Kashmir

Kashmir is a region in the far northwestern part of India, and for many people, Kashmir means different things. The two most common things the region is known for is its beautiful, soft, wool that is exported worldwide in the form of scarves, sweaters and various other articles of clothing. The other, more notorious thing the region is known for throughout the world is that it has been the battleground, and one of the main reasons for, the three wars that have taken place between India and Pakistan.
When you look at the U.S. State Department's Travelers Advisory web page it warns against going anywhere near Kashmir. It speaks of the potential of violence to break out at any minute and the threat from terrorists in the area. I figured with that kind of publicity, there probably wouldn't be any lines to wait in and availability at every hotel. I headed up there right after visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
I will try to explain the recent political history of Kashmir as best I can but rest assured this is nowhere near everything involved. It is a subject that, if you're interested in, is worth looking further into and encompasses not just India and Pakistan but has ties to the US, Britain and China. Not to mention the middle east. Influences from World War II helped mold a mindset of self defense here in India and this has had a big impact on the way India deals with the rest of the world. With India emerging as a world economic power, the tensions between it and Pakistan are not going to go away and have the potential to affect us all.
India's two major religions are Hinduism and Muslim. They haven't always gotten along here. After independence from England, Gandhi tried to hold the people of India together as one nation but the tensions were too much and the country was divided in two, well, actually three.
The new area that came out of this division was Pakistan and it was what used to be the far western part of India and the far eastern part of India. The concept was to divide the country along religious lines thereby separating Hindu India from Muslim Pakistan. The new country of Pakistan now had two parts, separated by the entire country of India. And while this division was based on religion, there were many, many mixed communities all over the country who had been living together for generations. Once the line was drawn there were millions of people who instantly became refugees fleeing to get to their "appropriate" country. Horribly, in the mass migration that followed, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered on both sides because of their religious differences.
It is important to remember, too, that when the British colonized India, India was a collection of many small nations each led by it's own Maharajah or leader. The British used these Maharajahs against each other, promising certain leaders regional power if they helped bring other Maharajahs down. During the British Raj or colonial time here, much of India's regional governing was done by these Maharajahs and the Maharajahs in return answered to the Crown of England. The British only dealt with the overall governance. Things ran this way right up until independence and when the country was divided, these Maharajahs were still in power.
Now way up north, where the dividing line between Western Pakistan meets the beautiful Himalayan mountains, there were a handful of local rulers that were allowed to decide which side they wanted to be on. For the most part, this came easily. The areas that were mainly Hindu and Buddhist went with India and the areas that were Muslim went with the newly formed Pakistan. Except Kashmir. The local ruler of Kashmir didn't want to be associated with either side and wanted complete autonomy, he wanted Kashmir to become it's own country. Both sides let him know that this was not going to be allowed to happen. The ruler then said he needed time to decide, so everyone waited, but they were pretty sure that Kashmir would go with Pakistan because almost everyone there was Muslim. But Kashmir didn't come back with an answer quickly enough for Pakistan and Pakistan sent troops in to forcefully take Kashmir. The ruler of Kashmir played his hand and decided to side with India because of Pakistan's invasion and asked India to defend it. Thus started that first of three wars between India and Pakistan.
In the first Indo-Pakistani War, India regained control of Kashmir but it took the United Nations to bring the two countries to an unresolved stalemate. In 1965 war broke out again mainly over the issue of who owned Kashmir and when China threatened to intervene (which who knows what that would mean), the U.N., led by the US and Britain stepped in to bring another unresolved stalemate. In 1971 Eastern Pakistan and Western Pakistan deteriorated into a civil war. Once again, refugees in East Pakistan, in the amount of 10 million, were on the run to India and with that Pakistan attacked Indian territory. India and Pakistan entered their third war in just over twenty years. Eastern Pakistan declared its independence as Bangladesh, India beat Pakistan back and once again the U.N. stepped in to arrange a cease fire.
