Paradise on earth

After considerable thought and against all advice of family and friends, the three of us were finally off for Kashmir. Sutlej made the decision for us, by washing away 3 bridges on the road from Rohtang Pass to Kinnaur, thus nixing our plans of a second trip to Himachal. The train pulled into Jammu in the wee hours and we were straight away off to Srinagar by one of the innumerable shared sumos. The trip was quite uneventful for all the passengers, except us. For, it takes some getting used to, if almost 70 % of the vehicles plying belong to the armed forces, with heavily armed soldiers peering from vantage positions throughout! And the landscape began to change as we closed in on the Jawahar tunnel, which is the gateway to Kashmir valley. A board by the road cheekily read "You are entering Kashmir valley - Paradise on Earth, Owner's Pride - Neighbour's Envy"! From then on, one actually wondered whether it was new country - the landscape, the people, the dress, the food ... all changed ... and how.

Needless to say, Kashmir valley is bewitchingly beautiful. No wonder Shah Jahan is supposed to have remarked "Agar dharti par jannat kahin hai, to yehi hai, yehi hai, yehi hai!" A crude translation would read - "If at all there is paradise on earth, it is here, here, here!"

And we weren't seeing Kashmir shed its colours of autumn, nor with the fresh white carpets of snow. This was late September and the sheer beauty of the scenery was breathtaking. And nature seems to have taken a painter's brush and touched up everything there. The beauty of the people match that of the landscape. Amazing ... or rather bewitching would be the more apt word to describe the beauty of the quintessential Kashmiri. The ladies - old and young (one doesn't feel like calling the younger women girls, it almost sounds like an insult) alike, have chiselled features and the "right" mix of innocence and sensuousness, is what I feel. It must be in the green apples they eat, or in the pure air that they breathe ...! The dress sense of these ladies seem to accentuate the beauty manifold. No, don't get me wrong. They do not dress casually - or in an attention-seeking manner, nor do they dress in garish colours that are loud. Mostly they dress in plain white from head to toe - and what white ... it's indescribable ... the magic somehow seems to transform school/college going young ladies to angels from heaven having descended to spread goodness! I can go on and on ...

Too much of digression? Please pardon ...!

Coming back to our Jammu-Srinagar journey, among other things, we tasted our first namkeen chai (salted tea!), which is taken in along with sawdust like powdery stuff - which tastes like butter when added to tea. We reached Srinagar by 5 PM, from there caught an auto to Dal lake - negotiated with a houseboat owner and got ourselves a good deal on HB Arif, our home in Kashmir for the next few days. The houseboat is a marvel in itself. Made of deodhar (pronounced in these parts as devdhar) wood, a houseboat would easily cost in excess of 30 lakhs - depends on how pricey the furniture is - for instance, furniture can be made out of wood of walnut, apricot etc. Ours was a so called '5 star deluxe' houseboat. The comforts were really amazing - a drawing room, dining room (with fridge), one bedroom with attached bath - including a bath tub!, for us and another similar bed room for more guests, if they came by. Needless to say, all these rooms were fully furnished.

After a "burn your pocket" experience in a shikhara and a refreshing night's sleep, we decided to spend our first day in Kashmir, within Srinagar itself. Srinagar is definitely the most beautiful city that I have seen (Jaisalmer comes close, though!). It's gardens, mosques and lakes puts it beyond comparison with other cities. The first place we visited was Adi Sankaracharya temple there. To have a temple built in Kashmir, for a person born in Kalady in Kerala in a life span of 32 years ... well, what can one say! From there to the gardens. The gardens in Srinagar are a treat. We started off with the new botanical gardens. The flowers aside, Pir Panjals made a stunning backdrop. I did spot a couple of potential Noor Jehans, but they were with their own Salims! The next stop was Chashme Shahi gardens. This was constructed during the Mughal reign, at the end of the garden is a natural water outlet. The water was so refreshing ... how lucky were those kids who were filling up water, almost as if this was their daily routine, I wondered. From Chashme Shahi, we went to Nishat Bagh, a garden that was constructed by Noor Jehan's brother. The garden is the most amazing and would beat the Brindavan Gardens of Mysore hands down. It comprises an elevation consisting of seven levels. This is literally paradise for couples seeking privacy, for the elevation is so carefully measured that one will not be able to see the face of the person in one elevation from either of the levels above or below! This too has a small natural stream running the course of all the 7 levels to join the Dal lake across the road! My late afternoon lazy walk at the upper most level was cut short by an animated chat over phone. The lady wearing a black burkha with her face uncovered was literally crying on the phone. Oh my, she was so "Kashmiri", to say the least. Had I understood one bit of Kashmiri language, I would have found it difficult to not help her out of whatever personal travails she was going through! With great difficulty, I had to wrench myself out and accompany my friends who had gone on their own little reveries.

