Gulmarg

April 22

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

I woke up this morning in serious pain. Went for a day trip on Sunday up to Gulmarg, the local ski resort and forgot my sunblock. Got the worst sunburn I have had for years all across my forehead, nose and cheeks. Even the place where my hair parts on my scalp hurts. The cool mountain air was very deceptive, should have brought my umbrella.

We had another misty day to be going up to another hight in the hills above Kashmir. However it was clear enough as we wound our way higher and higher up the mountain's base slopes to see that the ridges surrounding the valley on three sides are the smaller petals of the rose. Beyond them great snowcapped peaks rear impossibly high into the blue distances, with just a tantalizing glimpse through blue haze every now and then of a splash of sunlight reflecting off a distant slope.

The entire mountainside is forest preserve, with many soldier guarded check stops. You can see as you drive up that the tall straight pines and spruces have been very carefully logged, between the trees are the stumps of other trees individually harvested one by one. All the slopes we saw were fully covered with healthy looking trees, no clearcut slopes anywhere. The under story is very clean and grassy. We saw groups of women carrying out bundles of branches and the odd dead fall log segment balanced on their heads, a few cows balancing on steeply angled pasturage and a large flock pf sheep with many young lambs grazing under the forest canopy. There is almost no dead fall at all on the whole mountainside the road switchbacks up. It was almost uncanny, a whole mountainside groomed like a zen garden.

The resort is built on a high saddle about 6000 meters above the floor of the vale of Kashmir directly below a snow covered mountain ridge. It's off season now, the snow is gone except for a few patches underneath the trees. But there were hoards of Indian youngsters gleefully rolling about in them. We got there early in the morning which was a good idea, because by noon the parking lots were filling up with tour buses and private cars and taxis. Hundreds of Indian families were taking advantage of that intoxicating combination of warm sunshine and cool mountain air to have pick nicks on the new grass of the run out areas of the bunny and beginner slopes and going off for trail rides on the hundreds of Kashmir mountain ponies gathered for that employment.

There is a chairlift that continues up past the brushed out ski run all the way up to the snow covered top of the ridge. We didn't want to go up because it was rather expensive, about $20 to get all the way to the top, but I would sure like to get up there some day when visibility is a little better and take some photos. It's still spring here and melting snow on the upper slopes means there is almost always a blue mist in the air. Maybe before I leave we will get some clearer days.

The ponies were the best part of the experience for me. Hardy little beasts, they are left out to forage for themselves in winter. Some looked like they could have used a little better feeding during the winter. They were thin and boney and still shaggy. They hadn't been able to shed their winter coat due to poor condition. Many however were in top shape, muscular and glossy with good health. This local breed is a beautiful dainty animal with fine boned legs and hooves, lovely shapely heads and a very spirited disposition. They are quiet and obedient enough when being led along with large heavily garbed tourists aboard, but I saw a lot of curveting and horseplay with their handlers as they cantered back to the starting place.

New house, new neighbourhood

We have moved into new accomadations, a little guest house in the warren of tiny streets behind Dall Market. I'm a bit of a curiosity to the women of the house, especially since I have spent most of the last three days processing photos and catching up with my blog. They want to know a lot of stuff about the west, centering as usual on the eternal Indian question, why are you not at home with your children?

Remi told one Kashmiri man that meeting Kashmiri women was the best part of the trip for him. The guy looked a little sceptical but I know what Remi meant. Most of the ladies we have met have been well educated, open, friendly and very straightforward and forthright. They speak their minds quite openly and eloquently.

The guys are cool too, the familiar Kashmiri charm. I'd love to import a little of that to sell some of my goods. These are photos of a couple of merchants down at our favorite internet corner.

Around and about

I've had the opportunity to explore a lttle more of the Shrinegar area. Went off on a shakira ride across the lake with the oldest paddler on the lake. He told me his father had paddled a shikira, he had started as a boy and was now 63 years old. We took it pretty slow. I talked to lots of waterbourne salesmen on my way down the gauntlet in front of the houseboats, might as well let their paddlers do some of the work for the old geezer.
First stop was Silver Island, a little patch of ground half way across the lake. Stopped in for a cup of tea in a houseboat moored to the shore. Got a closeup look at some of those fabulous walnut carvings.

