Spiti and Kinnauri NEWS

Chango, Upper Kinnauri Valley, Indian Himalayas
photo: Elena and Pierre

The Sunday Times - Travel April 23, 2006

Mission impassable in Indian Tibet
For most of the year, the Himalayan valley of Spiti is cut off from the world.

Spiti, the Himalayan cold semi-desert, is one of the highest, remotest and most inhospitable places on this planet. You could be forgiven for never having heard of it. It lies in Indian Tibet, just below Ladakh, a Buddhist valley that has preserved the traditional Tibetan lifestyle. We take the western approach, from Delhi to Chandigarh by train, then by 4WD via Manali, the Rohtang Pass and Kunzum La — which is blocked by snow from November to June. Getting there is an epic journey at the best of times.

There are eight of us, led by Joan Pollock, the founder of Spiti Projects, who has masterminded raising the money to build a hospital and a school in Spiti Valley. This is Joan’s annual tour of inspection, but also her triumph, for her school is completed and we are heading for the opening.

We drive Indian-style — fast, with horns blaring — in a convoy of four Jeeps. At Manali we pause to catch our breath and get used to the altitude. We are now joined by three charming Tibetan Buddhist monks from South India, who have brought with them two fiberglass deer and a dharma wheel for the new school.

After Manali, we climb steadily to the 13,055ft Rohtang Pass, then down 19 hairpin bends on the other side. The road follows the turbulent Chandra River through a lunar landscape, bleak and desolate, strewn with huge rocks. There’s nobody out here but the road-menders, and traders with strings of pack ponies. No man’s land indeed. After 3pm, when the sun has melted the ice-beds, the road is liable to be washed away altogether. It’s probably the world’s most atrocious road — but it also has awesome views of glaciers and snowcapped mountains.

The Chandra Dhaba teahouse is the first (and last) sign of life for many miles, but very welcome. It’s little more than four mud walls with a tented roof, but the bus has just rolled up and this is the rush hour. In the half-dark, drinking chai in the wasteland, I look at the weather beaten faces and think of Genghis Khan, who marched this way, and Kubla Khan, his grandson, who conquered Tibet — and Spiti — in 1262. Not much has changed here since then.

As we press further on, over the 14,950ft Kunzum La Pass, Spiti Valley stretches before us now: brown, dry, barren and beautiful, dotted with villages and green fields, where peas and bushes of Himalayan roses flourish. Above, the peaks are capped with everlasting snow. Snaking along the valley floor rushes the Spiti River, gray and turbulent.

More info on the Spiti Valley and Tibetan Buddhist Temples.

The next day we hit Kaza, Spiti’s capital and the height of civilization. There are a few hotels and restaurants, two or three shops, a petrol pump — the only one in Spiti — even a tiny cinema. And, of course, Joan’s hospital. It’s small, with just one eight-bed ward, but it has the only operating theatre in the valley: it’s better than nothing. Before it was built, anybody in need of surgery had to go by taxi, or pony, to the hospital in Manali, 125 miles away, or get on the bus — no joke with a ruptured appendix.

Our final destination, Mane village, beyond the back of beyond, lies at 11,000ft, in the lee of an awesome brown mountain with Om Mane Padme Hum — “Hail to the jewel in the lotus” — painted in big white letters, halfway up. The houses are traditional Tibetan style, whitewashed mud-brick, with flat roofs, standing among fields of peas and plantations of rustling poplars. There are no streets, no cars, no restaurants, no foreign exchanges and no hotels: you stay with the natives — and make friends for life. Prayer flags flutter on every roof; water hurtles through narrow irrigation channels; the stillness is breathtaking.

Jeet — a smiling government official in a cowboy hat — who has supervised the building of the school, has kindly invited us to stay in his house. We climb a ladder to the front door. There are no taps, no bath, no shower; the lavatory is a hole in the mud floor; and Jeet keeps three cows, two ponies, seven sheep, nine goats, two dzo (half cow, half yak) and two donkeys. It sounds primitive, but the house is spacious and smells enticingly of earth, wood smoke, incense. In winter, when the temperature can fall to -30C, Jeet parks his beasts in the basement, where they are safe from wolves and snow leopards, and double as central heating. Up here, the dzo still pulls the plough; the donkey is still the principal means of transporting goods. The mains electricity is a bit dodgy, but there are satellite dishes on many roofs, and solar panels: Spiti is gradually catching up with the 21st century.

