Inshallah I will come back Kashmir
Kashmir. Paradise on earth. I have been stubborn about coming here. So where do I begin recounting the tale of my experience in paradise? Lets start with the bus ride. It is a 24 hour bus ride from Delhi. The first few hours are not interesting at all. You get the usual congestion and smog and dust and traffic. Once you cross Jammu the ride becomes something else all together. The road starts to narrow and two way traffic seems like not a good idea anymore but the bus and truck drivers make passing each other somehow possible. I held my breath the first few times the bus slowed to negotiate a hairpin turn that overlooks a breathtakingly steep mountain gorge. Holding my breath all the way up to Srinagar was not an option so I started to focus on the trees, the mountain ranges, the water below and the ride became a great experience. My mom enjoyed it too. She couldn't take her eyes off the terraced backyards people had built behind their homes in the mountains. There were streams and a large river just zig-zagging its way alongside the mountain road.
There is army checkpoints everywhere once you pass Jammu. At 6am in the morning we saw the first of several mine detection teams with their dogs. For some reason that didn't disturb me at all. The presence of the soldiers quickly became a part of the scenery for me. We passed some settlements and that is where the story takes a bit of a turn. My mom closed her eyes and leaned back. I looked out the window, the bus slowed down to make a turn and there it was. A man shot in the head at the side of the road. The blood was still streaming out of him onto the road. A small group of people were standing around and a woman was being held by another, screaming. I really couldn't believe my eyes. I turned to ask my mom if she saw. Of course she didn't and so I told her it was a car accident.
Just before entering the three kilometer tunnel that leads out of the mountains our bus was stopped for a routine check. We were waved through only to be surrounded by soldiers seconds later. They started yelling at our bus driver and a soldier got onboard scanning the rows. He pointed at us (my mother and I) and asked us to follow him. We were escorted off the bus and once out were surrounded by six or so more soldiers who escorted us away to a shack at the side of the road. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the bus driver was now trying to give one of the soldiers that was yelling at him money. One of the guys put his hand on my back and didn't remove it until I left the shack. There was quite a stir and a few nervous smiles when we got back on the bus a few minutes later. Apparently we had to register ourselves entering Kashmir and our bus driver wasn't aware that there were tourists on his bus. That's what got him in trouble.
The scenery changed on the other side of the tunnel. We entered a large valley with fields and fields of yellow canola flowers surrounded by snow capped mountains. Clusters of villages appeared. In this part of the world children get their education sitting in front of a large blackboard in the middle of a meadow surrounded by the moutain ranges and fields of flower. What a way to learn your ABCs!
Entering Srinigar the presence of the army gets stronger. There are barracks and barbed wire fences with glass bottles hanging in them everywhere. Banks and post offices had soldiers posted at the entrances with the usual barbed wire and sandbag fortifications. Once off the bus we were pulled aside to the government "tourism office". There was a man on the bus with his daughter that was going to show us the way to Dal lake and he was seperated from his daughter, questioned and asked for ID. The guy at the "tourism office" was clearly taking bribes as he wanted to arrange for our accommodations. He was a mean looking guy. It took us the better part of half an hour to get out of there and convince the police that Anam and her dad were not trying to kill us. It was such a ridiculous affair. My mother by this time looked like we were going to be hanged. My mom refused to get on a houseboat so we had to find a hotel. With the way things were going it didn't surprise me that at midnight someone was pounding on our hotel door asking us to open it. We didn't. My mom was freaking out and asked me if I would have come here on my own. The tone of her voice told me that there was only one right answer so I gave it: "No, of course not." She eyed me suspiciously and replied: "Of course you would. You're not afraid of anything." I really wish that was true.
The next day we left and got on a bus going to Amritsar. I don't know how many routes there is through the mountains but this one was way more spectacular than the one we took when we entered the region. There were waterfalls, bridges and more hairpin turns but this time we would look ahead and back and up and down and see the roads snaking around the mountains with convoys of trucks like a line of ants speeding there way out of sight around a bend, disappearing into the sky or into the mountain. There was evidence that some of the trucks didn't quite make it as their remains lay at the bottom of some of those drops we gazed down upon.
There is army checkpoints everywhere once you pass Jammu. At 6am in the morning we saw the first of several mine detection teams with their dogs. For some reason that didn't disturb me at all. The presence of the soldiers quickly became a part of the scenery for me. We passed some settlements and that is where the story takes a bit of a turn. My mom closed her eyes and leaned back. I looked out the window, the bus slowed down to make a turn and there it was. A man shot in the head at the side of the road. The blood was still streaming out of him onto the road. A small group of people were standing around and a woman was being held by another, screaming. I really couldn't believe my eyes. I turned to ask my mom if she saw. Of course she didn't and so I told her it was a car accident.
Just before entering the three kilometer tunnel that leads out of the mountains our bus was stopped for a routine check. We were waved through only to be surrounded by soldiers seconds later. They started yelling at our bus driver and a soldier got onboard scanning the rows. He pointed at us (my mother and I) and asked us to follow him. We were escorted off the bus and once out were surrounded by six or so more soldiers who escorted us away to a shack at the side of the road. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the bus driver was now trying to give one of the soldiers that was yelling at him money. One of the guys put his hand on my back and didn't remove it until I left the shack. There was quite a stir and a few nervous smiles when we got back on the bus a few minutes later. Apparently we had to register ourselves entering Kashmir and our bus driver wasn't aware that there were tourists on his bus. That's what got him in trouble.
The scenery changed on the other side of the tunnel. We entered a large valley with fields and fields of yellow canola flowers surrounded by snow capped mountains. Clusters of villages appeared. In this part of the world children get their education sitting in front of a large blackboard in the middle of a meadow surrounded by the moutain ranges and fields of flower. What a way to learn your ABCs!
Entering Srinigar the presence of the army gets stronger. There are barracks and barbed wire fences with glass bottles hanging in them everywhere. Banks and post offices had soldiers posted at the entrances with the usual barbed wire and sandbag fortifications. Once off the bus we were pulled aside to the government "tourism office". There was a man on the bus with his daughter that was going to show us the way to Dal lake and he was seperated from his daughter, questioned and asked for ID. The guy at the "tourism office" was clearly taking bribes as he wanted to arrange for our accommodations. He was a mean looking guy. It took us the better part of half an hour to get out of there and convince the police that Anam and her dad were not trying to kill us. It was such a ridiculous affair. My mother by this time looked like we were going to be hanged. My mom refused to get on a houseboat so we had to find a hotel. With the way things were going it didn't surprise me that at midnight someone was pounding on our hotel door asking us to open it. We didn't. My mom was freaking out and asked me if I would have come here on my own. The tone of her voice told me that there was only one right answer so I gave it: "No, of course not." She eyed me suspiciously and replied: "Of course you would. You're not afraid of anything." I really wish that was true.
The next day we left and got on a bus going to Amritsar. I don't know how many routes there is through the mountains but this one was way more spectacular than the one we took when we entered the region. There were waterfalls, bridges and more hairpin turns but this time we would look ahead and back and up and down and see the roads snaking around the mountains with convoys of trucks like a line of ants speeding there way out of sight around a bend, disappearing into the sky or into the mountain. There was evidence that some of the trucks didn't quite make it as their remains lay at the bottom of some of those drops we gazed down upon.
posted by LOTC at 8:59 AM
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