Little Tibet

The remote region of Spiti in the Indian Himalaya

Originally published in the Khaleej Times, 29/04/11

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/weekend/inside.asp?xfile=/data/weekend/2011/April/weekend_April99.xml&section=weekend 

The bus lurched around another hairpin bend, and a terrifying void opened to the left. Hundreds of feet below I could see the river, a streak of turquoise in a landscape the colour of wild horses. Crumbling ridges rose on either side, and the pale mountain sun burnt coldly in a hollow sky. This was the Old Tibet Road, one of the most spectacular – not to mention terrifying – highways on earth. I gritted my teeth, ignored the chasm below, and focused on the stark mountains beyond. I was on the very brink – quite literally – of my destination: the remote upland fastness of Spiti.

***

Hard on the Tibetan border in the Indian mountain state of Himachal Pradesh, Spiti is a world apart. A long valley, walled in by sky-scraping ridges, its language, landscape and culture are more Tibetan than Indian. But while its better known northern neighbour, Ladakh, has long had a prime place on the travel map with direct flights from Delhi ferrying in thousands of visitors each summer, Spiti has slipped beneath the radar.

As a sensitive border region it was only opened to outsiders in 1993; there is no airport, and the rough roads (it is a two day trip from the Himachal capital Shimla, or a 16-hour jeep ride from the tourist hub of Manali) has kept all but the most adventurous at bay.

It was the promise of epic mountain scenery and authentic Tibetan Buddhist culture that had led me to brave that bus ride. News of an expanding network of locally run village home-stays, meanwhile, left me confident of finding somewhere to stay.

***

The next day, with my nerves scarcely settled from the jolting journey, I met the key mover behind those home-stays and wider efforts to develop sustainable community-based tourism in Spiti.

Sonam Tsering is a pint-sized force of nature, a sometime trekking guide, restaurateur and all-out enthusiast for his own Spitian culture. Over a steaming bowl of phakste, Spiti-style dumpling soup, in his Kunzum Top Cafe in the village of Tabo, he shared his views.

According to Sonam the slow development of tourism in Spiti has been a blessing in disguise. Tabo is the hub of what passes for a tourist industry here, but it is home to nothing more than a dozen guesthouses and a clutch of cafes.

“The most important thing is sustainability,” he said, citing the ugly plethora of concrete hotels that swamp Manali and the Ladakhi capital Leh. “And it is also important that the first benefit should be for local people. This is the thinking behind the home-stays; it spreads the benefit so it’s not just here in Tabo. There are home-stays now in even the most remote villages.”

While not running his restaurant or helping home-stay owners Sonam’s other cause is the preservation of Spitian culture. Concerned that traditional music was vanishing from village festivals, he and a group of friends have set about learning to play – and to record – Spitian folk songs. As night fell over Tabo he reached for a khokpo, a long-necked Spitian guitar, hanging on the wall, and smiling modestly – “I’m not very good yet!” – he began to pluck a wiry rhythm.

***

The monk settled himself cross-legged on a pile of dusty blankets, turned the first strip of elaborate Tibetan script, and with a gentle clearing of the throat began to chant in a low rumbling voice. I was the only other person in the little chamber of the protector deity in the ancient Buddhist monastery of Dhankar, 20 kilometres west of Tabo. The monk’s name was Chumpa, and a few minutes earlier he had found me wandering alone in the courtyard and invited me to watch his lonely morning puja ceremony.

When he was finished I stepped outside into the sharp sunlight. This tiny monastery village was perched in the very teeth of the mountains 3894 metres above sea level. The air here was thin and the light was sharper than glass. Alpine choughs with glossy black wings twisted in the cold thermals, and far below the blue-grey river was braided into a mesh of channels on the valley floor.

Spiti’s name means “The Middle Land”, reflecting its past as a place between more powerful neighbours: Tibet, Ladakh, Kullu, and Kashmir – and these days India and China. Buddhism probably arrived here in the 7th Century, amalgamating with the ancient Bon religion of the mountains. Today most of Spiti’s 10,000 people belong to the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism, the Yellow Hat sect of the Dalai Lama.

***

From Dhankar I travelled onwards into the Middle Land, sometimes staying in village home-stays recommended by Sonam, sometimes bedding down in the simple guesthouses attached to Buddhist monasteries. In the stony side valley of the Pin National Park, the snow leopards said to haunt the upper slopes eluded me, but the snow-streaked mountain scenery was worth the detour. Spiti is prime trekking country, and the Pin Valley is the starting point for the week-long hike into the neighbouring Kullu Valley.