In the evening, Jeet’s wife, Samtan, walks with us through the pea fields, where the women are still working. I like this place where everybody pulls together, whether picking peas or minding the animals on the high pasture, or sweeping snow — all seven foot of it. Life is tough, co-operation is vital.. and these people never seem to stop smiling; I guess it’s Buddhism that explains their remarkable serenity. If you want to spend 10 years meditating in a cave halfway up the mountain, the Spitians will not think it strange: that degree of devotion commands respect up here.

We eat momos — Tibetan stuffed dumplings — and try tsampa, or roasted barley flour, the staple Tibetan food that is baked into bread, or mixed with a little yak-butter tea. Samtan makes tea for us, using the bazooka-like brassbound churn. It’s salty, but not unpleasant. After dark, I climb the ladder to the roof: no street lighting, and not a car headlamp in sight. The moon shining on the Himalayas is unforgettable.

In the morning, I wake to the bells of pack donkeys, and voices calling in the Spiti dialect, which nobody has ever written down. At Manali the greeting is the Hindi namaste; in Spiti it’s a joyous joulay, joulay. Today is specially joyous, because it’s the grand opening of Mane school: a splendid solar-heated building, now decorated with prayer flags and balloons. The monks have painted the deer and dharma wheel yellow and fixed them on the roof.

The junketing begins when 15 lamas from Dankhar, the local monastery, with their Rinpoche (head monk), perform a special puja for the school. Wearing their crimson robes and the eponymous headgear of the Gelugkpa sect, the Yellow Hats, they are a stirring sight. The former Minister for Tribal Development declares the school open, and we sit under an awning with the minister and the monks, honored guests. The audience, cross-legged on the ground, is the population — maybe 500 people, including the lucky pupils. We are presented with six white scarves, and eat some fabulous sticky yellow Tibetan sweet, washed down with Pepsi.

Traditional Spiti dances follow, with Tibetan trumpets and some funky Himalayan drumming. Seven men in red-tasseled hats and magnificent silk robes perform a dance with heavy swords. The girls’ dance is elegant, with much hand-waving, but the women’s dance steals the show. When they really get going, Joan is made to join the line — a great honor— and there’s much smiling and laughing. I like very much the unconditional friendliness of these people, who welcome visitors by sticking their tongues out.

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SPITI’S PHENOMENAL landscape is reward enough for flying halfway round the world, but the valley also has half a dozen important Buddhist monasteries. According to tradition, Rinchen Zangpo, the Great Translator, was sent by King Yeshe Od of Guge, about AD996, to build 108 monasteries across the western trans-Himalaya. Legend says Tabo gompa (monastery) was built in one night: shrewdly sited at the crossroads of two ancient trade routes, it flourished on the offerings of merchants carrying gold, salt, fine wool and tea. We arrive during the monks’ siesta, but we get to inspect the nine temples, the famous murals and painted mud statues of Buddhist gods, all wearing clothes, uncannily lifelike.

Spiti Valley and Tibetan Buddhist Temples.

The following day we visit the 16th-century gompa at Dankhar, a cluster of whitewashed buildings sprawled across a spectacular rock high above the river. At 12,774ft we drink chai with the Rinpoche and his lamas. We visit the novice monks in the schoolroom, where they sit cross-legged on the floor, red-robed and shaven-headed, chanting their lesson. Spiti follows Tibetan custom: the eldest son inherits house and land; the younger sons enter the monastery at seven or eight years old.

That afternoon, we trek into the Lingti Valley, famous for fossils. Tenzin Lama, the smiling head monk of Lhalung gompa, happens to be at Dankhar, and he walks home with us, following the sheer cliff of Palangri (17,500ft), a flat-topped mountain of awesome vastness, concertinaed in some antediluvian upheaval. We pass gangs of road-menders, Nepalese migrants (earning 81 rupees a day — about £1), who smile and say joulay, and bow to the lama, hands together.

Inside the Serkhang, or Golden Temple, at Lhalung there is a very special atmosphere. Some believe this is another of Rinchen Zangpo’s foundations, more than 1,000 years old. Whatever their age, the mud sculptures of Buddhist gods are extraordinary. Many have fingers or toes missing, however, and the frescoes have been damaged by rainwater. In fact, the villagers have asked Joan to help restore the temple, and our trekking is sponsored, to raise the money.