From Nishat Bagh to Shalimar Bagh, the most famous of the lot. Shalimar Bagh was constructed by Shah Jahan - surprisingly it has very little regality, except for the resplendent building in green right at the heart of the garden. After resting our sore backs on the lush green lawns and refusing to pay tips to a guy who claimed to be the mali - gardener, we were off once again. We had covered all the famous gardens of Srinagar and were on our way to Hazrat Bal shrine - a Sufi mosque - legend has it that the mosque has within its precincts, a hair of the Prophet Mohammad. En route we had to cover the entire stretch of Dal lake - a la, queen's necklace in Mumbai - I did have a stop made to capture a picture postcard of a lonely boat furrowing its way in the backdrop of the majestic Pir Panjals. After spending a few minutes in silence, we were on our way back to our home on the lake. A brief stop in the old city for some troop movement jerking us back to "reality".

Early morning next day, we were on our way by JKSRTC bus to Gulmarg. The signboards on the road kept mentioning places that one usually comes across as newspaper headlines, albeit for the wrong reasons - Doda, Kupwara, Baramulla, etc. We were passing through Srinagar at around 8 in the morning, in time for the angels floating by to their schools and colleges. The spoilers being the guns conspicuous by their presence everywhere. The vegetation changed after about an hour's journey and a couple of snow capped mountains limped into view. We stopped en route for chai coffee - it felt like a small town in Europe (where I haven't been!), with cookies and bread for breakfast, and tea to wash it down - as Enid Blyton would have it! We reached Gulmarg in another hour's time - the view was breathtaking. Gulmarg festival was concluding the same day. We went up the gondola - only to the halfway mark (the other half being the highest gondola ropeway in the world - but then at an additional Rs 500/- per head, was too costly), walked around in the meadows. The horses roaming round, sheep herded by old pathan-looking guys, the play of the sunlight and fog, altogether was a surreal experience. With great reluctance we came down, in time to spend a few minutes at the closing ceremony of Gulmarg festival, and had to literally run all the way to catch the bus. In the rush to have a few "close up" photos taken, I found myself detached from my friends, only to find that they helped out a couple of "angels" by letting them taste the apple "murabba" that we had bought at the Gulmarg fair! On returning to Srinagar, while walking the distance from the bus stand to our house boat, a small incident just about summed it all up. We were passing by and heard what sounded like bursting of fire crackers. We jumped with fright and realised that the security personnel standing some distance away had suddenly become alert, making us want to feel back in the comforts of our houseboat.

The next day was planned for the old city of Srinagar, which I agreed to, with great reluctance, after much deliberation. We reached the pagoda style mosque - which looked very elegant - the Dastgir sahib mosque. After seeking permission as to whether we can indeed enter the sacred place, I stepped in. Maybe it was the green carpet, or the green painted walls, or the wooden architecture - I was simply taken in. I found myself asking whether I could just sit there in silence. The kind the peace I felt there is too difficult to convey. I did not feel like coming back. I wanted to know more about the place and asked an elderly devout man as to what dastgir meant. His answer was "haath milanewala". God being the manifestation of that which will give you a helping hand - so beautifully summed up, I felt. There was this saintly man, with a flowing thick black beard, praying right next to me. His mannerisms gave away a very cultured and spiritual ancestry. I followed him out of the mosque and found him giving away fresh new currencies of various denominations to the poor assembled outside.

