Eventually, still walking well, despite a few aches, over fields of scree, they reached Mahagunas Top at fifteen thousand feet. With rippling layers of geology exposed all along the bare ridgelines, and the glittering Himalayas spread out ahead, the landscape inspired them to forget the weariness they had begun to feel in their calves and knees. After Don, thinking of the post-trip potluck dinner they would arrange back in Spokane, got as many shots as he could, they headed for Panchtarni, the confluence of five streams, and the last camp before the holy cave itself.
Amarnath was a hard three-hour walk from there, the culmination of the yatris’ pilgrimage, at the end of a well-worn path that wound its way at a forty-five-degree angle through a gigantic glacial amphitheatre, where the bedrock rose hundreds of feet on either side, causing the trekkers’ footfalls to echo. When Don and Jane reached their destination the following morning, the giant cavern, more than 150 feet high and open to the elements, carved deep into the side of the mountain, was an overwhelming spectacle. The final approach was a zigzagging path, and Jane and Don could imagine how the cave had inspired stories of the gods for many hundreds of years: the Rajatarangini, a twelfth-century Sanskrit chronicle of the kings of Kashmir, had recorded how Aryaraja, a monarch who had ruled around the time of Jesus Christ, had worshipped a phallus formed of snow and ice ‘in the regions above the forests’.
After reaching the mouth of the cave and catching a glimpse of the giant ice lingam, filling their lungs with the sandalwood incense left by pilgrims, Don and Jane began to retrace their steps along the mountain path before branching off along a little-used track Sultan had told them about. ‘We didn’t do a “V” all the way back to Pahalgam, but instead cut across due west at around the area where the streams come into the East Lidder River from the north,’ Jane says. ‘That would have put us a little south of the village of Barimarg.’ There were trails all over the place, and the guides knew the routes. They were heading for the Lidderwat Valley and the Meadow, where they would spend the night before pushing on north-west, along a high-altitude route to the difficult Sonarmas Pass, at eleven thousand feet. Near here they would spend their last night in the mountains. A few hours beyond lay Sumbal, a village on a metalled road, from where a taxi would take them back to Srinagar.
Carpeted with white daisies and blue gentians, the Meadow was spellbinding when they reached it at the end of that afternoon, exhausted after a full day of walking and climbing. Bashir and Sultan set the tents up as usual, choosing a pitch in what they described as ‘the Upper Camp’, near a couple of empty dhokas, whose roofs were grassed over for insulation. They made a point of positioning Jane and Don’s tent close to the blue ice water, so they could hear it where they lay.
The couple fell asleep early, Jane complaining of toothache. The next morning, 3 July, they woke feeling glum. Just one more yomp to the high-altitude lake, Tar Sar, lay ahead of them. The adventure was coming to an end, although Jane’s toothache almost made her quit early: ‘I thought it was just a seed that had got stuck and so I ignored it, and we went ahead.’
The day John Childs set out on his trek up the Lidderwat Valley, heading for the Meadow, British tourists Keith and Julie Mangan, Paul Wells and Cath Moseley, accompanied by their new Canadian friend Bart Imler, arrived in Pahalgam with the Holiday Inn’s owner Bashir, who introduced them to their guides and pony-wallahs. True to his word, Bashir had arranged a full team: ponies, a cook, guides, and two extra teenage boys, brought along for ‘emergencies’. But there would be none of these, Bashir had assured them, his words ringing in their ears after the alarming drive down from Srinagar, the road pitted with constant reminders that there was a major military operation going on in the Kashmir Valley.
Now that she was here before the mountains, Julie was excited, and grateful that she would not have to heft her cumbersome kit. The party set off in bright sunshine, Julie and Cath in shorts and T-shirts, small daypacks slung over their shoulders, following the same track up the Lidderwat Valley that John Childs had taken at daybreak. Bashir was chatty, passing on titbits about the flowers and wildlife. The pony-wallahs asked where they came from, what life was like in the UK and where they had been so far on their travels. As they made their way out of the town, heading north-west up a gentle incline along a path that followed the route of the sloshing Lidder River, Paul got out his camera and began taking photos of the nomadic shepherds tending their flocks, men whose entire lives were spent wandering with the seasons, their burnished faces topped by wool caps, inset with tinsel and mirrored fragments to catch the sunlight.
Apart from the occasional herder, the group had the valley to themselves. For a while they walked in silence, listening to the cries of a hawk on the thermals high above their heads. Paul snapped his walking companions: Julie, wearing a bandana and baseball cap; bow-legged Keith, sporting a natty woollen waistcoat, bought from an insistent shikara salesman; Cath striding along with an improvised walking stick, happy for the first time since she had arrived in India. Ahead was the hulking mass of one of the smaller peaks.
‘It was as if God had given us a piece of paradise,’ Julie recalled. It was everything the posters had claimed. Kashmir had won her round. The mountains rose ever higher, thickly cloaked in red pines that grew so densely that the absence of light below the canopies ensured that nothing grew in the warm mulch of crushed leaves and cones around their bases.
After a few hours they stopped for lunch at Aru, which marked the end of the drivable road. Spongy, lush grass lay beneath their feet. A clutch of wooden houses served as chai stalls and guesthouses. This was their last chance to buy sweets and biscuits. They sat down to vegetable curry and rice before heading out of the village, on a less well-defined path than before. Paul snapped a couple of shots of the dilapidated ‘Milky Way Tourist Bungalow and Cafeteria’ on the outskirts of Aru. It looked like a set from a spaghetti Western. Bashir mumbled that he didn’t like the place, and ushered them past. Something bad had happened here, he said. The owners were not good people. He would explain another time.
The path headed up through the pine forest at a precipitous gradient before swinging down to rejoin the Lidder. After a couple of hours they broke out of the conifers and into an expanse of grassland, a glacial valley that smelled of clean washing and star anise, where the wind blew the grass into eddies. Bashir said they had at last reached the Meadow.
Julie and Keith reached for warm jackets, while Bashir and his crew pitched the tents. There were a couple of other small groups already camping here, among them Jane Schelly and Don Hutchings, but Julie and Keith, conscious of everyone’s desire for space, chose not to go and poke around. People could come down later, drawn by the campfire, if they wanted to talk, they reasoned. Instead, the Mangans wandered over to the stony banks of the Lidder, taking sips from the ice-cold water while Bashir’s team clanked around, setting up the kitchen. They had brought everything they would need: big blackened cooking pots and pans, kerosene stoves, and enough food to feed a cricket team. One of the boys was sent off to forage for wood while Bashir set a fire in a ring of stones left by some other trekking party. By the time the tea had boiled the Westerners had settled around the fire, hungry and footsore. Tomorrow they would head for the glacier, travelling light, leaving most of their kit behind. The Meadow was that kind of place, Bashir said. It wasn’t like back home in Blackburn or Middlesbrough, he joked, where you had to leave the lights on all night to keep the burglars guessing. But, just to be safe, he would leave a couple of his boys to guard the camp while they did the eight or nine hours up and down. They would take food for the journey, but there was nowhere to stay at the top. Julie wasn’t sure she’d make it all the way, but she’d give it a try. The Meadow was already proving hard to leave.
The next day, at dawn, Keith, Julie, Paul, Cath and Bart slowly made their way on towards Kolahoi base camp, a gentle climb at first through a vast, sweeping glacial valley, its floor littered with large boulders deposited by ancient ice floes, a solemn, eerie landscape that rose on either side towards sheer granite cliff faces high above. Here and there wild ponies grazed, tiny specks dwarfed by the rugged landscape. Dotted around was the