Further west I passed through Kaza, the administrative capital of Spiti, and the only place in the valley where concrete and tin predominate over packed earth and poplar wood. From here a strip of winding tarmac led north past another ancient hilltop monastery at Ki to Kibber, claimed to be one of the highest villages on earth. It was a cold place where ibex horns decorated the doorways and prayer flags snapped in the running breeze. In the evening herdsmen brought yaks down from the hillsides and there was a smell of wood-smoke and livestock. This was the edge of a wild world that runs east for many hundreds of kilometres – the world of the Tibetan Plateau.

***

My escape from Spiti would take me across the 4551-metre Kunzum Pass to Manali. But first I doubled back east to seek out one of the remotest of all the village home-stays, 20 kilometres up a side valley in the hamlet of Lalung.

For my final days in Spiti I was the guest of Tashi Bodh Khabrik and his wife Dolma. They have been taking in travellers for the past two years, and they were the best of hosts. I was given a room with a roof of poplar branches in a corner of a whitewashed village home.

Over a dinner of momos – Tibetan dumplings – in the cosy kitchen-cum-living room that is the heart of every Spitian home, Tashi told me how the villagers club together to take care of their combined flocks of goats and yaks. Each family has only a few animals so people take it in turns to take the entire four-legged population of the village out to graze before returning each beast to its individual owner at nightfall. In winter, Tashi said, the dirt track down to the main valley was often blocked by snow for months on end; beyond the village there is nothing until the Tibetan border.

Here in Lalung, amongst the narrow lanes, the poplar-lined irrigation ditches, the endless cups of tea and the cheerful calls of “Joolay!” – the standard Spitian greeting – the journey into the Middle Land along bone-shaking mountain roads seemed more than worthwhile. 

© Tim Hannigan 2011

Across the Roof of the World

A Journey in Ladakh

Originally Published in The Epoch Times, 08/09/10

http://epoch-archive.com/a1/en/uk/nnn/2010/09-Sep/08/012_Travel.pdf

The wheels of the truck were inches from the edge of the road. Stark rust-coloured cliffs rose on either side, and far below an angry grey stream churned between tumbled boulders. I swallowed hard and looked up at the clear blue sky as we edged around the hairpin bend, shifted gear, and began to roll towards the valley floor.

I was riding into the heartlands of Ladakh, India’s wildest mountain fastness, in fine style – installed in the luridly decorated cab of a Kashmiri cargo truck. Thirty minutes earlier the driver, Hussein, and his assistant Altaf, had taken pity on me, waiting for a bus at a desolate roadside, and had stopped to give me a lift. By accepting their offer, I now realised, I had put my life in their hands – this road was little more than an overgrown goat path, edging along cliffs above bloodcurdling chasms.

My nerves were on edge and my eyes were fixed firmly on that narrowing strip of sky all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. We crossed the murky Indus River on a rattling suspension bridge and the road to Leh opened ahead, a strip of smooth blue tarmac cutting through a landscape the colour of wild horses. I breathed easy at last; Altaf smiled and patted me on the shoulder, reached under a pile of blankets at the back of the cab and took out a ripe melon. As we bowled eastwards with the mountain breeze coming in at the window he passed me slice after dripping slice.

***

Ladakh lies hard on the Chinese border northeast of Kashmir. The whole region is more than 3,000 metres above sea level, and the two tenuous roads that link it to the rest of India are blocked by snow for eight months of the year. This is a world apart.

Geographically and culturally Ladakh belongs not to the Indian Subcontinent, but to the Tibetan Plateau. Here there are stark, iron-coloured mountains, villages huddled in stands of willows and poplars, and bone-white Buddhist monasteries. The 270,000-strong population are Tibetan Buddhists, and their language is a Tibetan dialect. Indeed, until the turmoil of the 20th century saw old trading routes across high passes abruptly severed, the region had closer links to Lhasa than to Delhi. Today, however, it remains one of the most open and accessible places for visitors keen to see the ancient Buddhist cultures and the striking scenery of High Asia.
Many visitors arrive in Ladakh by air, but I had made my own entry from the west, taking a Jeep across the Zoji La from Kashmir, and making my first stop in the world of Tibetan Buddhism at the lonely outpost of Lamayuru. It was a spectacular place to start my journey through Ladakh.

The monastery here is the oldest in Ladakh, built in the 10th century by the great Buddhist missionary Rinchen Zangpo when Ladakh was ruled as part of Western Tibet. Its whitewashed prayer halls and weathered stupas are slotted among the crags of a rocky outcrop. Mud-walled houses nestle against the lower slopes; faded prayer flags snap in the sharp breeze, and the whole place is adrift in a vast, empty landscape.