Since the mid 1980's, violence has been a part of life in Kashmir, mainly Muslim militants attacking Indian army outposts in the area and exploding bombs throughout the region. It was not uncommon for gunfire to be breaking out in the center of Srinagar, the main city in Kashmir. The primary request of the militants has been the removal of the Indian Army from Kashmir and the handing over of Kashmir to Pakistan. For about the last 20 years, this violence has gone on while the people of Kashmir, the people who actually live there, not the militants and not the soldiers, lived in fear everyday for their lives and lost many loved ones to a conflict they didn't want, between two countries that they don't want to be a part of.
In recent years the violence has subsided and tourism has returned to Kashmir. Indian tourism that is. North American and European tourism has only come as a trickle in the last 2 years. I wanted to be part of that trickle. Now you might ask yourself why, with a history like that of Kashmir, would anyone want to go visit it, but one look at its beautiful snow peaked mountains being reflected in pristine alpine lakes and you'll understand why.
This time of year (Early March), the one road that approaches Kashmir from the south was on again, off again, closed due to snow. Even if it was open, it would be about a 24 hour drive from Amritsar. The road from the north would be closed until probably May. So I flew. The airport had a heavy military presence at it and there were more forms than normal to fill out. It was unusual to have to go through security to leave the airport.
All along the road from the airport to the city of Srinagar, there were soldiers in full gear, with rifles standing post along the roadside. I noticed that about halfway between the airport and the town there appeared to be quite a few new homes being built. And not just small concrete cubes like elsewhere in India, there were very nice, two story houses made of wood and brick. Who they were for, I don't know, maybe the military, maybe tourist rentals, maybe locals.
The city of Srinagar also has a heavy military presence in it, with soldiers on every corner and various hotels being taken over and now used as barracks for the soldiers. You constantly see soldiers either standing post or walking along the roads. Here and there were sand bag bunkers filled with men and machine guns, but the strange thing is, it all seemed so peaceful. The people in the city went about their lives and no one seemed to notice the soldiers. One of the first things my cab driver told me was to never take a photo of any soldiers or any military buildings.
One of the first things that I noticed was that there wasn't as much garbage here. And not as many people.
The newer part of Srinagar is set on a big body of water called Dal Lake. Behind Dal Lake is a nice mountain ridge that still had snow on it. The snow in Srinagar itself had all melted off, probably a couple weeks ago. Lined up in the water of Dal Lake were hundreds of these old wooden house boats. The houseboats used to be the homes of the British who for some reason weren't allowed to own land, so instead they built these ornately detailed "houses" on top of rectangular barges and made them their summer vacation spots. Since the British left, these house boats have been turned into cheap tourist accommodations. Now, while some of them are still very nice, more than half are in pretty bad condition, some rotting into the water. These house boats are not like the self propelled house boats we have in the US that you drive around the lake in while bikini clad girls dance to Motley Crue (sorry, had a little day dream there). Think trailer park on the water. Think double wide. In the area of the lake where boats are all anchored there's quite a bit of trash in the water and the sewage from the boats drop straight to the water. For the most part, they're an environmental nightmare and should be pulled out. Fortunately they are restricted to one part of the lake. Once away from that area, the lake is calm and beautiful. I took a 'guided' paddle out on it in a small little wooden canoe. They wouldn't let me just rent the thing and take it out by myself, they made me have a paddler, who paddles it while I sat there. Something about relaxing and enjoying myself. Ha. The guy who does the paddling doesn't really speak English but he's the "guided" part of your rental, since, he is the one who's deciding which direction you go in. Normally, couples rent these larger, twenty something foot long boats, called "Shikaras", with big cushions and a canopy over them and the paddler takes them around the lake. Very romantic. Since it was just me and I'm cheap, I didn't want to rent the 20+ foot thing, so I asked him to rent me this smaller, no frills, plain wooden canoe with no seats, no pads and no canopy. Just a wooden cross beam to sit on in the middle while the guy paddled from the back. This smaller canoe is usually only used to carry tourists from the shore to their houseboats maybe 100 yards away, so the guy who ran the rental place looked at me like I was nuts. I got it for half the price of the regular one, how's that for romantic? It was nice to be drifting out on the water with the fresh air and snow covered mountains above. It was a nice change from the garbage strewn, smog choked cities of northern India.
