A Kashmir Holiday

Kashmir is mindbogglingly, breathtakingly and heartbreakingly beautiful. The adjectives are chosen after due consideration. The mind finds it difficult to absorb and describe the beauty, hence mindboggling; the beauty -- especially of the high valleys, clear frothing blue-grey river waters  and the looming snow dusted mountains -- is like a punch in the solar plexus hence breathtaking and all this is experienced in the shadow of the gun and a faint but all- pervading miasma of bitterness, suspicion  and potential violence, hence heartbreaking.

But life flows on despite the machine guns, the spot checks, the traffic jams to make way for armed forces convoys and the undercurrent of fear that is inevitable in such an environment. Children walk to school chattering, horsing around and checking their cellphones as children do everywhere on earth; the apple crop is ready to be harvested and the walnut crop is drying by the roadside, to be sacked and loaded onto tempos for transportation to the markets. I was told the growers get one rupee per walnut! Compare this with walnut prices in Delhi and one realizes the gap between retail price and returns to the agriculturist who has surplus to sell.

Srinagar has the Dal Lake amongst many other attractions and a cynical outsider could be pardoned for assuming that the houseboat experience on the Dal would be an unpromising, touristy experience with smelly stagnant water, unprepossessing facilities and aggressive vendors peddling cheap junk — and one would be quite wrong!!

The Srinagar lakes are in a bowl with mountains looming over them and the impact of it all was quieting.

The best veg food we had in our seven days in Kashmir was on board a houseboat; the water in which we were moored was not smelly at all and the shikara ride was quite a joyful experience. Vendors did approach but did not persist when we showed no interest and were uniformly polite and not pushy at all.

 The morning came to consciousness (my apologies to the poet) slowly and softly with the odd shikara going about some early business on an otherwise empty water surface.

And slowly the stirrings of commerce were felt with the smell of wildflowers brought up to the side of our houseboat as we sipped tea and soaked in the silence. The price mentioned for a bunch of flowers was high but we paid it quite gladly – we were happy to give back, in our small way, for the experience that was simply there for the taking.

After a day on the Dal we drove to the valley of the Lidder. In other words, to Pahalgam and points beyond -- Aru Valley, Betab Valley and Chandanwadi (where the Amarnath Yatra starts).

The Lidder flows down from glacial heights in two streams that meet in Pahalgam -- the Aru valley lies on one arm and Chandanwadi and Betab Valley on the other.

Our hotel was located downstream from Pahalgam -- a sparkling new little gem of a place with a superb view down the valley from front facing windows. Construction of another hotel on an adjoining terrace blocked off the valley view from the side. Very modern heavy-duty trucks were ferrying building material down the hillside and obviously several terraces had been sold for construction -- the fruit trees on them were dying and the fruit withering on the branches.

The cynic in me saw the onset and determined progress of the Naini-Tal, Bhim Tal syndrome: the shades of green -- thick stands of tall pine and other trees -- flowing down the valley of the Lidder will very soon be replaced by a cascade of colorful concrete flowing alongside the Lidder. It would perhaps be wise to get a view of nature at its beautiful best in the region before it is butchered on the altar of tourism promotion.

The Aru valley is a short drive from Pahalgam and absolutely mind blowing. The road ends there and a gently sloping valley reaches up to the foot of soaring mountains, the tops of some of which were lightly dusted with snow. It is a place to just sit around, look and absorb nature at its spectacular best while ignoring the tourist trash on the ground --the ubiquitous empty plastic packs of snack foods that herald the onset of development and the success of marketing strategies of Multinational food processing companies.

A piece of friendly advice -- do not buy ‘pashmina’ stoles from itinerant vendors here or anywhere else. Buy them and other great stuff -- dry fruits, pherans, shawls etc  from  known shops in Srinagar to be assured  of quality and reasonable  prices.

A feature of tourism in Kashmir is the penchant that tourists have of getting themselves photographed with pigeons sitting(sic) on themselves. The photographer carries a plastic basket with pigeons in them and approaches you singing ‘Masakkali, Masakkli..’!!And it obviously does give him  some revenue!

Not wanting to be memorialized in this fashion we requested one such entrepreneur for permission -- and the privilege -- of photographing him with his birds for the rate he was offering to photograph us.

The Betaab Valley is named after the film Betaab that was reportedly shot there. Essentiially it’s a big park alongside the gently flowing, blue-white Lidder -- no rocks here so no rough and tumble of frothing waters as can be seen at Chandanwadi.

The Lidder at Betaab Valley

The valley is a popular picnic ground and busloads of school children were making merry as were tourists with cameras and packets of chips. But despite the crowds, just sitting by the river and watching it flow created a space of silence around one for a short while.

And then there was Chandanwadi -- the starting point for the Amarnath yatra . Here too was the Lidder, but in a narrower, sprightlier more bubbly avatar, bouncing over rocks on a narrow streambed rushing downhill while tourists took selfies and ponies trudged up the track.

Yes, tourism in Kashmir includes a lot of sturdy ponies and a great deal of horseshit, which can be a trifle disconcerting for those of us unused to animal excrement liberally decorating roads/paths in several places.

From the Chandanwadi Parking lot

The start of the path

The horses and the trash by the path

From the Pahalgam region it was back to Srinagar for some shopping and a trip to Doodhpathri, a magnificent expanse of green meadows, a

white-water river, towering mountains all around and yes, loads of tourists, locals picnicking and, of course, horses.

The drive to Doodhpathri, once one is out of the urban clusters and into the wilderness, is an experience in itself -- nature wild, green and overwhelmingly beautiful! Words do fail one; one is pushed to using all the seemingly trite words and hackneyed phrases which are simply grossly inadequate to describe what one experiences.

A practical observation: everybody we interacted with -- drivers, vendors, hotel and restaurant staff, salespersons in shops, shikara  boatmen….. were polite, considerate and pleasant; a very agreeable change from the aggression one has to deal with all too often elsewhere.

One cannot ‘do’ Kashmir in a hurry. One has to spend time just being there: walking around, checking out the treks if one is sprightly enough, shopping…and absorbing it all slowly. And one has to do it before it is all swallowed up in colorful concrete and plastic wrappers.

While Kashmir is definitely expensive, the products it is justly famous for -- walnuts, shawls, stoles and not to forget, walnut brownies from a particular shop in Srinagar -- can be bought at a fraction of the price one pays for them in Delhi and the quality is way way superior.

Do visit Kashmir -- it is well worth the expense and effort.

Mindboggling, breathtaking, heartbreaking, quite, quite overwhelming.

Some Perspectives

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