THE LAND OF FLYING LAMAS & OTHER REAL TRAVEL STORIES FROM THE INDIAN HIMALAYA

by GAURAV PUNJ

  Story 1

  Kashmir – the Second Chance

  Hand-drawn maps for representation purposes only. Not to scale.

  The setting

  There is something special about Kashmir, and you come face-to-face with this fact the moment the plane starts its descent into Srinagar. The valley springs out from the clutches of the high, windswept mountains of the Pir Panjal range and opens up in kilometre-wide green opulence, interspersed with log huts, Chinar trees and the Jhelum. Yes, you can see all this from the window of your airplane. It’s an unusually wide valley, wider than any in the Indian Himalaya, and that, more than anything else, makes it what it is.

  I have been going to Kashmir every year since 2006 and have noticed the gradual thawing of the decades’ long winter, of tensions and resentments against whomsoever they were meant. Earlier, as soon as you left the airport, you could sense the tension throbbing through the roads, the silent glares of the locals and the automatic rifles of the army men posted every hundred metres. To be honest, I never really felt at ease while in Srinagar, though I wanted to, badly.

  From the Lal Chowk bomb blast of 2006 while we were having lunch just a block away, and the slogans of ‘Azaadi, azaadi…’ chanted coldly in 2007, to the ‘no room available in entire Srinagar’ situation in 2011, it has been a steady progress towards the oft-quoted ‘golden era of Kashmir tourism’ which was fuelled by the enterprising Kashmiri and the Hindi movie industry. It still has some way to go; the tourism infrastructure needs to catch up with the rest of the Himalayan states; but it is progress nonetheless.

  Pahalgam is 100 km southwest of Srinagar and is one of the towns in the holy trinity of Kashmir tourism, Gulmarg and Sonmarg being the other two. Don’t miss the ruins at Avantipur, just outside Srinagar, as you drive towards the town with two names, Anantnag and Islamabad, before catching up with the Lidder river and then following it all the way to Pahalgam. From there, continue along the Lidder for 15 km and you’ll reach the quintessential Kashmiri village of Aru.

  The stage

  Aru is a village set around a huge meadow with a small stream flowing through it. There are log huts set up by the tourism department right in the middle, occupying the best location, but they weren’t functional when we visited. On the periphery are a few more guesthouses, and we stayed in one of them, the only guests in Aru. It was 2008 and the valley was just about recovering from the long lull and tourists were starting to trickle in. Our guesthouse owner, though, acted as if we had disturbed his restful times staying alone in this idyllic village. An attitude not too different from a few other locals we encountered on our trip.

  We were in Aru because we were planning to do a short trek that starts from there, goes along the Lidder stream to Lidderwat and further towards the snout of the Kolahoi glacier. In its prime, tourism-wise, Kashmir was a magnet unlike any for trekkers, and the crown jewel was this trek and its off-shoots. It was on this trek that three trekkers were abducted and killed in 1989, in a chilling and definitive end to the golden era. Historic significance was not on our mind however when we chose the trek, it was the fact that it’s easy, short and stunningly beautiful. Our contacts in Kashmir had assured us of its safety, and here we were.

  Lidder valley is also home to the semi-nomadic tribes of Gujjars, Chaupans and Bakrawals, herders of cattle, sheep and goats respectively. An entirely unique set of people. They have been leading the same way of life for ages now; they don’t recognize state borders and, most intriguingly, they don’t give a damn about anybody. Very similar in their looks, traditions and attitude, but make the mistake of mixing up one for the other and they will not waste a moment in correcting you, sternly of course. They live a semi-nomadic life with separate winter and summer homes. The summer abode is more a temporary shelter made of rocks high up in the mountains. But cosy nonetheless. And into one such hut we stumbled.

  The cast

  In order of appearance: Javed, our voluble guide for the trek, his assistant Nadeem, a Gujjar couple, the open-air schoolteacher, and the two Chaupan women. Our group included Rujuta, her father, Bhavana, a hardcore IT professional, Zahir, a hardcore ad guy, and me.

