Kashmir continued... The action begins!

Pahalgam

Now I understand why Kashmir has been eternally renowned as "Paradise on Earth".

Srinagar to Pahalgam is but a three-hour journey that includes a jeep change in the town of Anantanag, otherwise known as Islamabad. The divine landscape of the Kashmiri Himalaya lies ahead of it. We arrived and David made me walk at least five kilometres! He insisted we trek around and find a location we liked as opposed to giving into tempting offers of lifts to specific guest houses by the touts that rounded on us the second we set foot on Pahalgam soil. It was good practice for the trekking expeditions that I'd decided I'd like to try.

I've never been trekking in my life. In fact, I have a tendency for taking the piss out of trekkers and have this image of them in anorak coats, sensible shoes, silly hats and hiking sticks. And binoculars. And Gore Tex trousers. And thermal underwear of course. They're strange creatures. Remind me of studious aliens with their fluorescent goggles, Northface rucksacks and illuminous bright orange waistcoats. David reckons that the ones I'm talking about are usually German, or that they're just posing as trekkers in their snazzy, high-tech gear.

I'm not the kind of person to say no to an adventure, even if it's something that I've never tried before. Well, apart from the kind of lunacy that involves bungee jumping, parachuting or base-jumping. Never say never though. I did manage to abseil down waterfalls in Nepal with Nicola and didn't really like it at the time, although in the aftermath, I did admit that I'd do it again. I've lived in southern Spain's Alpujarra – a range of 13 mountains sprawled out across the Granada region. They were immense in themselves, yet just a speck in comparison to what we were about to experience here in the Kashmiri Himalaya – so this was not something that I was about to miss out on.

We discovered the village of Loripora and found ourselves surrounded by vibrant green Kashmiri countryside with the snow-capped tips of the Himalaya Mountains peaking out from behind a stunning, picturesque landscape. We could hear the sound of the fresh water river rustling like the wind blowing thorough leaves and bounced over stones to cross it before walking through the tree-lined country road that led us to the Brown Palace Guest house – a place that kismet (fate) had brought our way.

We'd spoken to Ibi, the son of the owner and rafting fanatic privy to the odd tipple and smoke. In comparison to what others had tried to bribe us with, we were given an extremely good offer to go on an adventurous trek with his younger brother and trekking assistant.

Tales of Kashmir
I don't have an anorak or sensible camel coloured shoes. What I do have is a Bench snowboarder jacket and huge stomper boots that could kick an arrogant man's arse to Timbuktu. Along with a fleecy top and hoody, it was plenty for trekking. The minute we'd agreed, the boys busied themselves with preparing for the trek – packing sleeping bags, tents and food.

In the meantime, Haji, the owner of the guesthouse told us stories of Kashmir. “Business was so bad in the nineties that I had to go to Manali where I opened the Jungle Bungalow”, he recalled, smiling, “Sheep, goats, chickens, I think maybe one yak too, lived in the room downstairs, so we called it Jungle Bungalow.” He also told us of the time an Israeli client had gone missing. “His clothes were still in his room so when he failed to return on the second day, I called the police,” “My place was full of embassies, press, government officials! It was crazy! No one could find him. Then after two years, they found his body hanging from a tree. Nepalis had killed him in Parvati Valley.” Following the incident, Haji decided that he'd had enough of Manali and that it was time to return to his Kashmir to begin again, starting up the Brown Palace here in Loripora, Pahalgam. Business has been picking up slowly, but there are not enough tourists coming to Kashmir. “Slowly, slowly, things will get better, Insh'Allah.” Haji also recalled the time that he'd smuggled a Dutch journalist up to the dangerous insurgent-infested mountains at three in the morning. They were questioned by the rifle hugging young men just as they set up camp. Haji explained how he then convinced the insurgents that the journalist was around to tell their side of the story. He laughed as he told us of how they'd managed to give the insurgents the slip.

“BBC came and put a satellite in my garden! Right there!” he pointed to the spot, “can you believe it? They were broadcasting Kashmiri news from my place!” We laughed together at length. He'd been a rich man as well as a poor man, admitting that right now, he was just okay. “I've seen it all now. But more people should come to Kashmir. Some people though, they just don't know how to appreciate the beauty of what is here! It makes me mad! Especially Israelis! All they ever do is smoke. Smoke, smoke, smoke...” He said it in jest, but meant it. I can understand. Most Israelis that I have met are content with floating around India on the tourist circuit and going from place to place getting stoned.