After another night under canvas, we trek over the mountain to Demul. It looks idyllic from above, an oasis of brilliant green field-terraces, but Joan sees another village of dirty children. Part of her campaign is to teach the Spitians that it might be a good idea to wash. Jeet rounds up the kids in the dusty street (zero traffic); Joan and the girls hunt fleas, apply head-lice shampoo, and the hose. This is the famous Pollock hygiene clinic, made very popular by the reward — combs, toothbrushes, balloons.

The return journey to Delhi, via Manali and Simla, is not without excitements: a 4WD gets stuck in a stream; to the botanists’ delight we find the elusive blue Himalayan poppy.. First, though, we stop at Kunzum La. We form a circle by the shrine, shout “So-o-o-o” three times, throw tsampa to the winds, and wish. The monks wish for world peace and a free Tibet. I wish for all that, of course, but I’m hooked by this cold desert full of warm people: I also wish to come back.

Donations to Spiti Projects can be made on www.spiti.org or to Cannongate House, Cannon Street, London EC4N 6AE.

Stud farm raises hopes for Himalayan horse

By Baldev S. Chauhan, Indo-Asian News Service

Shimla, June 20 (IANS) The magnificent Chamurti horse can smell glaciers, walk deftly on the ice of steep Himalayan slopes and survive the bone chilling cold - and a stud farm in Himachal Pradesh now hopes to stem the breed's shrinking numbers.

Experts are excited with the success in breeding the endangered horse at the state breeding center at Lari in Spiti Valley, about 400 km north of this state capital.

"In view of the declining numbers of Chamurti horses, the state government set up the breeding center four years ago. From 12 the number of horses has gone up to 27," S.S. Rawat, who heads the breeding center, told IANS.

Encouraged by the success of this stud farm, officials have now decided to sell four ponies to tribals to avoid in-breeding and to help preserve the gene pool at the breeding center.

"The numbers of the Chamurtis has definitely come down in recent years. We found only two surviving Chamurti horses out of 22 some years ago," Rawat said.

The endangered Chamurti breed is said to be one of the few species of horses found in the remote high mountain region of Spiti bordering Tibet.

Earlier efforts by the Himachal Pradesh government to breed the horses had failed as they were done in the lower hills at Mandi, and cross-breeding with other breeds resulted in poor results and disfiguring of the original breed.

"Our mobile team of veterinary doctors have just completed touring the remote villages in Spiti Valley and castrated 135 males (that were the result of cross-breeding)," Rawat said.

Rajeshwar Singh Negi, an environmentalist, said: "So much more needs to be done to save this species of Tibetan horse which for centuries was found in plenty dotting the high alpine pastures along with yaks."

Some experts say the magnificent and hardy Chamurti horse is actually a wild ass of the Tibetan plains and was domesticated centuries ago by nomads.

With a lion-like prominent mane, this sturdy horse grows to a height of 130 cm and can be seen grazing on alpine pastures from May to November. It is stall fed for the rest of the harsh winter in Spiti.

Two rare and exotic Himalayan animals, the yak and the Tibetan Chamurti horse, will be bred at special farms in Himachal Pradesh to save them from extinction.

According to latest official estimates, there are barely 851 yaks left in Himachal Pradesh's high mountains out of around 2,000 in 1980. The number of Tibetan Chamurti horses has dropped to about 2,500 in the mountains of Spiti Valley.

"The (Indian) agriculture ministry has sanctioned around Rs.9.6 million for setting up a yak farm in Spiti, of which Rs.5 million has arrived," said S.S. Rawat, a state animal husbandry official.

"The money will be spent to build breeding farms in Spiti Valley and buy pure yak females to breed with the farm's male yaks. The calves will be distributed to the locals in Spiti," said Rawat.

Presently, there is only one yak breeding center in India. It is located in Arunachal Pradesh.

"The existing Chamurti stud farm at Lari village in Spiti valley is to receive Rs.8.6 million for breeding this rare species of horse," the official said.

"More female Chamurti horses will be purchased from nearby villages for breeding at the farm. The 18-month-old colts will be sold to farmers later," a veterinary doctor said.

Animal rights activists do not agree with the government's proposal to sell the animals to farmers.

