whatsoever and despite the risk involved each passenger of Chicham are forced to take this ride as there is no other option left to reach their destination on time.

This writer had a chance to witness this breathtaking ride during his recent visit to Himachal Pradesh . It was hard to believe that people would actually put their life in danger on daily transportation  but then it shows the extent to which humans have to push themselves  for survival . The brief interaction I had with villagers while filming the ordeal shed some light on their plights . A elderly lady admitted that it is indeed scary to travel in rope way but in her own words it’s a matter of keeping their house running . Fortunately there have been no fatal accidents till now but few of the villagers have suffered serious injuries . The hostess of our home stay in Kibber  is one of the victims of this risky rope travel and lost her middle finger when the box got stuck mid air few years back. The remains of a tractor deep down on the ground  that crashed from  the trolley validates the danger involved . As usual the authorities  remain unperturbed  from their issues and  have received no assistance  in resolving the transportation crisis. The unfinished bridge stands tall as a testimony of false promises and  abandonment . The youth of the village have been trying to take this matter to the outer world through media but have not succeeded yet . So when they requested me  to help them in this endeavour , I thought the least I could do is to send a message across the media . May be not a prime time news material  but those few Indians in the mountains  deserve some attention  . It will be a great injustice to look over their struggle that have become a part of their life only for survival.