We'd met Boaz and Ruth, a couple from Israel and found them positively charming, spending evenings talking about Palestine. They confessed to being sympathetic to the situation, but were far from pro-Palestine. I have met only two people from Israel that profess to being pro-Palestine. It seems the rest have been brainwashed by the Israeli government and transformed into a nation of assassins. They finish their compulsory time with the military and come straight to India to find solace, some of them losing the plot and flipping out while Jewish missionaries go around the subcontinent picking them up and sending them back home to recover.

Considering the fact that they're not very liked in the world, Israelis can still be commended for having the balls to travel, especially in areas where there is a large concentration of Muslims. Part-Italian, Boaz has a dual nationality, while Ruth, who's mother is English, has a British passport, which makes it handy when checking into hotels that declare in Hebrew, “Israelis Are Not Welcome.”

Aru – onwards and upwards
More on the guys later. We jumped into a jeep and drove to the small village of Aru, situated at the foothills of the mountains that we were about to ascend. Haji accompanied us up to the village and said, “Insh-Allah, we will meet when you return.” Two donkeys were loaded up and we set off, climbing an ascent that led up through the village and into the mountains.

So we did our first leg of trekking and about four hours later, arrived at base camp, which nested at 3,500 metres.

Kolohai Glacier
The following morning, David jumped up and down like an excited child, grinning insanely, speaking very fast in a high-pitched voice and trying to coerce me out of bed with coffee. I don't think you need me to tell you that David is a fanatic when it comes to mountains. Meanwhile, I'm not exactly a morning person, but managed to get myself together, brush teeth by river, eat breakfast and set off with the boys for the trek to Kolohoi Glacier. I was tired! It was too early! I wanted to sleep more! But as I learnt, there is no arguing with the mountains and you have to set off early if you want to get back before dark. Ten minutes later, they threw me onto Bul-bul the horse. Two hours later, I was able to open my eyes and walk. I found myself clambering over giant rocks like a mini figurine. The landscape had changed from a vibrant psychedelic green to a barren dessert of rocks.

We could see Kolahai Glacier from the camp itself. This is the illusion of the mountains. They're also deceptive, hostile, unwelcoming and unpredictable. It was a sixteen km trek that involved crossing a number of rivers, bouncing over giant boulders, scrambling over huge rocks and climbing dizzying ascents. David and Aja shot ahead and became tiny dots in the distance while Atta, Ibi's brother, accompanying me at a speed I felt comfortable. It became difficult to breathe but David had taught me a technique that involved breathing in through the nose and out from the mouth. We stopped for a break and Atta suggested smoking a cigarette. This is the Kashmiri solution to dealing with altitude. We could see the ice on the glacier and the two tiny dots – David and Aja - eagerly running across it to reach the other side. Climbing over a dessert of gigantic boulders and rocks is not easy; especially when you begin to feel tired because one slight mistake and you could end up with a splattered chin or broken ankle. We made it though, had lunch and sat around for about an hour freezing our balls off before taking off for the descent back down to the camp.

As we passed an unfriendly gypsy camp, two dogs began barking ferociously. Luckily they were tied to the shack and couldn't quite reach us. David nearly jumped on their heads as he bounced between the boulders. We stopped for chai at a friendlier nomad camp and welcomed the warmth of the stone house in which we sat. The mother prepared a hookah for herself as her daughter served us tea, her eyes burning holes in my soul the entire time. They spoke Kashmiri, so conversation in Hindi was off bounds. The experience was strange, yet nice. On the way back, three small gypsy children with beautiful translucent eyes and almost-blonde hair, squeaked on top of their voices, “Tawfee, tawfee, tawfee!” They wanted toffees. Luckily, we had some on us and to their sweet delight, distributed the few that we'd bought with us.

For me, the trek was an experience that I'd never really encountered before. It tested my resilience, strength and stamina, which for some reason had surprised David. He wasn't sure if I was brave or completely ignorant of fear, in other words, stupid! I was happy to get back to camp, where we walked about to loosen the muscles in our legs.