I was shown around the monastery – and offered my first cup of salty butter tea (a Ladakhi speciality and an acquired taste to say the least) – by a young monk named Tashi. I spent the night in a simple guesthouse in the village, and the next morning I hitched that hair-raising lift with the truck drivers.

Altaf and Hussein – who were carrying a load of electrical goods all the way from Delhi – took me to Leh, the Ladakhi capital. In the 16th and 17th centuries the town was the seat of the Nyamgal Dynasty who ruled over an independent Ladakh, allied to their Tibetan neighbours. It was only when it was captured by the expansionist Hindu ruler of Jammu – later to become the first Maharaja of Kashmir – in 1834 that the region found itself more closely tied to the Indian scene. Ladakh remains administratively a part of the troubled state of Kashmir today, though many Ladakhis would rather see their homeland ruled directly from Delhi as a Union Territory.

For centuries Leh was a caravan town, a crossroads on a feeder branch of the fabled Silk Road. Yak trains from Tibet arrived to trade pashmina shawl wool with Indian merchants, and long strings of Bactrian camels lumbered down over the passes from the desert outposts of Xinjiang with jade and silks.

Today those old roads are closed, but Leh still has an international buzz. This is the hub of the tourist trade that has grown in the three decades since the Indian government threw Ladakh open to foreign visitors. There are trekkers, culture-vultures, spiritual tourists and mountain lovers in town, and 300 miles from the closest urban centre, it is an outpost of outlandish sophistication marooned in the wilderness, home to the best cappuccinos in the Himalayas.

But despite all this, a hint of the old Silk Road romance remains. A spectacular mud-walled fortress looms over the town; in the narrow alleys the descendants of Turkic traders from Kashgar and Yarkand still do business; and rising across the Indus Valley the white ridge of the Stok Kangri range still flares brightly in the afternoon sunshine.

***

The final stage of my journey through Ladakh would take me east through a stepping-stone string of monasteries, and across a skyscraping pass towards the forbidden Tibetan frontier. In the hilltop monastery at Thikse, some 20 kilometres from Leh, I shivered in the dawn as the maroon-clad monks lined up for their morning puja ceremonies – a welter of clashing cymbals, booming gongs and rhythmic chanting. There were more stops at more monasteries – Stakna, standing sentinel between the flanking ridges of the Indus plain; Chemrey rising from a nail-bed of poplar trees; and Takthog, slotted against the back wall of a narrowing side valley – and then, riding in the back seat of a hired Jeep, I crossed the dizzying saddle of the 5,289-metre Chang La, claimed to be the third highest drivable pass in the world.

It was downhill all the way on the other side through broken, fractured landscapes where chubby marmots watched the passing Jeep from the stony roadsides. And then my final destination appeared ahead – a long lozenge of bright water under a vast sky.

Pangong Lake, a 130-kilometre stretch of clear, salty water, lies 4,250 metres above sea level. Once it was a junction on ancient trade routes – north towards Yarkand, east towards Lhasa. Today, it is the ends of the earth and a suitably stunning place for the culmination of a Ladakhi adventure.

The Jeep stopped at a cluster of seasonal cafés at the windswept head of the lake and I scrambled alone up the hillside to take in the view. The waters were a vivid turquoise in the shallows, deepening to the colour of lapis lazuli further out. Flocks of delicate, red-legged seagulls – incongruous here in the high mountains – fluttered on the near shore, and across the water a great bank of ribbed brown hills rose. To the east the lake narrowed between rugged buttresses, and in the furthest distance a conspiratorial cluster of snowy peaks huddled. A sensitive international border straddles the lake; those mountains lay deep inside Chinese-ruled Tibet. Sitting, shivering on that windy hillside, I felt deeply grateful for the window into the Buddhist heritage and the wild landscapes of the wider Himalayan world that my journey through Ladakh had given me.

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Travelling to the Dizzying Heights of Ladakh

A Journey through Ladakh, India, from West to East

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 30/09/09

http://thejakartaglobe.com/travel/traveling-to-the-dizzying-heights-of-ladakh/332455

I had been waiting at the roadside for an hour, shivering in the thin air. Behind me the poplar trees of the Chemrey Valley looked like a distant oasis; ahead the road swept away over barren slopes towards the mighty 5360-meter Chang La Pass. White lizards scurried over the rocks and no vehicles came past. Beyond the Chang La lay the fabled Pangong Lake, the remote strip of lapis-blue water that I hoped would be the highlight of my journey through Ladakh, northwest India’s high-altitude wilderness. But if I didn’t get a ride soon I would have to turn back. And then I heard the sound of an engine, straining through the switchbacks. I was on my feet in an instant, just at a shiny white jeep rounded the corner…