That night, I checked into a guesthouse call the Swiss Hotel. The hotel is located in the newer part of town, right near the lake. The manager is this guy named Rouf and he and his whole family really take you in. Other than me, there was one Indian businessman from Jammu (south of Srinagar) staying there and a young British couple who came to ski (India's premier ski resort, Gulmarg is up the road).
The day I arrived, they were having a birthday party for Rouf's 2 year old daughter. I ate pastries and sweets until I was sick. That night, when the party was over, Rouf's cousin had to drive some of the family to the Old City and asked if I wanted to come along. You bet I did. After we dropped the family off, he had to find somewhere to buy medicine for the birthday girl and juice for tomorrow. We zig zagged across the Old City, where most of the urban fighting had taken place, and the cousin told me what it was like to spend the last 18 years "unsure if you were going to make it home that day." He said you became numb to the gunfire and went about your life and work but always worried if you were going to get home. And when you did make it home, worried if the rest of the family would make it too.
The cousin showed me the big, brick two story building that his grandfather had built and his family lived in until the military moved in after independence. The military commandeered it and it's been used as soldier's quarters ever since. He showed me the High Court Building and the main government center called the Secretariat Building which has the city's only elevated highway bridge passing right in front of it. That night Rouf and his cousin and I sat and spoke about a whole range of issues over chai. Rouf would get all excited and pontificate. It was an incredible learning opportunity.
Rouf told me how he and many others are trying to get the house boats out of Dal Lake. He said that the hundreds that I see there now are half of what use to be there. He said he wished Lonely Planet (the guide book company) would tell people not to use them. (Lonely Planet does have a paragraph about how polluting the houseboats are but on the same page promotes them as their number on pick on where to stay. Go figure?) Rouf told me that there use to be thousands of trees in the shallows of the lake (it's a big lake), but politician decided that the best way to clean and promote healthy lake water was to cut all the trees down. And they did, with no scientific research or basis. I saw no trees on the lake, even at the edges.
We spoke about the violence and the potential for things to flare up again. The cousin, who was probably in his early thirties, didn't seem too worried. He said that things were stable now and getting better. After the cousin headed home, Rouf, who was probably in his forties told me not to be out after dark. He said that things could change quickly, that while, yes, there are concerns anywhere you travel in the world nowadays and that things could change in a matter of days in any country, he warned that things in Kashmir can change in minutes. He said he'd seen it. He was angry about the fighting because most people in Kashmir don't support either side and yet they are the ones who suffer the most. "Without peace there can be no prosperity". He spoke of how the fighting hurt the area financially as well. Every day I was there, as I walked out the door to go sightseeing, Rouf would say, "Be home by dark." In a way it was funny and made me feel like a little kid who's heading out to play. Only I knew Rouf wasn't playing around.
The next day I walked up to a mosque that sat way up on a hill. Rouf said that walking around during the day was fine, but that there was a celebration going on up there and that it would be packed with people and if I wanted to avoid being squished in with a crowd I could just walk the lake. I headed to the mosque. Come to find out the celebration was for the Prophet Muhammed's birthday. There were a lot of people up there but you could still walk around. Mostly it was families sitting around the mosque grounds eating lunch. Initially, I thought, that if it was Muhammad's birthday it should be much lively celebration, but it was pretty sedate. I think I remember from what I've read, Muslim celebration are quite reserved. Especially in comparison to Hindu festivals that are all noise, color and chaos. I was also really surprised that no one was staring at me, no one was checking me out, like they do in the rest of India. The just passed me by like they didn't notice or care. I would find out why in shortly.
