All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
Having come from a family that has had 5 people in the armed forces, I feel a particularly strong connection to the Indian Army. I have also had the privilege to meet and know many other army veterans in good old Doon and elsewhere and I guess there is something different about them. There is that touch of class (not in a snobbish way), the honour and the honesty which I genuinely admire. I guess it takes a certain level of sincerity to be willing to give it all away for protecting people you don’t even know personally.
After the recent events, we have seen the adoration and adulation being received from across the country for our soldiers. I thought my way of showing respect would be to take you to army cantonments, memorials, museums and events across India, since I have often stopped over at such places in many of my travels throughout my country. Needless to say, cantonments are the cleanest parts of any town and that itself says a lot about the military mindset.
The Indian Army employs around 1.3 million in active service and another nearly 1 million reserve personnel. Its Integrated Defence Head Quarters are in Delhi and there are Head Quarters for its 7 Commands too. These are the Northern Command which is headquartered in Udhampur, Western Command in Chandi Mandir, South-Western Command in Jaipur, Southern Command in Pune, Eastern Command in Kolkata, the Central Command in Lucknow and finally the Training Command in Shimla.
While I have been to all these cities and others (besides Udhampur and Chandi Mandir), but one of my most special visits was to Lansdowne in our Garhwal itself. This is since my grandfather (Colonel PL Nautiyal) had once upon a time served here for the Garhwal Rifles. In fact, my granddad happened to serve at a time when we had all the major wars post the birth of our nation. These were the 2 Indo-Pak wars, the Indo-China one and if that weren’t enough, the Indian contingent was also called to Vietnam in the 1960s and my granddad was part of the horrendous war there too. He left the Indian Army early to take care of family duties back home but sadly I was only 6 when he left on his long journey to a faraway world. However, I do have very fond memories of my brief time with him since he was very fond of me. I happened to spend quite a bit of my early childhood in Doon with my grand folks and maybe that explains why I am so drawn towards Doon to this day. It really is my favourite place on Earth.
My grand folks had 3 children, with my uncle being the eldest followed by my mother and aunt. My uncle was a student at RIMC Dehradun and then went to the National Defence Academy (NDA) Khadakvasla in Pune. However, later, he decided to pursue a different path in life. Besides him, another uncle of mine, from my granddad’s side itself, was a colonel in the army. In fact, I have 2 more close family members from my own generation – one who is my cousin (father’s side) and another who is my cousin’s husband (mother’s side). Both are proudly serving the nation as colonels. These 5 family members are not counting other distant relatives in the armed forces, so now you know where the army influence came from in my life.
But when it came to me personally, I never really aimed to join the army since I realised very early on that I was a bit of a weakling and completely non-sporty. Besides I didn’t even have 20/20 vision. But like most 10 year old boys, I played with my Gi-Joes and military vehicles, but by around 17, I started writing poetry and building castles in the air. I had no clue what a career meant and trust me I wasn’t born into excessive wealth and privilege either (relatively speaking, of course).
It is only a decade later, at 27, that my life took a new direction. This happened when I started travelling the world but somehow even then my connection with all things military never left me. You see, my first international flight to London got delayed in Kuwait and we were forced to do an overnight. As luck would have it, right outside my big hotel window, I could see American fighter jets and inside my room I saw a warning pasted in bold red, which read – ‘PHOTOGRAPHY NOT ALLOWED’. This really got me interested as to why photography was not allowed here. It then struck me that these jets were somehow linked to the Gulf War of 1991 which I had heard of in the news. The fact was that many American fighter jets had never left Kuwaiti soil even after a decade and a half post the end of that oil war. Now when I look back at my first international trip to England & Scotland, one of the clearest memories is that of those jets in Kuwait and I have no photographs to prove I was there. I think after missing out on taking photographs in Kuwait, I have never missed out on capturing my travels since.
After this moment, it took me a while to realise that what I really enjoyed was telling raw and visceral stories of what was going on in the world. I really didn’t care for ‘travel highlights’ but was keen on watching the world closely and observing the good with the not-so-good and reporting without filters. Over the years I got into dark tourism in a big way and enjoyed recording stories which had both heroes and villains, and at the same time realising that life was never this black and white. And as I grew and saw more and more of the kindness and the horrors around the world, I witnessed a lot of greys in between too.
But one perception that has never changed for me is that there are no greys in the Indian Army as I believe it has only heroes. In a world of many good and few bad people, the Indian Army transcends all this. I have met and conversed with so many military personnel around India and I have always left a richer person after each interaction. I truly owe a debt to the Indian soldier – the real Indian hero.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home. Reach him at: www.facebook.com/nitingairola/; www.facebook.com/MostTravelledIndian/
