We reached a meadow at the foot of Chhota Kailash. From a ridge, we could see Parvati Sarovar lying in front of us. On the vast basin gleamed the melted snow of Chhota Kailash. I took a parikrama around the lake.

The view of Chhota Kailash defies imagination. The white snow-clad peak was soaked in the crimson hue of the newly born sun. Its image rested in the tranquil waters of Parbati Sarovar. With a feeling of deep contentment and accomplishment, we started our descent. I had conquered the peak.

Oral traditions:
In Japan, Manga is a form of illustrative painting. In India,it was the scroll painters who drew illustrations for bards to use as visual aids for their renditions. The storyteller-singer sang, nanarrated and danced the tale on the scroll,making it come alive. The enactment was not only entertaining, it also educated the rural audience. Both the bard and the painter created in their endeavour a genre of artists who kept alive a fantastic sytem of oral tradition. These mobile showmen were the precursors of the chalchitra, which today has evolved into a multibillion-dollar enterprise comprising cinema, television and the Internet. Bardic forms of entertainment have been popular throughout the country, be it the Phad narrated by the Bhopas from Rajasthan, the Patuas of Bengal, the Chitrakothis of Maharashtra and the not so well-known Telangana scrolls or Cherial paintings.

Cherial paintings, as they are called today, derive the name from the place they are made in-Cherial in the Warrangal district of Andhra Pradesh. Historians, however,term the paintings as Deccani paintings or Telangana scrolls, since the painters were spread across a number of villages in the Telangana area. The name ‘Cherial painting’ is more of a recent origin, as most of the painters from mid-20th century onwards were from this village, and the name has stuck.

The scroll works more on the lines of a film. A story is made up of a series of panels, as many as 20 or 30. Each panel could have three or four scenes from the story. The scenes within a panel are demarcated by pillars, trees or other symbols. They are painted in chronoligical order, so that when the narration begins, the story flows through the panel’s series of scenes. The paintings are drawn both vertically and horizintally. In the vertical format, which is more common, the scenes are depicted horizontally, with the panels distinguished horizontally by borders. The horizontal one, on the other hand is divided into horizontal panels, demarcated by borders at the top,middle and bottom.

The first panel in the painting has a drawing of Lord Ganesha. The rendition usually starts with an ode to the elephant-headed God, who is believed to remove all obstacles. As the story progresses,the bard holds up the relevant panel to the audience and sings the story contained in it. He runs through all the scenes in the panel before going on to the next.