  The act: Camping in Lidder valley and high drama in a Chaupan hut

  ‘Good morning sirs and madams, I Javed, guide for Lidder valley trek,’ Javed introduced himself in the same forced accented English that everyone in the tourism industry here seems to have picked up from God knows where. It was an effort to get Javed to speak to us in Hindi and took us almost a day. ‘And where are the cook and horseman?’ I asked. ‘Me only is everything,’ came the reply wrapped in a sheepish smile. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Surprisingly, we weren’t worried. We were so taken in by the indescribable beauty of Aru, and by all indicators, it would only get better on the trek. So with our guide-cum-cook-cum-horseman, two ponies and an assistant (small mercies), we started the walk from the village market. ‘Just small climb, then straight all day,’ was Javed’s description of the first day’s trek. It turned out to be factually correct, but boy, there was so much more.

  The initial climb took us to the top of a knoll overlooking Aru, which was guarded by a couple of army men, and it gave us a good excuse to catch our breath. We said hello to the jawans and told them we were going for a trek. ‘Kyon aaye ho idhar marne,’ was the deadpan response. They’re just bored and homesick, we decided and moved on. We immediately entered a thick forest of pine and deodar and began walking on a well-defined path. Javed and his small gang had gone ahead to pitch the camp and all we had to do was walk along the trail at our own pace. Soon we came across the first of many interesting scenes we would be witness to through the trek. It was a Gujjar couple with their month-old baby, dressed in all their traditional glory, walking purposefully towards Aru. ‘Her vaccination for this month is due,’ the mother told us with a shy smile, but matter-of-factly. I love the Gujjars for the way they have assimilated ‘modernity’ while leading a, what appears to be, primitive lifestyle. At that moment however these thoughts were not in our mind, we were too busy admiring the baby and her attire. Will let the picture do the talking. It’s on page i in the inserts.

  Soon we were out of the forest and in the wide, open Lidder valley. THE Lidder valley, I should say. Let’s use our imagination a bit now. You are looking from top and can see tiny figures emerging from the forest into wide grassy grounds, gently sloping down. To their left is a stream, crystal clear, bubbly, azure blue, 15-20 feet wide, with more pastures on the other bank sloping up steeply, this time to a patch of deodar at the base of a huge mountain. Miniature sheep, goat and other cattle, as seen from your high perch, are grazing rather lazily on the abundant grass on both banks. You see the tiny dots stop in their track, looking all around them, with their mouths open, you can very well assume, and then there is a flurry of flashes, the memory cards of their cameras fast filling up in a futile attempt to capture what their eyes can see. One of them even walks to the bank of the river, lies down on his stomach in a weird position and flashes away.

  Giving up on trying to capture the scale of the valley, its greenery, and in the case of Zahir, the twists of the Lidder, we strolled on. The camp was just a couple of kilometres away and we had the whole day. You know how we use the term ‘surreal’ so frivolously sometimes? But what we saw next truly did do justice to the term. On the slopes, lush with grass, were about twenty children seated in five rows. They were in some sort of a school uniform, and facing them, seated on a chair, was a man. They all looked at us with the same amusement as we looked at them. It lasted for a few seconds or so and was soon replaced with broad smiles on both sides. We spoke to the man and found out what it was: a summer school for the Gujjar, Bakrawal and Chaupan children sponsored by the government. The funding included the uniforms, books, lunch and a full-time teacher. The rows represented grades I to V. The kids seemed to enjoy reading the beautifully designed and illustrated textbooks, and the teac
her, Bilal, was kind and gentle, and didn’t think much of his daily walk to Aru. Overall, it was a feel good picture government brochures would kill for. The photograph is on page i in the inserts.

  As Baba took Sir’s interview, we spoke briefly to the kids, clicked some pix and waved our goodbye, it was a school in session after all and one shouldn’t disturb them for long. Also, we were hungry. We reached our camp where two huge tents, straight out of the 1980s, had been pitched on the grassy bank of the river. Not much of trekking has been happening here and the equipment was just a reflection of that. One was a kitchen/sleeping tent for Javed and his assistant and the other was where all five of us would sleep.