"The focus should be to raise the numbers of the yak and Chamurti horses and then leave them in their wild habitat where they have been living for millions of years instead of domesticating them," said Rajeshwar Singh Negi, an activist.

According to Negi, of the 2,500 Chamurti horses, only around 500 are pure bred. Most horses have bred with domestic horses and lost their purity, he said.

"The long-term measures to conserve the species should be towards creating and preserving their natural habitat," Negi told IANS.

The yak is found in Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and in Tibet. The magnificent Chamurti horse is only found in India's Spiti valley besides Tibet and is far more threatened than the yak. The short and sturdy sure-footed horses can walk deftly on the ice of steep Himalayan slopes and survive the bone chilling cold.

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Apple Orchards in the Himalayas:

Following the Apple Trail to Kinnaur

Partha S. Banerjee The Times of India, Kolkatta ; April 20, 2002

Next time you bite into a luscious apple, think of the "˜American in Khadi'. Or better still, plan a visit to Samuel Stokes' picturesque adopted home in Himachal and enjoy a stunning view of mountains in the bargain.

But what have apples got to do with Stokes? Well, if it hadn't been for this unusually remarkable American who married a local girl and eventually embraced Hinduism, there would have been little apple farming in India.

The apple saga began at Thanedar, a charming little village at over 8,000ft. and some 82 kms from Shimla, and you can follow the orchard trail to remote Kinnaur, where forbidding snow-capped mountains tower over slopes that grow the best apples in India. Then move on to the enchanting Sangla valley with its quaint hamlets and the swiftly flowing Baspa river. But its at Thanedar where you must begin your journey for it was here that Stokes began experimenting with apple saplings he brought from America some 80 years ago.

Scion of a wealthy Philadelphia business family, Samuel Stokes (1882-1946) came to India in 1904 to work at a leprosy home near Solan (50 km from Shimla). Soon, however, the young American became increasingly drawn towards Indian philosophy and culture; he turned away from the foreign missionary community and became a Christian fakir, living in a cave for a while, then married a Rajput Christian girl, bought land in Thanedar village and took upon himself to improve the lot of the local hill people who lived in abject poverty.

After experimenting with wheat and barley, Stokes decided to try apple farming in his land. He acquired apple saplings from America in 1919, and after successfully growing orchards in his land, distributed saplings to the local farmers. By the late 1920s, apple orchards where bearing fruit all over the neighboring hills and the poor hill people of the area were suddenly growing unbelievably rich. Even farmers in Kulu and Kashmir, where a sour variety grew, borrowed Stokes' saplings
s to improve their apple crop.

In Thanedar, you can visit Harmony House, the Stokes' family home, a European style cottage with Himachali features, and be lucky enough to meet one of Samuel Evans' descendants, some of whom shuttle between the USA and Himachal. (One granddaughter, Asha Sharma, recently wrote his biography, An American in Khadi.) Close to the home is the Paramjyoti temple, a slate-roofed square structure with an encircling verandah, built in Pahari style. Stokes built the temple after converting to Hinduism in 1932 and changing his first name to Satyanand. In later life, he joined the Indian freedom movement, was jailed by the British, and became a senior Congress leader.

The Barobag Hill where Harmony House stands commands a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains, some slopes are draped in tall deodar trees, other stand studded with apple orchards. The snow peaks are to your right and in the distance, through a narrow valley 6000ft. below, flows the Sutlej. The road to the valley descends in sharp hairpin bends and before long you are in Rampur (3040 ft.), an ugly bustling town on the banks of the Sutlej with concrete building sand soaring temperatures. But it is the last big town on the way to Kinnaur.. . . . .

As the winding road to Kalpa ascends the high mountain, you soon find yourself in a kind of bowl encircled by soaring snow-capped peaks. It is a strange feeling you experience now, a mixture of awe and exhilaration. There is the Jorkandan (21,213ft.) summit towering on one side but more majestic is the Kinner Kailash (19,844 ft.), one of the mythical homes of Lord Shiva. You soon reach Recong Peo, the district headquarters of Kinnaur, and half an hour later to the quiet little village of Kalpa (9,700 ft.).

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How the apple came to India
By: Rishad Saam Mehta
January 5, 2003

. . . And as I came in from the cold, tired and stiff after a seven-hour drive through snow and ice, his cook put on the kettle and had a cup of steaming ginger tea ready in a snap.