After leaving the mosque, I walked up to a look out point where you could see the whole city, with lake and mountains framing it all in. There were a handful of people up there and eventually, these two young men who were about 22 walked up to me and started talking. Their English was perfect (I would find out why on that later, too). Initially, just as in the Golden Temple, I had my guard up, but within a couple minutes I realized they just wanted to chat. And that they were both very genuine and nice. They were both born and raised right there in Srinagar and they both had recently graduated from the University there with business degrees. They said that they were anxious to get out of Srinagar, not because they didn't like it but because the education and job opportunities were limiting. The said that they wanted to go to grad school in the US and when I pressed them about the reality of that happening, they confessed that it wasn't that hard. They said many of their friends were already there getting their MBAs. They said due to the political climate in Kashmir, there was now very high levels of unemployment because no one wanted to keep a business there. I asked them if they studied English in High School or college and told them that they spoke it well. They looked at me curiously and said, "We are schooled in English from Kindergarten on, it's the primary language here in Srinagar." They told me that they speak Kashmiri (which I heard them speak as well) but that they learn that in their homes from their parents and grandparents. While we were talking, and elderly man came up to the two guys and asked a question in Kashmiri. I heard them answer something back in Kashmiri that included "Alaska". (I had told them where I was from). They then turned back to me and said that the old man asked where I was from. They told him where and he became very surprised. He told the two guys that he thought I was a Kashmiri man. I asked why. The two guys told me, "Because you have Kashmiri features." Then it hit me. I looked at the two guys I was talking to, then looked at everyone at the area. I did looked like them, or they looked like me. Everyone had brown hair, not Indian black. Everyone had eyes that were green, hassle or light brown. Everyone had very light skin and, most of all, they had long, thin, narrow noses. No wonder no one at the mosque looked at me as out of place. (Oh, also, I guess I should mention that by this point I have a full beard and I'm dressed in bland brown pants with a bland winter jacket I bought in Northern India.) I looked at the kid who was doing most of the talking and realized that though he and I had similar features, he looked just like my friend James Walton in Denali. The only difference is that he had my long nose! And he was in his early 20s. He looked like what one of those computer morph things would do to show what my and James' love child would look like. It was funny and spooky at the same time.
So after a while, they took off because they said they had to visit several other mosques today since it was the special day. We said our good byes and I walked down from the hill into the Old City where I had been last night with Rouf's cousin.
Now I should clarify that there are people that have the "traditional" I'll call it, Indian look in Kashmir, and there's some people that look Himalayan. Like elsewhere their is a mix of people.
Walking down into the Old City that day was pretty neat. The sky was overcast and it added to the atmosphere of the old brick buildings, some of which were medieval looking. The old, slouching brick was accented by carved wooden balconies and window shutters. As I walked around I had several people come up to me and just want to talk. I had two older men invite me for tea and everyone I met was so, so nice that the touts seemed a world away.
I walked around the Old City for most of the day and the scenery was only interrupted by the presence of soldiers that seemed to be on every street corner. Bunkers were made in front of hotels that they had moved into and other government buildings. At one point, while walking past a bunker, I heard a soldier ask from behind the caging and sandbags, "Hello, where are you from?" I spoke to him for a few seconds. He was from central India and had been posted there for the last 3 years. His wife and children were still down in central India. I told him "good luck", he said "thank you", and I quickly moved on. I became very conscious of the government and military buildings and avoided them. I figured if anything was going to get hit it was them. But then maybe I was letting Rouf make me too paranoid.
Most of the men of Kashmir wear a pancho type cover called a Pheran. It's a traditional piece of clothing made out of wool and it hangs down to your knees. The wool is usually earthy tones like brown or green. Rouf wore one most of the nights and I would realize that he, as did most men, carried a small wicker basket full of burning coal under the pheran to keep warm while walking around at night. He let me hang onto the basket a couple of times and it was quite toasty.