***

Ladakh lies hard on the Chinese border in the stark mountains of the Karakoram Range. To the southwest is Kashmir, of which it is technically a part; to the east lies Tibet, to which it is far more closely tied by history and culture. It is one of Asia’s most prized destinations for adventurous tourists.
I had arrived in Ladakh from the west, travelling through hills the color of Tibetan wild horses. My journey would take me to a series of ancient gompas – Buddhist monasteries – and then finally, I hoped, to Pangong Lake.
My first stop was the isolated village of Lamayuru, with its whitewashed gompa perched on a toothy ridge. As I made my way up the steep steps I found myself gasping for breath. Like much of Ladakh, Lamayuru lies well over 3000 meters above sea level, and here in the trans-Himalayan rain-shadow there is little moisture. Buddhist prayer flags snapped in the breeze and glossy black alpine choughs wheeled in the thermals.
I was shown around the silent, incense-scented halls of the gompa by a young monk named Tashi. He told me that Lamayuru is home to some 200 monks from all over Ladakh. The gompa, he said, was over a thousand years old, and had been built by the great Tibetan missionary, Rinchen Zangpo.
Ladakh has long been part of the wider Tibetan world and for many centuries it was ruled from Lhasa. Later it was an independent kingdom under the powerful Nyamgal Dynasty. It was only with its annexation by the Hindu ruler of Jammu in 1834 that Ladakh found itself more closely tied to the Indian scene. But as I looked out from the gompa courtyard on barren mountains that ran all the way to Tibet, lowland India seemed as far away as the Indonesian tropics.

From Lamayuru I continued east along the River Indus, the backbone of Ladakh. I spent a night in the little village of Alchi, a cluster of traditional houses and an ancient gompa between irrigated fields, then pressed on to Leh, the Ladakhi capital.
Leh originally developed as a mountain crossroads, a meeting point of treacherous trade routes from Tibet, India and Central Asia. As late as the 1940s camel caravans were still crossing the Karakoram passes, but Indian independence and wars with Pakistan and China saw the borders sealed. Ladakh was closed to the outside world until the 1970s when the first tourists were allowed to visit. For many travelers today Ladakh is the next best thing to Tibet, or perhaps, with its well-preserved culture, even better.
In Leh the caravanserais of old had been replaced by guesthouses and giftshops, but there was still a hint of historical romance. The town lay in a nail-bed of pale green poplar trees; the mud-walled palace of the Nyamgal kings loomed over the dusty bazaar, and the descendants of Muslim traders from Turkestan still kept small shops in the alleyways.
I found a cheap guesthouse in the old town. Over a cup of salty yak butter tea – an acquired taste to say the least – in the traditional kitchen with its ranks of shiny copper pots and pans, Padma, the charming proprietress, told me of the changes she had seen in Leh over the decades. Despite relying on tourism for a living, she had concerns about sustainability and the speed of development – the outskirts of Leh are already marred by ugly concrete hotels. Also, like many Ladakhis, Padma complained about Ladakh’s status as part of Kashmir State – a legacy of 19th Century treaties between the Raja of Jammu and the British colonialists. Despite sharing no cultural ties, and having no involvement in the political unrest of Kashmir, Ladakhis are ruled from Srinagar. For Padma and many others it would be better for Ladakh to be governed directly from Delhi as a Union Territory.

When I asked in Leh about visiting Pangong Lake, replies were doubtful. Public transport is almost non-existent; a permit is required and regulations demand that foreigners must travel on an organized tour with at least three other people. I wanted to travel alone. The travel agent who helped me arrange my permit looked at me askance when I suggested hitchhiking. “Well, you could try…” he said.
Try I would, and the next day I set out, stopping off to watch a prayer ceremony at the gompa-topped hill of Thikse before catching a rattling local minibus, full of cheerful villagers who welcomed me with the universal Ladakhi greeting – “Joolay!” – up the side valley of Chemrey. The bus dropped me in the last village. The light was shining on the white ridge of the Stok Kangri mountains as I set out walking, picking my way to the lonely roadside beneath the towering hairpins of the Chang La.