He told me the story of the man who introduced to India, the deliciously sweet apples that we now enjoy. Samuel Evan Stokes, 21, came to India ( 1904) with the intention of working at a home for lepers in the Simla hills. He married a local pahari girl (1912), played an active role in India’s freedom struggle and was even jailed by the British.

Six kilometers away from Thanedar at Kotgarh stands an old church built by the British in 1843. In the early 1900’s Stokes was sent here to recuperate from the heat of the Indian plains. He’d come to India with a doctor couple — Mr and Mrs Carleton — who were working with the Leprosy Mission of India.

During a visit to Philadelphia, the couple had been asking for donations at the local church for their work in India and young Stokes was very moved by their cause and dedication and wanted to help out by voluntarily working for the mission in India.

1916
Stokes plants a few apple saplings in his Barobagh orchard in Thanedar. He faced a lot of opposition from his family because he was heir to the family’s prosperous business of elevators. Incidentally, Stokes and Parish Elevator Company later merged with Otis Elevators. But young Stokes was determined and his family relented to let him follow his heart and Samuel landed in Bombay on the February 26, 1904.

His voluntary work with the Leprosy Mission started in Sabatoo in what was then Punjab. Now the heat of the Indian plains doesn't go too well with everybody and soon Stokes found himself a victim of the heat and dust and was sent to the Kotgarh church to rest and recuperate in May 1904.

With time on his hands he set about exploring the surrounding hills and the trail that was the old Hindustan-Tibet road. And Thanedar (called the “Mistress of the Northern Hills” by Rudyard Kipling) worked her charms on him and he found himself completely in love with the place. In a drastic step he decided that he wanted to spend the rest of his life here.

He is arrested and jailed. Though he was a westerner he didn't share the British notion that dark skinned was inferior. As a matter of fact he had a way with the locals and he tried to understand their problems and help them in any way he could. He also stood up for them and was one of the most forceful protesters of the British system of forced labor. This delighted the locals who took him into their hearts and he became one of them. He married a Rajput-Christian woman called Agnes on September 12, 1912.

Realizing that her son was determined to spend his life in India, Florence Stokes came visiting in 1911. During that time, the area that is Thanedar today was a 200-acre tea plantation owned by a widow called Mrs Bates. Stokes’s mother bought him the plantation as a gift on February 6, 1912 for the princely sum of Rs 30,000.

Captain R C Scot of the British army had introduced apples to the Kullu valley in 1870. These apples, the Newton Pippin, King of Pippin and the Cox’s Orange Pippin were strains of the English sour apples that were not popular because of their taste. To meet the demand of the Indian market, sweet apples were still being imported from Japan.

1926
The first apple trees bear fruit and the apples are sold
It was during a visit to America in 1915 that Samuel Stokes heard about the new strain of apples patented by the Stark Brothers nursery in Louisiana called the Red Delicious. He bought a few saplings and planted them at his Barobagh orchard in Thanedar in the winter of 1916. Five years later his mother sent him a consignment of saplings of the Stark Brothers Golden Delicious Apples as a Christmas gift. The first apples bore fruit a few years later and were sold in 1926.

They were an instant hit. The divinely sweet taste and the inviting color had the Indian market going crazy over them. Their popularity even spurred locals into planting these, rather than their usual crops of potato and plums.

Also, because they considered Samuel Evans Stokes as one of them, they sought his advice and he helped them achieve rich dividends with their harvest. Soon the demand for the Kotgarh apples sky-rocketed and orchards cropped up all over the valleys of what is today Himachal Pradesh, to meet this demand.

1932
Stokes becomes an Arya Samaji and changes his name to Satyanand Stokes
The imports from Japan stopped.

It is from these first few saplings that the Sweet Delicious Apples of Shimla and the Golden Delicious of Kinnaur became popular and Himachal Pradesh grew to become one of the largest producers of the fruit today.

So the next time you bite into a juicy red or golden apple think about Samuel Evans Stokes whose vision and desire to help the locals brought these apples to Himachal Pradesh.

The next morning Thakur took me around to explore Thanedar. We went up to Harmony hall — the Stokes family house. A two-storied house built atop a hillock surrounded on three sides by snow capped peaks. Around the house are the apple orchards of Barobagh — the place where it all started.