At the end of the day I went to see the Jama Masid, the largest mosque in the city. It was impressive with the ability to hold 33,000 people. There I ran into the two guys from the other mosque. (the mosque was just about empty so it wasn't like we found each other in a crowd of 30,000). While there I asked them to tell me about religion in their family. They told me that they usually don't go to mosque everyday for prayers, they just pray where ever they are when the time occurs (5 times a day) and usually go on Friday afternoon for the big weekly call to prayers. They spoke about how they fasted at Ramadan and then ate at the celebration of Eid ul-Fitr, the holiday that ends Ramadan. They told me that they rarely come to this big mosque and just go to smaller ones near their homes. Finally, in a bit of a rush, they looked at the time and said they had to go catch a bus home because it was getting dark and off they went again.
Getting dark? Oh boy, I hurried home but it was about an hour after dark by the time I got there. Rouf gave me a look when I walked through the door but then laughed and said he was only joking.
That night he told me that it was true that the children of Srinagar are taught in English all the way through school. He told me that they also chose whether they want to learn Hindu or Urdu (the language of Pakistan, which is very similar to Hindu) to accompany their English. He said they don't study their native language of Kashmiri at all, that has to come from their family. Rouf said that he agreed with me when I told him that it worried me that in a few generations that Kashmiri would die as a language. He did tell me though that this was only in Srinagar and that in the surrounding towns and villages of Kashmir they still learned in their native language, or in the remote areas, they didn't go to school and learned Kashmiri at home. Rouf added that in Srinagar children were encouraged to follow whatever studies interested them. Then he leaned back in his chair and nostalgicly added that he studied Cricket and that he never made it out of High School.
Rouf also told me that the reason some people in Kashmir had light skin, light eyes and slender noses was because they were the "Decendents of Alexander." Refering to Alexander the Great. Kashmir was about the furthest that Alexander was able to make it into India before an army mounted on elephants turned him back. That loss was the end of the road for Alexander and he turned his troops around. While heading back towards the middle east, Alexander would die, but many of his soldiers would stay. I'm assuming when they say, "Desendents of Alexander" they're refering to the offspring of the European soldiers who stayed behind and not all from Alexander, but then again, they did call him "Great".
At night the tempatures would drop and it would get cold not only outside but in the hotel as well, since there was no central heating. You'd be hard pressed to find central heating anywhere in India) Each night as I would say good night and head up to my room, Rouf's cousin would run into the back house where Rouf and his wife and baby lived and give me a freshly made hot water bottle. I'd put that thing down in the foot of my covers and wrap my toes around it. It surprisingly kept me warm all night and in the morning still had a little heat left in it.
The next day I hired a taxi to take me to Gulmarg, the ski resort. The public transportation in Srinagar is an interesting thing. In the rest of India you have all sorts of people who you have to haggle with, bargain with and fight with just to get a ride. Endless touts will try to rip you off and you really have to know what the going rate is or you could end up paying three times the amount. Not to mention the condition and quality of the vehicle your being transported in is usually pretty crappy. There in Srinagar, they've unionized all of the public transportation and there are set rates for all the taxis and set rates on all the places you could possibly go. Even the Shikara boats are regulated. Initially when I saw the prices I thought, Wow! what a monopoly. But after I calculated what the distance and time was to the places I wanted to go and compared it to the other taxis I had rented, it pretty much worked out to be about the same. In comparision, sometimes it was more expesive and in others, like the death ride to the border ceremony in Amritsar, it was quite a bit cheaper and made me realize that that driver made off like a bandit. And the thing about it is, all the taxis are nice, new and clean. Also, the driver was very professional, safe and get this, followed the driving rules! At no point did I feel like I was going to die in his , and in India, that's a big thing. It made me think that since all of these drivers earn the same rate to bring you somewhere, the only way they can attract your business is to provide you with better service than the other guy. This leads to a much higher quality of service there in Srinagar. In the rest of India, since drivers are competing against each other, and you, to make as much profit as possible, they will stretch that profit margin by reducing service by skimping on things like vehicle upkeep, sanitary conditions and other important things like brakes. I'd take a ride with a Kashmiri driver any day over the rest of the cabbies I've driven with in India.