Then on under an aquaduct built by the munghals to bring cold mountain water to their summer palace across the lake, to Nisat park. This is one of three mughal gardens on the lake shore across from Srinegar. It's mostly just a series of teraces down which leaps that mountain stream through a number of ornamental pools and fountains before it enters the aqaduct to cross the lake. A merchant with a shop just up the road latched onto me like glue, I ended up getting back on the shakira just to ditch him.

We took a very liesurely trip back, through the floating gardens and around behind the houseboats. Those gardens are huge, got no idea at all of the size of them from the last trip I did. And what do you know, there are cops patroling in there too. These guys are really laid back.

A couple of days later I had the oportunity to go up to the top of another mount and take some photos above Srinegar. Again, a little too misty for really good photos but at least from this one you could see a lot of the countryside and they only prohibited video cameras, not still cameras.I refrained from telling anyone my camera could also do a few minutes of low rez video if I wanted it to.

Slum clearance

Our hotel is just across the way from a canal or river. There are a few houseboats moored on the bank and a few sheds and shanties built under the massive maple trees the area is famous for, called chinar in these parts. I took some photos, it was such a beautiful peaceful setting and it reminded me a little of the banks of the river in Duncan on which my brother Pat parks his trailer. I also took a few shots of the tiny little squatters cabins that sink posts into the two feet of dirt on the near side of the canal and sit out over the water on the near side.

One morning I notice some unusual activity along the bank of the canal, many many police standing looking over the bank. Some of them have riot helmets and bamboo shields, traffic is totally jammed on the road. As I make my way into the thickest part of the jam I see that it is a big bobcat that is causing the problem, backing up into the traffic lane. The driver is dropping its big front bucket over the side of the canal to crash into the flimsy roofs of these little box like cubicals and crush them, while the inhabitants struggle to pull out sleeping mats and bedding. It was all over in about a half hour or so.

By evening some inhabitants who had pieces of sheet metal and larger sheets of wood left to work with had reconstructed an approximation of their dwelling. Others had constructed tents of builders plastic to shelter themselves on the bit of floor remaining in their dwelling. I guess the bobcat couldn't get its bucket down far enough to punch through the floors of these dwellings so people were rebuilding on them as fast as they could get the framework back up. A sidewalk vendor helpfully pushed his cart up the street from the market and offered useful things like twine, hammers and other kind of building supplies and tools for sale just across the road.

I went back and took some more photos 4 - 5 days later. The local story about these people is that the were offered land somewhere in the Kashmir valley, they sold it, pocketed the cash and are back rebuilding on the same spot. I suspect there is more to the story than I am hearing.

Paper mache and walnut

There are paper mache items from Kasmir all over India, but you really do have to come to Kashmir to see the whole range of items produced in this flourishing home industry. The items are made from pulped paper, wood and fabric scraps, patted on to a form to dry and then cut off to leave a hollow shape. Most are finished off as boxes with a raised inside rim to hold the top on, but there are many open topped canisters and vases. Some are lined with brass to hold liquids or as trim. Once they are sanded a final single layer of paper is glued over top to give a smooth surface to paint on. They are diven a base coat, usually black and then painted all over with intricate designs in coloured enamel, finished quite often with gold paint and sometimes real gold. The items are then given three coats of varnish. They are waterproof in hot or cold water but have to be handled carefully to avoid scatching or chipping. I'm going to bring back a bunch of balls for Christmas tree ornaments. They are perfect for people who like ecologically sustainable crafts, light, unbreakable for childproof Christmas trees and each one an individually handcrafted item. The owner of the shop I visited said he employes 190 home based crafts people. He brings the forms over, with a sample of the design he wants and gets them to do them.

Next door Mr. R 's son sells walnut products.

Dalgate market

Dalgate is named for the nearby Dall Lock that connects Dall Lake to the inner city waterways. The market, the street fronting on Dall Lake, the rows of very expensive houseboats, the shakira loading docks and the bridge over the lock itself were all very heavily guarded by police when we first arrived. I didn't think much about it until my friend in Canada sent me an email saying she hoped I would be O.K. in such a disturbed area. I hadn't seen very much in the way of disturbance since we have got here, lots of police/soldiers with long guns hanging about, sometimes frisking the odd young man up against a truck, nothing more exciting than you would see on any weekend night on Whyte Avenue.

