India - Jammu & Kashmir

Leaving the dust and heat of Delhi again, we took a flight up to the far North West corner of India to the troubled state of Kashmir. Arriving in the city of Srinagar we were greeted by some distinctly English weather and a very high police and military presence, Kashmir being the disputed territory between India and Pakistan ever since Indian independence from the British in 1949. Prior to independence Kashmir was a separate country effectively, post independence India decided it wanted to make the border territory their own, so just took it. A few years later Pakistan decided they wanted it, so attempted to take it by force, and it has subsequently been the subject of several wars and multiple terrorist attacks in an attempt to reclaim it. The irony is that the majority of the Kashmiri people still consider themselves an autonomous area and don't really want much to do with either India or Pakistan, feeling that they would’ve been far better off if the British had maintained control over them.

The other major difference to the other parts of India we had visited so far was religion. Everywhere we had been to date had been predominantly Hindu, here in Srinagar it is 95% Muslim, and the difference is immediately noticeable - women walking around in full burkha's and barely a turban in sight on the men.

Srinagar is a town/city en circled by the Himalayas and situated on two lakes - Dal Lake and Nagin Lake. It is now a hugely attractive tourist destination for Indian tourists, despite the fact the last big troubles in the area were as recent as 2008, and apparently minor uprisings are still frequent. In the early days of British rule, the Kashmir people resisted the English presence, and as such banned the Brits from actually basing themselves on Kashmir soil. To get around this the Brits brought in houseboats and plonked them on the two main lakes and proceeded to live on them while they went ahead with trying to take over the region. The lasting legacy of this act of defiance has provided Srinagar with its biggest tourist attraction, as now hoards of people - predominantly Indian tourists - flock here to stay a few nights on one of the many house boats on the lakes.

We didn't bother with house boats, there were hundreds of them all lined up in a row, none of them actually go anywhere, they are alongside a string of significantly cheaper guest houses and they look out onto the main boulevard lined with tacky shops and restaurants heaving with traffic and people. Opting to stay at one of the guesthouses on the lake, we spent a few days exploring the place. The old town has a nice feel about it, and there are many European styled alpine villas and buildings, adding to the feeling that we could've quite easily been in a different country.

Kashmir people like to make quite a big deal about their supposed warm hospitality; we weren't exactly feeling that in Srinagar- there was a much harder nosed approach to their general attitude, going for the hard and hassled sell in the shops. There were plenty of scornful looks thrown Claire’s way, being a western woman not fully covered up in Muslim attire and a general edge about the place - largely due to the added tension the constant military presence adds. So after a few days we decided to start the 2 day journey across the mountains to the region of Ladakh (literal translation: ‘the land of high passes') and the town of Leh.

The distance from Srinagar to Leh is about 400kms, though due to the terrain you have to cross to get there it takes 2 full 10-12 hour days to reach by bus or jeep. You can work out the average speed you travel at yourselves, but suffice to say it was slow going journey but quite comfortable in our 'super deluxe' coach...

Winding our way up the mountains we reach the town of Sonamarg where hundreds of men with horses are stood waiting for business.... taking Indian tourists up the 5km trail to the Thajiwas Glacier and the first taste of snow for many. In June to August, the town is swamped with over half a million Indian Hindu pilgrims making their way to Armanath’s Ice Lingam, a cave with a stone lingam (better to look the word up than try to explain.... ) that during these months becomes encrusted with ice.... madness.

Slow speed is definitely the way to do this journey, as it involves some of the most daunting and dangerous stretches of road we have travelled, even surpassing some of the roads in South America. One particular stretch of road is a high pass on a 4000m high road that rises vertically up from a valley floor that is set at around 2000m. Thankfully they close the road in one direction at a time to reduce the danger, though this doesn't stop overzealous bus and truck drivers trying to overtake on it. The road is only open for a few months a year, it being completely inaccessible for the large part due to snow or landslides. As a result the road is in a constant state of repair and disrepair, it never gets to a stage of being resurfaced and it is a very rough and rocky track just about wide enough for one vehicle that zig zags it's way up an almost sheer face, making for a very long but incredibly quick way down if the driver makes a mistake. To add to the drama, we were going through the middle of a snow storm and there were large sections of snow and ice still covering stretches of the road, the road having only just opened for this year, a week prior, when we took it.

Anyway, we frantically start reading large sections of our books to take our minds off the potential disaster movie we were about to take the leading roles in and eventually we crossed the high pass and arrived in the town of Drass for a brief cup of chai, an omelette and chapatti sandwich and an opportunity to kiss the ground before we carried on.

Drass is a fairly typical high altitude one horse town, though it does have a couple of claims to fame. Firstly, it holds the record for the second coldest inhabited place on earth, with a recorded temperature of minus 60 degrees C being taken a few years ago and secondly, it was the site of the 1999 short but bloody India/Pakistan war, fighting over Kashmir again for the third time.
A few more hours through beautiful Himalayan mountain scenery we arrived at the halfway point and overnight stop of the journey, the town of Kargil. Deciding that we had pushed our luck enough by travelling on local bus through day one of the journey we opted to take a shared taxi jeep for day two, the vehicle being a little smaller and more nimble to negotiate the road ahead and there still being another two high passes over 4000 metres to come. This road is the only link between these remote mountain towns, so not only does it act as a pretty busy freight route bringing much needed supplies in, but it is also a highly militarised region and as such convoys of huge army lorries are a regular additional obstruction.

Setting off in our jeep our fellow passengers spent the first ten or twenty minutes saying their prayers, before stopping at the final ‘shrine’ on the way out of town (as we now entered a predominantly Buddhist region) where they all made offerings for a safe journey...confident?!?

For the most part our driver was pretty good, only nearly falling off the side of the cliff or nearly having a head on collision with a much bigger truck or military convey on a blind corner about a dozen or so times. Towards the end of the day though he was obviously getting a bit bored of the slow and steady approach and decided to see how quickly and recklessly he could make his way down the zig zag track from the top of the highest pass of the journey. After we had bumped and skidded our way down the track at ridiculous speed we shouted to him that he needed to slow down. This was apparently a source of great amusement to our fellow passengers who fell about laughing. After all, why could we possibly need to take any sensible precaution in the way the jeep was being driven when they had already said their prayers and made their offerings - surely that was enough?!? Maybe in their world, but certainly not in ours.

And therein pretty much lies the problem (or art, depending on your view point) with Indian driving. There is such a constant barrage of things on the roads that could make for a fatal journey, most of which are completely out of the control of the driver, that they choose to put their faith in religion and hope for the best, if your time is up your time is up. To a degree that's fine, but what a lot of these drivers also need to bear in mind is their ability to limit the potential for an accident by taking responsibility over their own actions on the road rather than relying on some higher power, that unfortunately doesn't have a great track record of protecting against idiots who attempt to defy the basic laws of physics and gravity while driving.

Anyway, eventually we make it to Leh in one piece.