So off we headed to Gulmarg. It was a couple hours drive and we eventually wound our way high up into the mountains, well above snow level. When we got to the top, the taxi driver parked and said, "Take your time, I'll be here at the car when you get back." This from a man making a flat rate. Elsewhere in India the driver would have said anything over 'X' amount of time is going to cost you more.
At the ski resort, there were a bunch of people on the bunny slope, but the snow was starting to get sticky with the spring thaw. I saw a new type of monkey sitting on the roof of a building. There were only two of them and they were in between the size of the macaque and the langur. Also they were really furry, which I'm sure helps up there in the snow. I don't know what they were called. I watched them for a while hoping to figure out what their disposition was but they were so engrossed with grooming each other that I couldn't tell.
I walked up to the lodge and bought a ticket for the gondola. The lodge itself was nothing spectacular and reminded me of some smaller Connecticut ski lodges back in the 70s. I wasn't planning on skiing but wanted to ride the gondola up to the top to see the views. It claimed to be the highest chairlift in the world at 13,500 feet. Once up at the top, the views were spectacular and because of the tempature drop, the snow was perfect for skiing. I stood at the edge of the double black diamond run and watched the skiers and snowboarders go down. Up top there's no one running the gondola, you get off and on, on your own and there didn't appear to be any ski patrol either. I hung around up there taking pictures and looking at the peaks and then when my toes were frozen I headed back down. (I was wearing sneakers, why do you ask?)
As I walked back to the car I noticed that many Indian families, who weren't there to ski either, would pay men to pull them around on small wooden sleds. It was strange, because they weren't sledding down and of the slopes or little hills on these sleds they were just being pulled around on the flat ground.
I found my driver and off we went back to Srinagar.
That night, as every night, I ate at this restaurant down the street called Lhasa. It was run by a family of Tibetian refugees and was easily some of the best food I've had in India. Not to mention how nice the family was. The owner would make me lunches of giant vegetable spring rolls to take with me on my daily outings. After dinner, Rouf, the cousin (sorry I don't remember his name) and I talked for a while in the front office/lobby area of the hotel. Later, I got on line using the hotel's computer (which was free!!). After a little while Rouf said, "Hey, are you going to be here online for a bit?" I said yes. He said, "Can you watch the front desk for me while my cousin and I go eat dinner?" "No problem," I replied. "If anyone comes in just tell them to have a seat and I'll be back in a short while." Rouf would return an hour later. Fortunately no one came in to rent a room. In the five days that I spent in Kashmir, Rouf had me watch the front desk four or five times. Each time he was gone for about 45 minutes to an hour. Sometimes people would come in looking for him and then leave. Sometimes people would come in and say something in Kashmiri and I would shrug and they would smile and leave. Rouf was such a trusting guy at times it was amazing. When I was checking out I told him I wanted to pay my bill. He said, "OK, but if you don't have the money on you just send it to me later." What??? I've never travelled anywhere else in the world and had that be an option.
The next day I would get the same taxi driver and off we would go to a village called Pahalgm. It was about 4 hours away, tucked away in a steep canyon at the edge of the Himalayas.
To get there, we went through a handful of villages and long stretches of agricultural land. Kashmir, I came to realize on the flight in, was a large valley with a mountain ranges on both sides. Now, driving across the farmland, I realized just how fertile that area was. We passed fields of saffron, rice and mulberries. And then orchards of almonds, apples and walnuts. There appeared to be a fair amount of logging at the edge of the valley too, and plenty of small "factories" that made cricket bats. At times, poplar trees lined the road and once in a while I'd see people out in the fields but not often since it wasn't planting or harvest time. The saffron fields were empty but we did stop to see a shop that sold it right at the edge of the fields. The old guy in the shop explained how they harvested it and then showed me a bag of it. He showed me one of its purple flowers, too. He asked if I wanted to buy any. I said no thanks, that I wasn't able to cook while traveling. He said, I could put it in my tea. I said I'd take a bag of almonds instead and me and the driver snacked on them for the rest of the ride. When I got back to Delhi I went and looked up the price of saffron in a market there. A good price in the city was 250 rupees($6.25) per gram. Right now Pure Kashmiri saffron goes for $12.00/gram in the US. The old man in Kashmir was asking 150 rupees ($3.75). I should have bought.
