John Childs flew in to Srinagar on 30 June, carrying a sleeping bag, a tent and a small backpack. He was determined to get his trip up and going as soon as he touched down. He knew roughly where he wanted to go, and had maps and trekking contacts from the factory workers in Bihar, although he had not yet rung them to make firm arrangements. As the other Western passengers dispersed, leaving him standing alone by the luggage carousel, he suddenly realised that he had not really thought this through: ‘Signs of war were everywhere. Sandbags, soldiers, tanks and guns of every possible description. I was a little overwhelmed.’ Although he worked in the weapons industry, and could identify the make, model, bore and clip capacity of pretty much any gun from a distance, he had never handled one in a conflict situation, or even really thought about the realities of war. ‘I should have just turned around, got back on the plane to New Delhi and listened to the voice inside my head.’ But stubborn John got talking to a taxi driver instead, who offered to take him to his hotel for what seemed an honest fare. He wasn’t interested in seeing Srinagar, other tourists or the inside of a houseboat, he told the driver. He just wanted to have a good sleep at the hotel he had booked from New Delhi, and to get going first thing in the morning.
After a circuitous trip through downtown Srinagar, during which John saw a lot more razor wire, the taxi driver pulled up at a patch of waste ground. ‘Sir, your hotel seems to have been knocked down,’ he said, eyeing John in the rear-view mirror. Incredulous, John attempted to get out of the car. ‘It’s not safe here, sir,’ the driver insisted, ushering him back in. ‘I am not lying to you, sir. This area has been appropriated by the army. It happens all the time. There are militants in this district, and the security forces are building here to beef up security. You should stay on the houseboats, that is the only safe place for tourists, and not city-centre hotels.’ John sat back down. He had no way of knowing if the man was telling the truth or not. The hotel had been his only pre-planned arrangement in Kashmir, and now it seemed to be gone. Or was this even the right address? It sunk in that he did not know anyone here, or even if it was safe to call the numbers the factory workers had given him.
The driver reassured him. ‘Sir, please, I am a tourist guide. Stay with my family tonight and we will help you make your onwards arrangements in the morning. I will not charge you.’ Within minutes John had been driven down to Boulevard Road, where his bags were tossed into a waiting shikara. ‘I was embarrassed and angry. Before I knew it, I was being rowed down these little waterways accompanied by a man I had only known for thirty minutes who might well be planning to slit my throat as soon as we got round the next corner. I knew I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.’
His mood lifted a little when they arrived at the houseboat, which, just as the driver had promised, was luxurious and welcoming. The men of the household, all dressed in brown pherans and smoking heavily, quickly surrounded him, while the women dispersed to cook him ‘a Kashmiri wazwan’. What were his trekking plans, the men wanted to know. ‘Kolahoi? Aru? Sonamarg? Tar Sar? Sheshnag? Chandanwari?’ When they found that he had nothing in mind, they began bidding for his cash. ‘They showed me letters from foreigners who had been on successful treks with them.’ Afterwards there was a lavish banquet and all the houseboat’s wood burners were lit. Relaxing a little, deciding he had little option other than to go with the flow – a difficult decision for a planner like John – he bartered with the men until they reached a price: US$300 for a four-day trek, with food, guide and a pony-wallah thrown in. Within half an hour, two men appeared. The guide was a lean, mournful-looking Kashmiri with a pencil moustache, who introduced himself as Dasheer. He talked John through where they could walk and what he would see, recommending the Lidderwat Valley, with a stop-off at the Meadow. Had he heard of it? ‘One of the most beautiful campsites in the world.’ John quizzed him about trekking times and elevations, and concluded that the man knew what he was talking about. That night, for the first time in several weeks, John slept soundly, dreaming of his girls back home and of the mountains to come.
They set off by taxi down Highway 1A just after dawn on 1 July. John spent most of the journey batting away questions fired at him by Dasheer, the driver and the pony-wallah, Rasheed, all of whom chain-smoked, filling the cab with fumes. What was America like? How did he get into the weapons business? How much was he paid? Did his company sell guns to India? Did he know how poor Kashmiris were? Unused to being bombarded at such close quarters, John buried his head in his guidebook, so he did not see the locals queuing at checkpoints to be body-searched, their pherans held aloft, as his vehicle, with its conspicuous passenger inside and its tourist permit glued to the windscreen, was whisked past them. He barely noticed the relentless caravan of military traffic that dominated the road. But as soon as they turned off the main highway at Anantnag, and started heading north-east towards the mountains, everyone fell silent as the car manoeuvred around several large craters in the road. ‘Mines,’ the driver said by way of explanation, glancing at John in the rear-view mirror.
John was dismayed, but the driver seemed unconcerned, laughing as he used his entire body to force the wheels around another hole. Military convoys were constantly on the move nowadays, he said as they careered around another, ever since the Indian Army had taken over the holy village of Aishmuqam. Once it had been most famed for its hilltop temple, the last resting place of a fifteenth-century Sufi saint, or rishi, called Zainuddin. It was venerated by the boatmen of Kashmir, who would take their children there to cut off their first lock of hair. ‘If this was done elsewhere, the child would die or become blind,’ explained Dasheer, who had been born on a houseboat himself. Should they stop to have a look, John asked. Earnest Dasheer shook his head. Like many of Kashmir’s ancient mountainside pilgrimage spots, which held special meaning for Muslims and Hindus alike, the Aishmuqam tomb had attracted visitors for centuries, but these days people were frightened of the notorious army garrison and signals headquarters that lay in its shadow, and of the anti-government militants who constantly sniped at them.
When John said he had been assured that all the trouble spots in Kashmir were far away, to the west of the valley, his companions exchanged glances. Were they just trying to scare him, he wondered as he stared out at the crocus fields on either side of the road. Maybe it was the Kashmiri factory workers in Bihar who had lied? If so, what else had they not told him? What about the kidnapping of the foreigners the previous year? He asked his companions if any of them knew anything about it. The men shrugged, lit up cigarettes and began speaking to each other in Kashmiri.
At Aishmuqam there was nothing much to see of the army camp, and John’s fears lessened as they entered a gentler landscape, a terraced valley of lush green paddies. ‘Kashmiri rice,’ the driver declared, pointing towards the fields, where young girls and old women stooped over the ripening crops while their men looked on, smoking cigarettes. ‘The finest in subcontinent. Twice the price of Punjabi rice. Doubly delicious.’ But nowadays, he continued, it was mostly exported to rich Indians to the south: ‘Locals cannot afford to eat it.’ Dasheer and Rasheed shook their heads. The road started to climb again, following the flank of an ice-melt river in which ancient boulders had been worn flat.
By the time they reached the confluence of the East and West Lidder rivers, between which the trekking station of Pahalgam sprawled across a flat grassy plateau, they were at nearly nine thousand feet. John took in the view: gentle pine-topped ridges folding into one another as far as the eye could see. Pahalgam’s canny tourist and guide agencies had long ago dubbed the town ‘the Gateway to the Himalayas’, although its charming old wooden quarter was gradually being swallowed up by modern modular concrete hotels. But it was not the town planning that drew people here,