***

The jeep screeched to a halt and a very surprised head in reflective sunglasses appeared from the passenger window.
“Where on earth are you going?”
“Pangong Lake!” I said; “can I have a ride?”
They were a party of wealthy Indian tourists on a daytrip from Leh, and despite their surprise at finding a foreign hitchhiker at this wild spot, they made room for me amongst the picnic baskets. I smiled all the way up the snow-streaked slopes to the dizzying summit of the Chang La Pass. My companions seemed less happy – they were suffering from headaches and nausea, mild symptoms of altitude sickness brought on by the elevation. A little shortness of breath was all I experienced.
Across the pass marmots and wild horses watched us from the roadside as we passed, and then, finally, the lake appeared in a blaze of bright blue. One glance and I knew the journey had been worth it. The Indians dropped me at a little cluster of tented camps at the head of the lake and I picked my way up the steep hillside to take in the view. The waters below faded from aquamarine in the depths to pale turquoise in the shallows. Flocks of delicate white gulls – incongruous here 4250 meters above sea level – flickered over the shore, and beyond there were bony brown hills under a vast sky. The wind from the east cut like a knife and the light was sharper than glass. It was a truly stunning place. The lake here was barely a kilometer across, but it ran eastwards for 134 kilometers, deep into Tibet. The upwelling of white mountains I could see in the far distance were inside Chinese territory, beyond the forbidden frontier. But shivering and smiling on this bleak hillside I was sure that the view from the other side could be no more beautiful than this…

© Tim Hannigan 2009

Turmeric in India

The traditional health and beauty uses of the spice turmeric in India

Originally published in Asian Geographic Magazine, July 2009

http://www.asiangeo.com/ag_0509/departments.html

In the chili-scented heat of Khari Baoli, the spice market of Old Delhi, a trader named Ragesh motions towards the bowl of yellow-gold roots glowing prominently at the front of his stall.
“Haldi,” he says, the Hindi word for turmeric; “not only for eating, good for health, good for skin also.”
The spice trader is correct, for turmeric not only lends the unmistakable color and earthy base notes to so much Indian cuisine; it is also central to traditional health and beauty treatments in the Subcontinent.
Dr Sudha Asokan, a Keralan practitioner of ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of herbal medicine, explains: “There are many uses for turmeric,” she says; “it is good for the stomach, we use it for treating sinusitis and asthma, and also for the skin. All our oils contain turmeric.”
In South India every traditional household will have a turmeric plant growing in the garden for daily use. “We grind it and put it on our face every day before taking a bath,” says Dr Asokan. “It gives the skin a good glow and reduces oil and pimples.” As another simple home remedy raw turmeric is often used to relieve the itching of an insect bite, and powdered turmeric with hot milk is the traditional treatment for coughs and colds.
Central to turmeric’s Indian health and beauty uses are two powerful properties known in ayurveda as varnyam and vishaghnam, the first an ability to soften and lighten the skin, and the second an antitoxic, antiseptic quality. And with the combination of these two properties it seems that turmeric can be used to treat almost every imaginable skin condition.
“It is one of the most important substances in beauty treatment in ayurveda,” says Jyothi Viswambharan, another Keralan doctor. Mixed with cream and honey, she says, it is an effective remedy for dry skin, while blended with neem leaf or rosewater it is one of the best treatments for oily skin. Its wound-healing properties also help reduce the scars left by chicken pox. In combination with other substances turmeric can also relieve more serious skin conditions: “For scabies, eczema, psoriasis,” Dr Jyothi counts them off.
Turmeric grows best in the lush monsoonal climate of southern India but its use extends across the country. In a ceremony called Gaye Holud, part of traditional Bengali wedding preparations, both bride and groom have their body colored with turmeric – to soften and lighten the skin.
But turmeric’s applications go more than skin deep, as Dr Ramniwas Prasher, a consultant who often uses turmeric in treating serious diseases, explains. Mixed with gooseberry, he says, Indian ayurvedic doctors often use it to combat early-stage diabetes, the turmeric helping to boost insulin production. It also helps to fight infections, and, according to Dr Prasher, is even useful in treating some cancers. And all this from a substance generally known only as a food flavoring in Western countries. “We have a basic difference in approach to these things in India,” says Dr Prasher.
Dr Sudha Asokan agrees: “The West does not really have a tradition of herbal medicine, but we have known about these other uses of turmeric for 6000 years.”
But which is turmeric’s most important application in India – food, or health and beauty? Dr Asokan smiles: “Both!” she says.

© Tim Hannigan 2009

Kashmir - Heaven on Earth?

Travelling in Kashmir

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 01/06/09

http://thejakartaglobe.com/travel/kashmir-heaven-on-earth/278530

The passenger jeep emerges from the dripping darkness of the Jawar Tunnel in a blaze of sunlight. “Welcome to Kashmir Valley” says a sign at the roadside; “Heaven on Earth”. Green mountains soar on all sides, but in front of the sign is a tangle of razor-wire and a pair of Indian soldiers with machineguns. As we bowl away downhill an expanse of land, filled with slender poplar trees, opens below. In the distance is a ridge of snowy peaks. And then we run into a grinding traffic jam behind a huge military convoy. Welcome to Kashmir indeed.