  The camp had been set up at Lidderwat, and just ahead were settlements of Chaupans and Bakrawals. It was no doubt an exceptionally pretty site, but we decided to eat first and look around later. Javed was not in the mess tent however, but soon we could hear his shouts as he appeared on the scene, wildly chasing one of the ponies, which he eventually managed to catch and tie to a boulder. Panting, he came up to us and complained, ‘Lunch is ready, why you so late, I got bored.’

  Lunch was, to put it mildly, a not very tasty concoction of rice and sabzi, but Javed insisted it was Kashmiri pulao and coerced us into praising his cooking skills. We had to give it to the man for his sheer enthusiasm and entertainment quotient though. He laughed loudly at his stupidest jokes, sulked majorly if we didn’t praise his cooking or didn’t include him in our kitchen tent conversations, chased ponies every few hours like a crazed man and 24x7 pretended to be a pro guide-cum-cook-cum-horseman. But behind the eccentric persona he projected was a practical man, a man who has suffered the hardships of a very long proxy war, and who now wants to work hard and make the most of the second chance he has got. We glimpsed that Javed once in a while, especially when he would make statements like, ‘Why does everyone ask us if we want India or Pakistan; we just want tourists.’ And it endeared him to us.

  A short history of Kashmir

  It would need many volumes to cover Kashmir’s history in its entirety, so this is barely a glimpse of the ‘glimpse of a short history of Kashmir’.

  Time period

  Dominant religions

  To be noted…

  Earliest –

  3000 bc to 1350 ad

  Hinduism

  Buddhism

  In mythology, Kashyapa rishi drained the Kashmir valley and settled Brahmins there. Ashoka established the city of Srinagar in 300 bc and introduced Buddhism to the region. Hinduism resurged in about 800 ad under the Karkota dynasty.

  Middle –

  1350 ad to 1819 ad

  Islam

  Initially under the Shah Mir dynasty, Islam gradually spread and became dominant with Persian replacing Sanskrit as the official language by 1550 ad. Then came Mughals, first indirectly, and then directly ruling Kashmir under Akbar from 1589 ad.

  Latest –

  1819 ad to 1947 ad

  Islam under Sikh rule

  In 1819 ad came the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh and ruled a state with 77% Muslim and 20% Hindu subjects. This rule lasted till Hari Singh in 1947.

  It was warm in the tent and we slept soundly. The next day was a rather long one; we were to walk as close to the Kolahoi glacier as we could and then return to Lidderwat and our camp. It was also a day when we would gain some height, and perhaps climb till 3200m. After breakfast, Baba came up to me and told me he felt like returning as he ‘can’t shit in the open’. We didn’t have toilet tents on this trip, so the business was to be done behind a rock or a tree. Well, not much to argue there, although I had a feeling he was not yet done with interviewing Bilal and just wanted more time with him. Javed offered to walk him back to Aru and to the guesthouse there, while we went ahead with Nadeem.

  We started soon and after crossing the Lidder over a log bridge, caught the trail going up. All through we could see Gujjar, Chaupan and Bakrawal settlements. These were largely temporary huts made of loose stones and wood, set at a distance of about twenty feet or so from each other, and built into the slope of the mountains such that if one looked from the top, they just merged in with the terrain, very much like military bunkers. Soon we reached the point from where the trail bifurcates, one towards the Kolahoi glacier, the other towards Tarsar lake. There were dense forests of birch (bhoj patra), the highest Himalayan tree, growing as they always do, almost perpendicular to the steep slopes. Our trail now passed through the terminal moraine of Kolahoi glacier, and was therefore more rocky and harsh. There were no trees any longer, the sun was sharp and the altitude began to have an effect on us. Bhavana, who had literally been bouncing ahead in the morning, was the first casualty. She sat on a rock and refused to move, her head in her hands.

