Michael Benanav

The Van Gurjars ("forest Gurjars") are a nomadic Muslim people found in the Shivalik Hills area of Uttarakhand, India, at the base of the Himalayas. Each summer they migrate with herds of semi-wild water buffalo to alpine pastures high up the mountains. Their sole source of income is selling milk to local communities. They are vegetarian, and treat their animals with an unreasonable amount of love. They have been doing this for over a thousand years. In the 1990s, new national parks were created for tourism, and this conflicted with the Van Gurjars way of life - people came to see the wild lands, not grazing cows. In 2006 India enacted a "Forest Act" that would protect native peoples, but local park officials took a fiefdom approach and put pressure on the Van Gurjars to stop their nomadic trek. Thus conflicts in the forms of bribes, threats, protests, etc.. have been ongoing.

Michael Benanav is an American journalist and nomad at heart who attached himself to a family of Van Gurjars and followed them on a migration season. It's a remarkable way of life with no technology and everything done by hand, he says the 15 year girls have the strength of Olympians. Nevertheless when they settle in towns they become depressed and wish to return to a nomadic existence. The contrast with modernity is stark, as they migrate up mountain roads trucks fly by horns honking. This is interesting look at a not well known nomadic people who seem to be on the cusp of disappearing, Benanav has done them a great service and an entertaining read.… (más)

The Van Gujjars, are a nomadic people, a people who travel with their water buffalo from the Shiivak Region to the Himalayan plateaus. They travel from place to place, depending on climate, and always with focus on the animals and their needs, fresh grazing land. A way of life threatened now by new policies, ethical and environmental policies, and claimed National Parks. In ironic fashion, the very agency that should be the protectors, the National Parks are instead the harassers wanting them off of Park lands.

We learn the way they live their lives, culture, socio economical underpinnings, the importance of their families and there relationship with their animals, Their religion, the are from a tolerant Muslim culture which has drawn the unwelcome attention of the Islamic Foundation. The author was accepted, surprisingly by these people, traveled with them and worked alongside. Shared their happy moments, and from the enclosed photographs their was a whole lot of smiling going on,and their stresses, how they feel about being the last of their culture making this yearly pilgrimage.

Such a unique people,hard, hard workers,but so much joy, caring for each other, the family as a unit, was beautiful to read. Was a wonderfully informative read about a unique way of life threatened by progress, or what is seen as progress. The pictures, bg smiles, allows the reader to put faces to those mentioned in the book.… (más)

This is the story of how the paternal grandparents of the author survived the Holocaust and eventually made their way to Israel and then the United States. In addition to telling their stories, Michael Benanav tells how he tries to confirm parts of their stories by following in their footsteps to Romania, Russia, and Hungary. The stories of their survival and subsequent journeys to Israel and the U.S. are interesting, even fascinating in places. The trouble I had was that Michael didn't talk about being able to prove their stories in any kind of historical way. Maybe that's understandable for his grandmother because she was Romanian and her story generally didn't cross the Germans army. Her displacement, weeks-long march, and subsequent imprisonment was at the hands of the ruling despot of Romania, himself rabidly anti-Semitic. Perhaps there were few records of that period listing the names of those Jews who were removed from their homes, marched hundreds of miles into what is now Russia, and then left to fend for themselves if they could. Certainly Michael never relates that his grandmother was counted, tattooed, or added to the rolls by the Germans. His grandfather, however, was in the German army, albeit in a Jewish men's division. The Germans kept meticulous records of every person, and every train, where they went, what they were fed, what they did, etc. Why no discussion of those records of his grandfather? Without that kind of proof we are left with just the memories of two elderly people. Human memory is fluid and unreliable. At one point late in the book, Michael relates an argument between his grandparents about whether an incident late in their years in Israel happened before or after the birth of their first child. That was many, many years after the Holocaust, but they still couldn't remember for sure. So what of their memories of earlier incidences? Nonetheless, this is an interesting and sometimes riveting book.… (más)