Kashmir is perhaps the Indian Subcontinent’s oldest tourist destination. The Mughal Emperors dreamed of its lakes and gardens and 19th Century British colonialists came in their droves for the climate and the scenery. Even as late as the 1980s honeymooners hid away in houseboats and trekkers earned their blisters on the high passes.
But despite Kashmir’s centuries-old status as a holiday hotspot, today it is better known for political violence. Although it has an ancient history as an independent kingdom, Kashmir has long been ruled by outsiders. The state of Jammu and Kashmir – which also included Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh – was created after the collapse of the Sikh empire in 1846 when the British sold the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley to the Hindu Raja of neighboring Jammu. After independence from Britain in 1947, India and Pakistan went straight to war over Kashmir. An uneasy ceasefire left the territory split between the two countries with a tense face-off over the dividing line. Kashmir Valley itself is on the Indian side of the so-called Line of Control. Despite a further two wars it was only in the late 80s, when a bloody anti-India insurgency erupted in the Valley, that Kashmir dropped off the tourism map, gaining dubious renown instead as South Asia’s nuclear flashpoint.
Hardly a place for a holiday then, but I have always wanted to visit Kashmir, and with rumors of easing tension and a mass return of domestic Indian tourists, now finally seems like the time to go. Military traffic jams aside, as I arrive in the capital Srinagar at dusk it seems that the only danger now is the hotel touts who throng the bus station...

Despite its troubled past Srinagar is a charming city. The River Jhelum forms its backbone, but another body of water, Dal Lake, is its heart. It was the lake that attracted the original holidaymakers, and it is till the focus of the Kashmiri tourist industry today. Out on the waters are moored hundreds of houseboats, Srinagar’s most idiosyncratic attraction. Originating during the colonial era, the charmingly old-fashioned houseboats are still a fine alternative to a hotel.
As I stroll along the Boulevard in the sunshine of the next morning all seems well. Hundreds of Indian trippers are milling around taking snapshots or haggling over the price of a boat ride. Following their example I hire a shikara – the brightly-painted Kashmiri answer to a Venetian gondola – for an hour’s tour of the lake. The shikara is paddled by a man named Ghulam. As we drift through rafts of lotus plants he tells me of the hard years of the troubles. With the mountains reflecting in the water, and shikaras busily plying back and forth it seems hard to believe that just a few years ago Srinagar was virtually a warzone, and Ghulam and thousands of other Kashmiri tourism workers spent more than a decade with virtually no income.
“But things are better now,” he says with a smile, slipping the shikara paddle into the green waters of the lake.
Another Srinagar resident I meet later, an urbane man named Firdous Ahmad with a finger in just about every tourist industry pie, confirms this. “Sometimes when I think back on what we have experienced here I can hardly believe that it was real,” he says. But things are definitely improving – and as if to prove it our conversation is interrupted as Firdous takes a call from a party of Indian visitors whose trip he is organizing.

The next morning I set off to explore an earthier side of Srinagar – the old city. Usually known as Downtown, it is renowned as a hotbed of resistance to Indian rule, but today all I find is hospitality and a wealth of unusual Islamic architecture hidden down narrow side-streets overhung by wooden balconies. I am surprised to see a similarity to traditional Indonesian mosques – here too there are triangular three-tiered roofs rather than domes and minarets.
Outside the great Friday Mosque, I meet a young man named Taufiq. He tells me that he has just returned to Srinagar after working for several years in a call centre near Delhi.
“Kashmir is the most beautiful place on earth,” he says; “I couldn’t stay away any longer.”
But what about the political situation? “Most Kashmiris these days don’t like India or Pakistan,” he says. So what do they want? Taufiq smiles and mouths the word: “Independence.”
Such sentiments are not unusual, and despite what Taufiq says there is still some support for integration with Pakistan. The next day a strike has been called in protest against recent Indian elections. The old city is shut down under a massive military security operation.
The strike doesn’t stop me taking a taxi an hour out of town to Manasbal Lake. This is a world away from the bustle of Srinagar – no touts or houseboats; just sharp sunlight, a cooling breeze, flitting white water birds and a rising wall of mountains reflected in the clear water. A young boatman named Ashraf paddles me out across the lake. With no other tourists in sight, we head for his home village on the far shore where his mother and sisters give me tea and shyly ask to have their photos taken.