From there, we walked down to Naqsh bandh ziarrat, another similar looking mosque. We walked further to Jama Masjid. The imposing courtyard with the high roof allround and the long wooden pillars made for a magnificent congregation place. Namaz was going on - there were a few pious looking devout old men praying there. After being admonished for wearing the handkerchiefs as head gear, we too sat down wearing the hat made of cane. Coming out of the Jama Masjid and answering a few queries of security personnel as to who we were, where we came from, why etc - mostly friendly banter, we were on our way to climb to Hari Parbat, which had a fort perched atop its hill. Climbing a few steps we reached a temple. The security personnel there were initially quite brusque with us. But then, a couple of them allowed us into the temple. On our way back, one of them called up a colleague from Kerala, we had an interesting conversation, to say the least. And finally, we were told that the fort was inaccessible. On our way back, we stopped by at a bronze vessel shop. We were chatting up with the lone shopkeeper when I missed the photo op of the whole trip. There were these 4 cute little pesky mischievous kids coming with their school uniforms and bags. By the time I took the camera out of the bag, it was too late - they had passed me by. Those kids had something about them. There was also this cute little baby who was crying, because his/her legs had got entangled in the rod supporting the street lamp post. Another school boy came by and helped "release" the infant's leg - and the instantaneous stopping of the cry, followed by the sheepish smile at all of us, was too great an expression! We walked back and went to another mosque by the name Shah-e-Hamadaan. This is apparently named after one of the Shahs of Iran/Persia who had helped establish Islam in Kashmir. From the window, we came across the classic handls aloft prayer pose of an old man. With the late evening sunlight filtering in through the "designer" architecture of the windows, the sight was an aura to behold! One tried various permutations of aperture and speed settings to ensure that this was captured on camera. Stepping out, we were taken in by surprise, the noise of a lot of Suryakiran jets in unison, performing one the innumerable aerobatics overhead. Later on, one read in the newspapers that this was part of Indian Air Force drive to endear themselves to the local populace.

A confusion over an unmanned parked Maruti car once again brought us back into "reality" that late evening. Early morning next day, we had arranged for a visit on shikara to the famous sabzi mandi (vegetable market) on Dal lake. We were off by 4 AM, the sound of the oar slapping the water by, in darkness was somehow quite pleasing than eerie. We were in time for the sabzi mandi action. Sellers and buyers of vegetables conduct their business on small boats that are stacked with piles of vegetables, unique to Kashmir. It was essentially the age old barter system in action, with measures of vegetables getting transferred from one boat to the other, in exchange for another pile. The centre of attraction was a young lady dressed in pinkish orange, with a dupatta for a head scarf. Somehow, that lady with the assertive look reminded one of what the previous generation might have felt about our former PM in parliament! With more than a handful photos taken (in the hope that these would come out alright), we were back to our little home on Dal that we were going to have to wave goodbye in a few minutes. We were off to Pahalgam, finally bading goodbye to Dal lake and Srinagar.

We took a shared sumo from Srinagar to Anantnag, sitting next to me were a couple of "odd" looking men, with one of them holding what looked like a baby. Our vehicle was hauled up to the side more than once, for letting military convoys to pass by. We were all becoming restive. And from the bits and pieces of the conversation that I could make sense of, I realised that the bundle being held was the dead body of a baby. I became quite disturbed. We had reached Anant Nag, and from there took another sumo for Pahalgam. We were accosted by a horde of young men offering "executive class 5 star accommodation". After much discussion, we took a room in one of the hotels. After an hour's rest followed by lunch, we were accosted by the same guys for a horse ride into the hills to see the scenery of "Kashmir valley" point and a couple of other "points". Much to our consternation we realised that we were literally taken for a ride. The only saving grace being one of these points which resembled the meadows at Gulmarg. The newly appointed toll booth official narrated to us the difficulties faced by Kashmiri youth and how the situation has changed over the last couple of years. We returned and then spent time walking to a nearby temple - the fresh water pond and the water there really did taste "fresh" and out of the world.

The next morning, we prepared for the day's journey back to the lower plains. It was with a heavy heart that one reached "Please turn to have a last look at Kashmir valley" board - the other side of it said "Welcome, you are having your first glimpse of Kashmir valley - Owner's pride ...."! We did learn a lot more about the valley from one of our co-passengers in the sumo. We got down at Katara to have darshan at the famous Vaishno Devi shrine. The next day, we travelled out of Jammu to Amritsar, had darshan at Golden Temple and were on our way back. Although Amritsar and Punjab is also known for kudis, bhangra, and a certain way of life, one could not feel at home, away from the "paradise on earth"!