It began to drizzle, and in an unexpected act of compassion the men gestured for Jane and Don to put on some warmer clothes. Sit down, they motioned. Jane and Don sat and watched as the strangers unravelled their turbans and laid them out on the ground along with their weapons. Then they stooped to wash their hands in the river before prostrating themselves in prayer.
Paul Wells and Cath Moseley were waiting for dinner at the Upper Camp. Cath felt more content than at any time since they had reached India, and this was the kind of environment that suited Paul: up high in the wilds. He took snaps of their camp, black-and-white images showing the party’s three tents lined up in a row; Julie and Keith, Paul and Cath, with Bart Imler between them. In one shot, Keith Mangan, who had just got back from Tar Sar, can be seen rummaging around in his tent while Julie looks on, dressed in her warm sweatpants, hand on hip as if slightly irritated by the mess he is making. Exhausted, cold and footsore, Keith had come back elated at the end of the afternoon, saying that the scenery had been stunning, and while he was up there he had heard about a breathtaking high-altitude campsite at Sekhwas. Julie knew what he was getting at. ‘No way,’ she said, her feet still aching.
At around 6.30 p.m., just as they were getting ready to join the others for food, Julie turned to see a group of strangers approaching their camp. Wearing robes and turbans, they were dragging Julie and Keith’s guide Bashir with them. Clearly terrified, Bashir called out that the gunmen wanted to see everyone’s passports and that they had to obey their orders. Who were these men, Keith asked, but there was no reply. ‘They had guns,’ said Julie. ‘We were surrounded.’ Everyone handed their passports over, then, following mimed instructions, sat down in a semi-circle. Gripping Keith’s hand, Julie was filled with a burning sense of dread as one of the armed men used his rifle to prod through their tent. He moved on, eventually finding Bart Imler, who had spent the day wrapped up in his sleeping bag, still complaining of sickness and a headache. What was wrong with him, the gunman asked via Bashir. Bashir said he had altitude sickness. What nationality was he? ‘Canadian,’ the sick man croaked, trying to sound as feeble as he could. The gunman threw a strip of pills at him and barked, ‘Take these,’ before walking away. They clearly wanted the tourists alive.
It was almost dark, but the newcomers seemed in no hurry. Whatever this was, Julie sensed, it wasn’t an impulsive bushwhacking. Possible scenarios flashed through her mind: the women raped, the men lying with their throats slit. All the time she could hear dogs yelping in some distant gujjar encampment. How could they sound the alarm? She held on to Keith. Perhaps these strangers were forest rangers, she thought weakly. Just then, one of the younger ones, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, gestured with a knife at Julie and Cath. She froze, but Bashir explained, ‘They want you to dress properly.’ T-shirts and running shorts were inappropriate, the boy had said. Julie and Cath fumed, but went off to get changed. Then everyone was ordered over to the two dhokas, where more gunmen were guarding a group of Kashmiri schoolboys who had arrived noisily in the Meadow that afternoon. Julie had watched them setting up their tents on the other side of the river, joking and larking about. Whatever she and her friends had got themselves into, these local boys were in it too, she thought. Somehow, that reassured her.
But as the minutes ticked by while the leader established everyone’s nationality, turning the previously immaculate campsite into a tip, Julie felt as if the blood were draining from her body. She couldn’t breathe: it felt like the period of intense discomfort that is the precursor to full-blown panic. ‘I am going to die,’ she recalled thinking. ‘This is a firing squad.’ Would they end up digging their own graves, she wondered. Keith squeezed her hand. At least they would die together. But no shots were fired, and the gunmen remained calm. They ordered the Westerners to sit down, handed back the women’s passports and began rifling through all the tents again, stripping them of valuables. So it was just a robbery. Then two of the armed men marched off up the hill towards the tent belonging to a Western trekker no one had talked to: John Childs.
He was sleeping when they reached him. ‘That day, my fourth day of trekking, I had been to the highest elevation and had got altitude sickness. I was flat out. The first thing I knew about what was going on outside was when I woke to find a man pointing a gun into my tent. He told me to get up, and outside I saw another gunman.’ When John shouted at the man to get out, a gun was shoved in his face. He instantly recognised it as a Kalashnikov. As he scrambled outside he grabbed his passport, and was ordered to hand it over. He felt the weight of his money pouch beneath his shirt. It was filled with all his cash and credit cards. ‘They’re not getting that as well,’ he thought to himself as one of the gunmen led him down the hillside, still hazy from his sleep. Ahead of him he saw a large group of long-haired mujahideen-type figures guarding a handful of seated Westerners. He glanced back to see if there was any way of escaping up the hill, and caught sight of the second militant searching his tent for valuables. Had they staked out the woods too? ‘I saw him take my Canon camera with my social security number etched on it. He stole my sunglasses, too. I was furious.’ Could he make a run for it? If not now, then when?
John sat down beside the other foreigners, and took in his captors. ‘I could see that they were armed to the teeth with knives, semi-automatics and handguns. From that moment on I knew this was very bad news, whichever way I looked at it. Some of them were just kids, but the older ones had Kalashnikovs that looked like they had seen some battles. They were very nervous about the Indian Army coming into the camp, apart from the one who was evidently the leader. He did all the talking. He kept things calm. He carried himself with authority. He had a bearing that told me he was serious about this operation, whatever it was, a stillness of having experienced real fear and survived it.’
As he waited in silence for their captors to explain their next move, John ran over the past twelve hours in his head. Something came to him. That morning, Dasheer, his guide, the only Kashmiri he had grown fond of (although Dasheer had not seen any evidence of it), had urged him several times to break camp and move back down to Pahalgam a night early. ‘At the time I thought he was trying to con me, get back to his family early, take a day’s money for a trek that would now not happen, and we argued. “This is bullshit,” I told him. This was my holiday, and I wanted all of the nights camping I’d paid for. But then it suddenly became clear to me. Did all the locals know that something was going down? The jungle drums, that kind of thing. I’m utterly convinced that Dasheer tried to save me by getting me out of the Meadow, but I’d been too stupid and arrogant to listen.’ John had read about crimes like these in Colombia or Ecuador. ‘But this kind of thing only happened to someone else.’
With all the foreigners corralled beside the river, the leader turned his attention to the Kashmiri schoolboys, who, clearly of no use to him, were marched into the larger of the two dhokas, followed by all the other Kashmiris on the campsite, except for Julie’s guide Bashir. ‘We could see the schoolboys being pushed into the hut, no one saying a word, like a silent movie,’ recalled Julie. After a brief scuffle to secure the door, the leader began barking questions in rudimentary English at the foreigners, helped by Bashir. ‘Are any of you in the army? Do you work for your governments? Are you married?’ What were the right answers, Julie thought, panicking. Were there any? Did religion matter? Who was fighting whom? Everything she knew about Kashmir had left her mind as soon as they had been surrounded. She struggled to recall what the local troubles were about. Was there a way of answering that would safeguard their lives? They were not cut out for this. John Childs, who had still not looked up at the others, muttered a prayer under his breath.
All the time the leader thumbed the passports: British … American … Canadian.
A decision was made. The leader pointed his gun: ‘You, you and you.’ Paul Wells, Keith Mangan and John Childs stood up. ‘This is it,’ John thought as he was led back up to his tent to retrieve his walking boots and padded trekking jacket. ‘You complete idiot. Why the hell didn’t you just