Kashmir is defined by its mountains. After several days on the valley floor I head for the hills. Pahalgam lies on one of Kashmir’s ancient Hindu pilgrimage routes. High mountains rise on either side, and in the dense pine forest there are encampments of nomadic Bakerwal people, herders who make the long journey up from the plains each summer.
From Pahalgam I walk 12 kilometers to the end of the surfaced road at the village of Aru. This is a beautiful place – a cluster of neat houses in a bowl of high mountains. The Indian day-trippers, in search of horse-rides and photo-opportunities, are here too, and there are even a handful of other foreign visitors. I spend hours climbing through the forest – watching out for the bears that are common here – for vast views over the mountains. On my last day I walk a little way above the village with Mahsud, the man who owns the simple guesthouse where I am staying. He tells me of happier years when there were sometimes as many as 1000 foreign tourists in Aru at any one time. Then he tells me of the dark days of the 1990s when he closed the guesthouse and insurgents and Indian soldiers fought in the hills.
So what do Kashmiris really want now, I ask – India, Pakistan or independence?
Mahsud smiles gently: “Kashmiris are tired now,” he says; “we just want peace.”
Though I know that all the tensions remain, for this one moment as we sit looking out over the long green sweep of the valley, the Pahalgam Ranges rising white in the distance against a blue sky, it seems like they have it.

Visiting Kashmir

Many foreign governments continue to warn against all travel to Kashmir, but as the Indonesian tourist industry knows to its cost these advisories usually err on the side of extreme caution. However, underlying tensions do remain, and there is a huge military presence in the Valley. Minor confrontations between insurgents and the Indian Army continue in outlying districts, and protests against the government and security forces are not uncommon in Srinagar.
Indian tourists, who are probably better informed, have returned in their thousands, and there is already a steady trickle of foreign visitors. However, it is sensible to check the situation before going. The websites of Indian, or better yet Kashmiri, newspapers are probably the best resource. Kashmir is newspaper mad and there are about 15 English dailies published in Srinagar alone!
Kashmiri travel agents, particularly those based outside the Valley in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, have a vested interest in perpetuating the idea that you cannot visit Kashmir without a guide. While it may be nice to have someone else bear the brunt of organizing your trip, especially somewhere for which there is scant guidebook information, this is by no means essential. If you are happy to travel independently elsewhere in India then there is no reason not to do so in Kashmir.
The only international flights to Srinagar’s airport are from Dubai, but there are regular services from Delhi and other Indian cities with Jet Airways, Spice Jet, Kingfisher and others, all of which can be booked online. The main road connecting the railhead at Jammu with Srinagar is spectacular, winding up though the Himalayan foothills before eventually emerging in the Kashmir Valley through the Jawahar Tunnel. Buses and share-jeeps ply the route. The seasonal road out of the Valley to the northeast towards Ladakh is even more hair-raising.

© Tim Hannigan 2009

A Ride into Delhi's Past

The architectural relics - and the modern Metro - of India's capital

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 18/05/09
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/lifeandtimes/a-ride-into-delhis-past/2035

The early sunlight is falling on the salmon-pink sandstone of Qutb Minar, a monumental victory tower that looms some 73 meters into the hot white sky of south Delhi. The dust-coated trees of the surrounding parkland are full of squawking green parakeets.
The tower was built at the end of the 12th century by Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, the first Muslim conqueror of Delhi. It was meant as a mighty symbol of the victory of Central Asian Islam over the plains of North India. It is still a stunning building, but there are traces of at least eight ancient cities within India’s national capital, and according to a legendary prophecy, whoever builds a new Delhi will lose it before long. Within a couple of centuries Qutb-ud-Din’s dynasty had collapsed and his capital and his tower were left to the ghosts, the parakeets and wandering tourists. On this steamy May morning I am setting out to explore 800 years of Delhi’s monument-studded past — by means of its most strikingly modern aspect.

First, though, I hop into a waiting auto-rickshaw — the familiar three-wheeler known in Jakarta as a bajaj — and head north. Delhi generally makes Jakarta look like a bastion of order and modernity. The gridlock is worse, the potholes deeper, the pollution more choking. But all this mayhem is being mitigated by a new development in public transportation — one that leaves Jakarta very much in the shade. And after this rattling rickshaw ride I will turn to this modern miracle to complete my journey.
The auto-rickshaw drops me at India Gate, another triumphal monument at the heart of the most recent of new Delhis — the British-built imperial capital. British colonialists held sway over the Indian subcontinent for two centuries, but they only shifted their administrative center to Delhi from the humid swamps of Calcutta in the early 20th century. New Delhi, a vast mesh of interlocking boulevards, was designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens and inaugurated in 1931. The new capital was meant as a definitive statement of British power over India, but Lutyens and his masters had also either forgotten or paid no heed to the legendary prophecy. Within two decades the sun had set on Britain’s Indian empire. Today, India Gate, an arch of yellow stone originally a memorial to fallen British-Indian soldiers, is the central icon of New Delhi. This morning, as a pale sun creeps up into a blazing sky, it is crowded with Indian sightseers, snapping photos and eating candy floss.