  She had begun to display signs of, what would be known on our future treks as, the 3000-metre Bhavana syndrome. She got up from the rock, swerved wildly and scampered towards the nearest hut, with us following fast behind her. As soon as she reached the hut, a Chaupan woman, the inhabitant of that hut, emerged to enquire what we wanted. Ignoring her welcome, Bhavana went inside and made herself comfortable on her bed. Let’s call it, err, the true survivor’s instinct. While Bhavana lay on her bed, a scene not so different from Ram-Bharat milap was being played outside. The Chaupan woman greeted all of us with a big smile, turned to Rujuta and hugged her so tightly and for so long, it almost brought tears to the eyes of the unflappable Konkanastha brahmin. Damn, they even looked alike (photograph on page ii in the inserts).

  She then took us inside her hut, which was homely, warm, comfortable, spacious – things one would not have imagined looking at it from the outside. By now Bhavana had started crying, which made us very concerned at first, but we quickly realized we had to let her be. The Chaupan woman, whose name we never asked, as she never asked ours, communicated in her broken Hindi that she was making something special for herself and us. A younger Chaupan woman, from the neighbouring hut, joined us along with her six-month-old baby; she didn’t want to be left out of all the fun.

  If someone had walked into the hut at that time, this is the scene he/she would have witnessed: on the left, the Chaupan woman leaning over her chullah, making some special concoction while beaming at Rujuta, who was seated next to her. Behind them, on the gadda on the floor was Bhavana, sobbing; at her feet was Zahir, sitting cross-legged, with his eyes closed, determination on his face and hands on Bhavana’s feet, ‘healing’ her with his newly learnt Reiki; and by his side, the other Chaupan woman with her baby on her lap, trying to make conversation with me about Mumbai and weather. Don’t forget, we were on the moraine of the Kolahoi glacier, in a small, semi-permanent shelter, surrounded by mountains so high and a valley so wide, we really couldn’t have been more insignificant.

  Soon enough, the magic potion was ready and it turned out to be the best kahwa we have tasted till date. It was a perfect blend of almonds, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and, most importantly, kesar. I can’t really say if it was the kahwa or the Reiki, but Bhavana started feeling better and even got up for a while. The younger Chaupan woman was by now playing with Zahir’s SLR, specifically the lens. Zahir tried telling her to not put her fingerprints on the lens, but in vain. What’s the big deal, was her expression. All this while, her baby was kicking and laughing loudly. Suddenly he started to roll out of her lap and was about to fall face first to the ground. We all screamed in unison, ‘Arre arre, dekho’, and heroically lunged forward to protect him. The woman nonchalantly pulled him back on her lap, looked at our worried faces with a smile and said, ‘Go toh go.’

  We stared with open mouths, the lady’s super-quick reflexes and the associated coolness yet to sink in, when, I could
have sworn, the baby winked at us. ‘Gotcha,’ he was probably thinking. ‘Go toh go,’ we repeated to ourselves, almost like a mantra, hoping we could assimilate this lesson taught by the Chaupan woman. Zahir even put it into practice immediately and let go of his attempts to save his camera lens. We also let go of Bhavana and decided to let her rest while we walked ahead towards the glacier.

  ***

  Reality check

  Bhavana Mehta

  Ex-IT guru and now a fashion designer

  I don’t know what hit me that day. A throbbing headache, nausea, extreme tiredness, wanting to cry, not wanting to walk anymore… Luckily there was a hut close by and I just knew I had to go in. The lady in the hut welcomed us with a very warm smile. I barged in and found a place where I could lie down, forgetting all formalities; it was wonderfully warm and cosy inside. She made kahwa, which I love, and perhaps it helped me fall asleep. When I woke up there was no one in the hut. My friends have deserted me, was my first reaction. How could they, just because I slept? The Chaupan lady was there however, ever smiling, and told me they would be back soon. She asked me if I needed a mule to ride down, but I figured it would be better to keep my feet on the ground. GP and the others returned soon and we started our walk back. When we reached camp, Rujuta lay down flat on the grassy slope and started rolling down. She asked me to do the same and experience how it feels. It felt awesome; all my aches and pains had disappeared by then.