So I wondered if she knew something I didn't. I googled for recent news about Kashmir, and what do you know, big dust up in the big market downtown three days after we got into town, six people injured and one killed when a group attacked a machine gun post. I asked one guy about it and he said that people in that neighborhood were getting very angry about the mess the Indian police were creating in the roadways with their coils of razor wire, garbage and broken brick left lying all over the roadway. Srinagar is not like other cities in India. It's very clean, no garbage at all left lying around on the street. The narrow flagstone side streets are washed everyday by the people in the houses alongside them. The air is wonderful, very little of that stench of human and animal excrement and rotting vegetables in every unused nook and cranny that is such a feature of southern India, nor so much vehicular traffic that car exhaust is noticeable and no plastic bags. About the only place I noticed Indian style garbage tips was over the side of the canal that runs along Dalgate street, beside the little squatter cabins. However, attacking a military type stronghold seems a little extreme protest for civic cleanliness. Couldn't get much info about it though, the Kashmir News Agency website was off line when I tried to access the story.

Anyway, the police must have known what was planned, the security around the tourist section of town was very extensive when we arrived, they have since stood down a bit, not so many guys with guns standing around now. However it's obvious they are looking for someone, we keep encountering groups of them standing around odd corners of otherwise quiet streets prepared and waiting for someone.

Many of Srinagar's buildings are scarred by fire. The one in the photos above was just across the narrow street from a completely burnt building. All over the city there are signs of fire, damaged roofs and broken panes of glass on the third and fourth floors of otherwise very handsome brick buildings. The loss of it's tourist industry in the early eighties devastated the city's economy. Some people moved away and just abandoned their property. Other owners just use the floors that are still habitable, like my favorite bakery.. Business from Indian tourists is slowly recovering but foreigners are still staying away. There is high unemployment for educated young Kashmiri's and not much money in the private sector for infrastructure repair. Srinagar makes me think of a still beautiful woman with broken grimy nails and hands stained and scarred from digging her food out of the ground.

Dalgate is very much "the" tourist centre of the city. Dalgate market and all the shops along the boulevard that faces the water are there to service the houseboats and the hotels. Our hotel is along a street that runs at right angles to the boulevard facing the houseboats up at the end of the lake. I guess all those hotels have been built on landfill pushed into the lake to create more dry land to build on. Lately the government has accepted a large loan from the World Bank to clean up Dall Lake and some of those buildings next to the water are scheduled for demolition. Dall Lake is a rather small, very shallow lake and pollution from the large numbers of buildings on the shore, the many houseboats floating in the middle and the floating gardens behind them are endangering it. I noticed a great deal of blue green algae blooms just under the surface waiting to pop up on shakira rides around the lake.

John's house

One of the first things I did when we reached Srinagar was phone up the contact number a friend of mine in Puttaparthi had given me to reach his relatives. After a few frustrating conversations with people who only knew enough English to tell me they did not understand English, I finally go a hold of John, still sweltering in Puttaparthi and told him what was happening. Later that evening his brother and the guy who works in his store, Ayoub came over and took us out to the far end of town to introduce us around John and Ayoub's extended family. I took some photos from the function room on the top floor of the house.That is John's brother with the deer in the headlights look..

April 4

We went up to a shrine on the top of hill that rises from the shores of Dall Lake. Remi calls it Solomon's Tomb, the locals have a different story. You can see the geography of the area very clearly. Legend has it that Shrinegar was once a lake, I can believe it. It lies perfectly flat on the floor of a large valley, threaded by waterways, some of which look like big meandering oxbows some are the die straight rulers of canals. It was an overcast day so it was hard to get good photos. I'll go up again on a clearer day and try again.

The most entertaining part of the trip were the guards. The whole mountain is in the Indian Forestry Preserve so the entrance is guarded by a sand banked machine gun emplacement and sentries to check your id. Big signs at the entrance saying no inflammables such as cigarette lighters so I offered the guy at the bottom mine to hold until I got back down, he waved it off. At the top just before the steps up to the shrine, more soldiers and machine gun and a ladies check room. You cannot take a camera up there. The army ladies fondled my tits, crotch and butt, searched my purse, camera bag and pockets and confiscated my camera, cigarettes, lighter and extra camera chip. When I got back down from the shrine there were only four cigarettes left in my almost full package.