From India Gate I set out west along Rajpath, the grand avenue of New Delhi. Lutyens clearly had the carriages of kings, viceroys and maharajas in mind rather than humble pedestrians when he planned this city. I am glad when I spot a blue sign in the shadow of looming government buildings. “Metro,” it says, and I slip down polished stairs into icy air-con, away from Afghan triumphalism and British colonialism, and into 21st century India. The Delhi Metro is a miracle in a city that so often seems on the brink of structural collapse. The first eight kilometers of the network opened in December 2002 and by November 2006, three lines comprising 65 kilometers were operational. The Metro carries some 800,000 passengers a day and made a profit from day one. I pay my eight rupees (about 14 cents) and all thoughts I have been harboring about Jakarta’s modern superiority fade. As the train slides into the spotless platform and a bilingual voice-over announces its destination, the Trans-Jakarta busway suddenly seems rather underwhelming.

Two stops and four cool minutes later I am in Connaught Place, New Delhi’s commercial hub. Here flaking neo-classical columns shade designer boutiques. It’s still a far cry from Jakarta’s shopping mall glamour, but that counts for nothing as I slip back down into the Metro. Soon Connaught Place will be the heart of a vast metro network. All over the city cranes are at work. In Indonesia they would be building yet another mall; here they are extending the Metro at a cost of $4.25 billion. By the end of next year you will be able to ride from the airport to the city center, and even out to the Qutb Minar.
By 2021, a vast spider’s web of Metro lines will enmesh the capital. If chaotic Delhi can do this, I wonder as an escalator bears me down to the platform, why not Jakarta? Another eight rupees, another two stops, and I have slipped back some 400 years. Emerging from the Chawri Bazaar station I am greeted with a scene of colorful chaos. This is the heart of the medieval city of Old Delhi, a tangle of narrow alleyways and crumbling Islamic architecture. I pick my way through the mass of pedicabs and horse carts, dodging a wandering cow. Overhead, behind a tangle of wires, is a first-floor cityscape of delicate balconies crumbling under centuries of grime. At the end of the street I spot the onion-shaped domes of Jama Masjid, the great mosque of Old Delhi.
The Mughals, Muslims descended from Genghis Khan, ruled much of India for three centuries. The greatest Mughal builder was Shah Jahan, who commissioned the Taj Mahal and constructed the walled city of Old Delhi in the 17th Century. The Jama Masjid was his finest mosque. The floor slabs of the courtyard are searingly hot underfoot. Flocks of pigeons swoop around the triple domes. The mosque is a beautiful blend of white marble and red sandstone. In the shade at the back of the courtyard I chat with three teenagers from Bangalore in southern India, visiting Delhi for the first time. What do they think of the city, I ask. “Breathtaking,” they say.

From the mosque I pick my way through the bazaars to another breathtaking relic — the Red Fort. This was the seat of Mughal power in India, and its rust-colored wall falls like a theater curtain across the old city. Inside it is all dusty gardens and white pavilions. This is some of the finest Islamic architecture in the world, a style of latticework, inlay and blind arches. But many of the Red Fort’s treasures have disappeared. The Mughals too were victims of the prophecy that condemns the builders of new cities. In 1857 the British captured Delhi, sent the last emperor into exile in Burma, leveled many of the fort’s halls and turned it into an army barracks.
The heat outside is intense now, as I make my way along Chandni Chowk, once the fabled Moonlight Bazaar of the Mughal princes. Today it is an anarchy of traffic and cloth merchants. This is Delhi at its most overwhelming, colorful and disordered. After stopping at a stall for a refreshing glass of lassi — a cool yoghurt drink — I lose my way in the old spice market, a warren of chili-scented alleys. Lean men pulling handcarts hurry by and all modernity slips away. I begin to wonder how exactly I will find my way home. And then, emerging on a slightly wider street, I spot that familiar blue sign, of a kind that you will soon find all over Old and New Delhi. Slipping gratefully into Chandni Chowk Metro station I can’t help but wonder if the builders of this newest of Delhis will end up going the same way as British, Mughals, Afghans and all the others. I hope not, as the doors slide shut, the air-con dries the sweat on my brow and the train slides away, back toward the 21st century.

© Tim Hannigan 2009