A definite thing you notice in Kashmir is that the roads are a mess! Potholed, broken up obstacle courses in dire need of repair. It took us 4 hours to go a little over 60 miles. At one point we came to a spot where the road had been ripped up from construction and then left that way. I asked the driver how long it had been that way. "Six years," he said. When I asked why, he replied, "Because all our taxes go to Delhi and Delhi has a nice new Metro." He's right. Delhi does have a nice, new, and I'm sure very expensive Metro. If I lived in Kashmir and knew that all my taxes went to the central government and none came back to fix my local infrastructure even though my area brought in a fair amount of taxes compared to the rest of the country, I'd want autonomy too.
As we got closer to Pahalgm, the road began to follow a pretty rushing river called the Lidder. The landscape changed from farmland to forest and the road took us right down the middle of a steep sided canyon with granite mountain ridges on both sides. The driver parked and off I went to try and find a particular hiking trail in the area. Problem was that no one spoke English and everyone pointed in different directions. When I finally figured out where it started, I realized that the trail itself was going to be covered in snow. I gave up on following it and just made my way up the ridgeside zig zagging between patches of ground that didn't have snow on them. The higher I went, the more snow and before I knew it I was postholing up to my knees. Good thing again that I was wearing sneakers. I worked my way up to a big meadow about 5 miles above the road and found a spot to sit and look at the jaggedy snow covered mountains. I pulled out my little care package of spring rolls and had lunch. It was georgeous. Below was a forest of pine and above were peaks of deep snow. The green and white under a blue sky was beautiful. The sun was bright and warm and I felt like a ton of stress just lifted off of me. Stress from travel, pollution and poverty. I soaked it up for about an hour and a half and then darker clouds started moving in. I packed up and headed down hill, at times practically skiing in my sneakers as I slid further and further towards the road.
When I arrived back in Pahalgm I found my driver. It was getting late and we headed home, but before we took off, we stopped one more time by the river and took a look at the swift moving water. I had the driver stand next to his car and I took a photo of him and his taxi. He was probably around 60 years old and stood up straight and proud next to his car.
I had one more night at Rouf's and as usual, he and his cousin and I spoke for a while before retiring. Also as usual, when I woke in the morning, Rouf had made me chai and roti (flat round bread). Shortly after my tea and bread I said my good byes to Rouf and off I went with the same taxi driver to the airport. Once at the airport, we had to go through several different check points before we could even enter the place. Once inside, I grabbed my bag and shook my driver's hand. Since the driver and Rouf knew each other, I told the driver that I would email Rouf the picture of him standing next to his taxi and that he could look at it on Rouf's computer. A big smile broke out across his face and he gave me a hug. It caught me a bit off guard. But there's a good chance he's never had a photo of himself, let alone him and his taxi.
On March 6th, as I flew out of Srinigar, I looked back to the north and was amazed to see the enormous peaks jutting up through the clouds. I will definitely miss this place and I will truly miss the Kashmiri people. They were some of the nicest, friendliest people I have met in all my travels, and not just India. I will hopefully get to see it again.
On the morning of March 19th, while traveling in the southern Indian city of Hampi, I was stunned to read in the Delhi newspaper that militants had blown up the highway bridge that passes in front of Srinagar's Secretariat building. Unrest had returned. I could hear Rouf's voice in my head, "No peace, no prosperity", and prayed that he and his family were alright.