Hmmm! Interesting. So the gals in the Indian Army are cigarette smoking dykes. Guess sex with the guys might be a little dangerous. Or it might have been my clothing. I was wearing khaki coloured cargo pants, a tan coloured bush shirt, a dark burgundy long sleeved man's shirt, carrying a black trench coat and wearing my cheap as dirt Amritsar machine woven shawl. Maybe they were trying to figure out if I was a man or a woman.

Remi's entertainment for the afternoon was arguing with the rickshaw driver. We had used this guy before, he had overcharged me for a run across town and back to deliver Manzoor's package so I would not have hired him again, but Remi called him over. He agreed to take us up and back down the mountain for 150 rs, our hotel keeper had said that 100rs was the standard. When we got back down we gave him 200rs but he demanded 400rs. Followed us right into a restaurant and cried the blues to the restaurant staff, had a waiter coming over to the table to tell us we should give him 50rs more. Very loud and embarrassing event. Remi loves this tussle with rickshaw drivers everywhere he goes.

April 3
New Shrinegar is a stone city. We went to visit the family workshop of one of the merchants Remi knows from Puttaparthi. He recognized him on the street. Remi is much happier today. Mustafa's family lives in an area of the city where every house and yard is surrounded by a high stone fence. Block after block of gray stone bordering seriously potholed lanes. Only the cemeteries have low walls you can see over. There are a lot of them.

The young merchant from Puttaparthi gave us tea and cookies and told us about all the work involved in creating a fine shawl. His brother takes almost a day to weave a cloud soft pashm wool on a hand loom, then his father, a master embroiderer spends three months painstakingly embroidering the delicate all over patterns that has been drawn on the fabric by another craftsman. I have seen these shawls selling for 10,000 rs in Puttaparthi, that's about $275 Canadian. He showed us one masterpiece of solid embroidery that looked like it should really be in a museum. Three years work The family also owns machine looms,100 shawls a day, any thickness or quality of wool you care to specify on about about eight or so looms that look like they came from eighteenth century Manchester. This is what I came to Kashmir to see.

I even held in my very own hands a shantoosh shawl, the queen of wool. They start at $1000 American before embroidery. I would never buy one though even if I had that kind of money. They are made from the belly and neck hair of a wild mountain antelope. People used to just collect the fiber that pulled off the animal on bushes during the shedding season in the spring. It is priced in grams. But there is so much money in the wool that greedy people are shooting the animal and driving it over the brink into extinction. I'll stick with wool. Now if I can only find people willing to pay more than twenty dollars for a piece of weavers art back home.

April 2

We went for a shakira ride today and I saw why the TourPolice were so hard nosed about us getting accommodation on a houseboat. These floating dwellings do not have roadway connections to the land. The only way off one of them is by a set of stairs going down to the water to board a shakira, and the owner controls which shakira approaches. They comprise a virtual tourist ghetto. All the landing spots on the shore for shakira are guarded by men with rifles. It's a very effective way of keeping possibly disruptive foreign elements away from the metropolis proper. Very neat. I was glad we had managed to avoid that particular box. Probably would have been pretty boring too, it's very early days for the tourist season, hardly any of them looked occupied yet.

The waterborne salesmen were out, though probably not as many now as there will be when it gets warmer, peddling jewelry, shawls and eatables on the waterway. All the houseboats look pretty worn, no new varnish on the elaborate carved walnut friezes for quite some time, though I am sure they are quite magnificent inside.
Remi was in crybaby mode the whole trip. He was cold, he was leaving almost immediately, he wasn't going to adapt again to a new environment, he was going to Dharmashala where at least he knew where to buy toilet paper. As far as I was concerned, he could leave anytime he wanted, just quit telling me about it and do it. I was reveling in the sounds and smells of springtime freshness, relishing the delicious warmth of the sun after the chill of the night. The temperature was just about what it is at the beginning of April on the coast, with less rain. The fruit trees are in bloom everywhere and birds are singing their hearts out. I just love it here right now.