1937
He builds the temple that becomes his legacy to Thanedar.
Next to the house is an Arya Samaj Mandir. As we sat in the courtyard of the temple reclining amidst the wooden pillars, surrounded by inscriptions from the Upanishads and Bhagvad Gita and gazing at the lofty white Himalayas that seemed a stones throw away, Thakur told me the second part of the Stokes story.

During his rest and recuperation days at the Kotgarh church, young Samuel came in contact with a lot of Sadhus on the Hindustan-Tibet road making their way to Kailash Mansarovar. While the priest of the church was finely robed and had three meals a day, the simplicity of these Sadhus perturbed him and set him thinking about the Hindu religion.

Later on in his life he also studied the Bhagvad Gita in English and then in an endeavor to understand it, learned Sanskrit and studied it again in that language. In 1932, he became an Arya Samaji and changed his name to Satyanand Stokes. The temple he built in 1937 was to be his legacy to Thanedar. Juggal Kishore Birla, a scion of Indian industry at that time contributed Rs 25,000 to encourage him. Called the Paramjyoti Mandir or the Temple of Eternal light, he wanted it to be a storybook in wood and stone.

Standing next to it 65 years later, I realized that it is indeed that. On its walls are verses from the Gita and the Upanishads, reading which give the seeker strength to bear his sorrows and help reach his goal.

Samuel Evans Stokes was the only American to participate in the Indian freedom movement. As a matter of fact when the first saplings of the Golden Delicious apples arrived from Washington in 1921, his wife Agnes planted them because Stokes was in jail along with other prominent leaders of the Indian freedom movement such as Mahatma Gandhi and Lala Lajpat Rai.

Satyanand Stokes died on May 14, 1946. The widow of his youngest son Lal Chand Stokes is Vidya Stokes, who is the Congress party president of the Himachal Pradesh Congress party. She is also the former speaker of the HP Legislative Assembly and is rumored to be the next chief minister of Himachal Pradesh.

Such is the story of Thanedar, a simple town high on a ridge on the Hindustan-Tibet road. A place so charming that it captured the heart of a young foreigner. Talk to the locals and even today and they'll have a story about how this American in khadi touched the lives of their parents or grandparents and endeared him to their hearts.

The author is the travel correspondent for Autocar India

Tribes women adopt family planning
Kulwinder Sandhu
Tribune News Service Reckong Peo, February 10

The alarming growth of population is adversely affecting the overall development of the nation. No one realizes this better than the tribal people of Kinnaur, particularly women who are more amenable to adopting modern methods of family planning to control population growth and preserve the family landholdings from the brink of division among children, in order to improve household economy.

Having a total population of about 80,000 inhabitants in a huge geographical area of 6,401 square kilometers, the population growth rate of Kinnaur is just 1.8 per cent. It has a population density of 14 persons per square kilometer only as against 291 persons per square kilometer for the state of Himachal Pradesh as per the 2001 census.

Going by the historical background, polyandry or plurality of husband existed in Kinnaur since ages that blocked the fast growth of population. The common practice of becoming lamas and nuns (jomos) also helped in checking the growth of population.

There is a myth among the Kinnauri people that during the Mahabharata age Pandavas once stayed in Kinnaur with their single wife. After studying socioeconomic history of this region one can argue that land holdings of the people in Kinnaur were very small and after its division among family members it was quite impossible to survive, which might have forced the people to adopt polyandry to stop division of land holdings for their survival.

But, now, with the expansion of media, communication links and modern education the practice of polyandry and becoming lamas or jomos is declining.

According to a recent survey carried out in Kinnaur as part of the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) program by the Indian Institute of Resource Management Research, Jaipur, the knowledge of family planning is quite high in Kinnaur as about 96 per cent of women are aware of at least one modern method.

The percentage of women having knowledge of all modern methods of family planning is also fairly good and it stands at 89 per cent — 88 per cent for Scheduled Tribes/Scheduled Castes and over 90 per cent for women from other castes.

Specific knowledge on female sterilization among women in Kinnaur is over 96 per cent, male sterilization 95 per cent, IUD/loop 76 per cent, daily pill 75 per cent, weekly pill over 50 per cent and condoms 88 per cent. The survey has pointed out that over 18 per cent of the women have knowledge of withdrawal method and 23 per cent of rhythm/periodic abstinence methods.

As far as the usage of contraceptives is concerned, more than 74 per cent of women use contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancy. The contraceptive prevalence rate in the district is over 81 per cent, as per the study.