The poison that is “civilization”
The nomads, gypsies and tribal people of the mountains intrigued me most. Their way of life is far, far away from the world that I have known in the west, far away from a life they could never envisage. They are Free. Free from a corrupt system built on greed, power and money, free to live their lives in the only way they know how amidst the majestic glory of the soul-stirring Kashmiri Himalaya. The substance of their existence felt worlds apart. It made me realise how in our so-called “civilized” world, we suffocate in the vomit of an egalitarian society. In our contemptuous minds, we have tried to penetrate the beauty that lies in the simplicity of life, with the poison we term as “civilization”. As they try to ape their British colonial predecessors, the Indian elite continue to impose their so-called world view, feeling ashamed enough in the face of western ideals to pollute their own people and land; like the suffocating effect of a man tied to the noose of a horse running wild through a colossal of unforgiving thorns, shredding them to pieces. What I witnessed in the mountains was the dregs of beauty that remain. I imagined walking through the doors of a parallel world, visualizing the contemptuous, condescending and barbaric nature of a so-called superior civilization that succumbs to the expectations of an egotistical society with its brain-dead disposition to wasting away, replacing the necessity of returning to nature to realise ourselves, with washed out, faded dreams that aspire to a material world. We try and fail, left to be scraped up as garbage and dumped into the pile for losers. We succeed and forget who we are. The people I met in the mountains will never forget who they are.

Unforgettable
As we sat around our camp, small nomadic children suddenly appeared, and as they sat, watched us awkwardly from a safe distance. We beckoned them to join us and felt delighted to make conversation in Hindi with the brave few. Others were were subdued, quiet and extremely shy. One particular boy, about eight years old would not speak at all. According to one of the older children, he had lost his father in the previous year.

It was a beautiful day in the midst of the Kashmiri Himalaya and I reminded myself that this was the most unique experience that I'd encountered so far, and the beginning of an adventure that I will never forget.

Day 3 – Tar Sar Lake
It's day 3 and we're stuck high up in the mountains, so there's absolutely no way of going back down. Hooray! Well, that's not what I was thinking during the evil 50-degree gradient inclining from the foothills of the base camp to the narrow ridge that snaked around the mountain high above. We followed it round until we were faced by a fierce river, gushing about wildly about 10 metres below. I felt like a tightrope walker crossing it over a narrow, precariously thrown, wooden plank. At 4,800 metres, the altitude was higher than the previous day, making it both tougher to climb and difficult to breathe.

We found ourselves in the clouds with sudden abruptness. There were mystical green meadows all around. It was like landing in a magical and unknown land tucked away in the midst of the clouds. I almost expected to see some half-man-half-horse creature cantering elegantly across the misty horizon.

I also realised the schizophrenic nature of the mountains amidst the reduced visibility as we guessed the route to Tar Sa Lake. Legend has it, the lake behind Tar Sa is cursed and that an evil monster resides there. Anyone who visits the lake is cursed by the monster of the lake, so nobody dares to venture there, not Kashmiris, not Indians and not even the courageous nomads, tribes or gypsies that know and understand the mountains better than anyone.

We'd climbed some one thousand metres that day, so it was cold by the time we got to Tar Sa Lake. The 10,000 square metres of water that rippled serenely across the infinite liquid horizon in front of us wasn't exactly a pond. We had lunch and psyched up for the walk back.


Women don't trek!
A group of young Kashmiri men had joined us, one of them declaring, “women don't do what you are doing. They are not supposed to.” Great, I thought, I either ignore this prick or give him a piece of mind. I did the latter of course and ended up talking about the so-called code-of-conduct supposedly imposed upon women by the Qur'an. “If the Qu'ran dictates the way women should conduct themselves, it also makes reference to the way YOU, and yes, I mean YOU, yourself, should refrain from drinking like a fish and smoking hashish like it's going out of fashion in the way that I have seen you do. So I guess that makes you a hypocrite, meaning you're not in any position to judge or criticise others,” I replied before stopping myself.

Mountains bring people together
A shy young man of not so many words, Atta, who has a Sufi-like aura just like his father, Haji, had begun to open up to David and I, feeling comfortable in our company and appreciating the fact David had such a natural connection with the mountains. He even laughed at our jokes and confided that he enjoyed trekking with us. We asked him if he'd like to accompany us as a friend to Nepal for the Anapurna trek and his eyes shone with excitement.

Descending, we arrived at the furious river that we had crossed nearer the beginning of trek. The sun was hot so we took off our shoes and sitting on a short wooded area over rocks, soaked our feet in the icy water, smoked a few cigarettes, took some photographs and chilled out, absorbing the warm and gentle rays. It was a magic moment for us. Atta knew we were coming to the end of our trek together and felt sad.


Back to base
We had covered some 80km in four days and although I was happy with the experience that we'd had, I was also overjoyed at the thought of a bed and a shower, scampering down the flower-carpeted meadows like Heidi, leaving an exhausted Atta and sulking David, who was sad to leave the mountains, shuffling along slowly behind me. Wow. What an experience. I felt exhilarated with my first ever mountain trek in the Kashmiri Himalaya!