The food is great too, wonderful cooks these munghals.
I had a small delivery to make for a friend from Goa which took us on a long rickshaw ride across the city away from the tourist section into a neighborhood of small twisty alleyways. On the way I saw that there are many many channels traversing the whole city. No part of Shrinegar is very far from water. I want to hire a shakira to take me for a ride through some of those old canals in the heart of the old city. Old Shrinegar is a wooden city, two and thee story buildings with steeply pitched roofs of weather worn wood raise straight up from the water. It made me think of some of the sets of Ghormangast. I want to do a little more prowling off the beaten path and take some photos.

April 1

Srinegar
Both Remi and I were fairly groggy from lack of sleep when we dove down into the mountains and landed at Srinegar. We were not ready for the Tourist Police. They were charming but very determined to put us on a houseboat. They even found some houseboat owners who were willing to rent for the 200 rupees a night we were willing to pay. They surrounded us on the bus and ushered us into the Tourist Police Station in town. One guy was very hard nosed about it, but I just kept telling them there was no way I was going on a boat, I was afraid of water, I wanted solid earth underneath me. We insisted on a hotel. Finally after many hard stares the guy gave up and one of his men escorted us to a land based lodge. Pretty basic accommodation, no central heating or hot water, but at least we had the freedom of the city. I had been warned by Kashmiri's to stay away from those houseboat owners, they even scare Kashmiri's they are so rapacious, and there are stories about houseboat owners refusing to let tourists off the boats until they accede to whatever demands the owners want to make. I don't like that kind of situation.

March 30-31

Delhi
If the trip to Goa and my stay there was stress free and uneventful the trip to Delhi certainly balanced it in the other direction. For starters the plane took off half an hour late, so my friend who had been waiting for me at the airport had already taken off by the time I got out of the departure area. I had to get some money from a Citi Bank ATM machine so I took off in a rickshaw to find one. Just outside of the airport the driver made me transfer to a cab. I guess a way to get past licensing arrangements at the airport. I wanted to get my money and find a 400 rupee room, I've found them before at Paragangi down by the railroad but he talked me into trying a hotel five minutes from the airport that he claimed cost 1200 rupees. By this time we had been through so many twisting Delhi streets I was getting seriously paranoid and just wanted out of this vehicle. Turns out the hotel will not rent anything for less than 2800 rs, and the taxi driver wants 1500 rs. Got the hotel bill down by 800 by simply not registering or getting a receipt, it was pretty late and got a few bucks off the taxi by showing him I didn't have any more money in my purse. Still cost me almost a hundred dollars for the night. Meanwhile my friend has gone over to the departure terminal and checked into a 500 rs retiring room I didn't know anything about. My Internet connection worked in the hotel so I left him an email saying I would meet him on the plane in the morning.

When I got there in the morning I learned my flight to Srinagar had been canceled. I got a new reservation for the next day and decided to just settle in for a twenty hour wait at the airport, I certainly couldn't afford another hundred dollar night in Delhi. It was not a comfortable wait. Delhi Domestic terminals do not have an air conditioned public concourse like Canadian airports. Once off the sidewalk and inside you are in a security area and cannot leave the building again. No smoking inside of course so I just settled down to wait in whatever shade I could find outside. It was hot, but not as hot as Puttaparthi and dry so at least I could dry out every now and then, unlike Goa. All day long I hung about outside until as evening approached the security people began to ask what I was doing. Waiting for a plane I told them. The airport manager decided to fire up the scanning machine and run my bags through that and let me stay inside for the night. Just then Remi shows up. He had left his luggage in the retiring room and headed off into town to do some sightseeing and was just returning. So we spent a restless couple of hours inside being eaten by mosquitoes. I managed to talk the guards at the door outside to let me out and back in again for the odd cigarette. There were as many people flaked out on the concourse waiting for flights as there were stretched out on the benches inside.

It was very interesting watching the daily operation of this airport. It's not a large terminal, something you might find in a small Canadian city like Abbotsford, but it pumps more people through in an hour than Abbotsford would see in a month. Very efficient. The last flights leave about 1:30 am and start departing again about 3:00 am. I looked out on to the loading area behind the building, it was like a parking lot for planes, hundreds of them sitting wingtip to wingtip as far as a person could see.

Then they started loading up and taking off. They must have been leaving that runway every thirty seconds or so. There was about ten minutes to get on the plane before it was rolling into the takeoff queue. The pilot announced that there were 27 planes ahead of us. It didn't matter to me. There were no mosquitoes in the plane. I was sound asleep.