A short train ride through Kashmir Valley

Courtesy: ET Bureau A short train ride through Kashmir Valley. A short train ride through Kashmir Valley. The Lalit Grand Palace, Srinagar. Countless acres of paddy fields rolled by. Greenery and the snow capped peaks. It’s not South Africa’s famous Blue Train, nor is it Europe’s Orient Express; it’s not Rajasthan’s Palace on Wheels or even Karnataka’s Golden  A short train ride through Kashmir Chariot. It doesn’t have a catchy name, it doesn’t cost a fortune and there is no plush service on board.  In fact, the only thing it has in common with the famous luxury trains that I’ve mentioned, is the promise of unforgettable vistas. Yet a brief hour’s ride on a spanking new red-and-blue train of the just opened Baramulla-Anantnag rail link changed my entire perception of a state that is at once iconic and unsettling: Kashmir.  As I prepared to embark on my first-ever visit to the Himalayan paradise, my teenage son protested, “Are you mad? Srinagar? Baramulla? Sopore? Anantnag? Don’t you see how these places make it to the papers every day? And you’re haring off there to see a train?!” It did sound kind of crazy even to me, after all I was no hard-nosed reporter of militancy and Indo-Pak issues. I dealt with the good life — travel, food, wine... What was I doing literally courting trouble?  Yet, the prospect of actually seeing for myself a state that seemed to make it to the headlines for all the wrong reasons was too enticing to forego. Moreover, the thought that Kashmir Valley has actually got a train 155 years after the first one ran in India between Bombay and Pune in 1853 was too piquant not to explore further! How could anyone have resisted linking Paradise to the rest of India with bands of steel for so long?  Thus, with equal amounts of trepidation and excitement (and perspiration given the June temperature in Delhi) I set off for Srinagar with my photographer colleague from the Times of India, Manoj Kesharwani. The 80-minute flight was scarcely enough to gulp down some soggy lunch on board before craning our necks to see the craggy, still-snowy tops of the formidable Pir Panjal range, one of the Valley’s rocky guardians and the Jammu-Srinagar rail link’s most implacable hurdle!  On the horizon, the even higher, white peaks of the Zanskar spurs glimmered through the clouds. Was that Nanga Parbat, rearing its proud head above the other massifs? Or was it my imagination, given my life-long fascination for mountains? The Himalayas looked grand even from 35,000 ft, but as the aircraft began its rather precipitous descent into the Valley, they seemed to grow taller. Below, the green expanse of the valley beckoned like Shangri-La — an oasis amid the bare rocks and snow.  No wonder saints and seers, emperors and philosophers, poets and travellers alike have been enchanted by the valley for millennia. I could imagine why Jehangir kept returning there with his beloved Noorjehan, why Jesus was said to have spent his missing years here imbibing its unique syncretic ethos, and indeed why India has been sacrificing so many of our men in uniform for decades to protect this valley from vivisection. This was indeed paradise, and Srinagar its entrepot!  Srinagar, for most people (this writer included) means the Dal lake, flat-bottomed houseboats and skimming shikaras, flower-laden gardens dating back to the Mughal era and handicrafts — images bolstered by Bollywood movies of yore.  More recently Srinagar has meant bandhs at Lal Chowk, hartal calls by the Hurriyat, burning buses, flag marches by troops in camouflage fatigues, stone-throwing, scowling young men, and tales of militant attacks and casualties in ‘encounters’. I barely saw either stereotypical image!  Of the first, I had but a glimpse every day, from the beautifully manicured lawns of the imposing Lalit Grand Palace, the century-old colonial  A short train ride through Kashmir building, once the seat of Kashmir’s royal family. Today it’s Srinagar’s only five-star hotel, perched atop a hill at the head of the high-security Gupkar Road with fabulous views of the Dal Lake below.  The charm of the heritage wing’s Darbar Hall with its magnificent ‘jail’ carpet specially woven in Rawalpindi, and the centuries-old chinar trees that frame a spectacular garden breakfast buffet is irresistible.  The palace’s panelled walls, old mosaic floors, and mullioned windows bespeak a different kind of gracious living than that offered by the grand houseboats anchored on Dal lake, but I was still amazed that the hotel’s 125 rooms, suites and independent cottages were full!  Peak tourist season, never mind the tension....What sangfroid! Even when separatists called a bandh to demand the release of their leader (under house arrest not far from our hotel!) on the day we were to leave, the staff didn’t turn a hair. “Just show your air ticket and the CRPF will let you through,” we were told. And they did!  We whizzed through the state capital on our way to various Northern Railway sites — including the superlative main station at Srinagar with its unbelievably beautiful carved wooden panelling in the portico and waiting room — but that was about as much as we saw of the ‘usual’ sights, good or bad. No sullen mobs, no shut shops, but yes, plenty of uniforms of all kinds, including two amiable armed J&K Police men who were there to guard our ‘expert’ guide, the deputy chief engineer of the railway project.  We also couldn’t miss the speeding Army convoys and eagle-eyed, armed CRPF personnel in trucks guarding hordes of Amarnath yatris in a gaggle of buses, vans, cars and tempos on the highway. At one point a speeding CRPF bus tumbled straight into a paddy field, narrowly missing an old woman.  Concerned, we stopped to help. A clearly tense paramilitary officer rudely told us to go away —if anything happened to the old woman, an ‘incident’ might ensue and we wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of it.... We obeyed. How could life go on under the shadow of a gun, militant or military, I wondered, not surprisingly. Yet it did.  As we ventured off the highway down winding country roads (just what tourists are advised not to do) and as we looked out of train windows, a timeless Kashmir unveiled itself. Each turn brought into view bucolic village habitations with Swiss chalet-like sloping roofs full of hay.  The lowing of cows and baa-ing of sheep made the atmosphere even more Heidi-like! Only, instead of a cherubic Swiss girl, chattering little schoolboys straggling along in twos and threes, looked curiously as our Scorpio or train went by.  Women engrossed in tending cattle or doing housework simply had no time to stand and stare (like their hardworking sisters elsewhere in India)  A short train ride through Kashmir but the men did, unsmilingly. Older men and women — the only ones who seemed to still stick to traditional Kashmiri attire as against the ubiquitous shalwar-kameez for both sexes and Iranian-style headscarves for the women — looked at us pensively as if saying, “They too shall pass...” And in every village, stacks of planed willow staves awaited metamorphosis into cricket bats!  Only a fair, rosy-cheeked woman selling bread at one of the countless village bakeries we passed seemed to have time for a chat. She gamely explained the various kinds of bread the Kashmiris ate according to the occasion and time of day — ranging from a flatbread to macaroon shaped buns to even a sort of doughnut shape. Indeed of bread there was plenty, but some of the rest of India’s most polluting habits seemed to have fortuitously found no hold here: paan and paan masala. Result: sparkling clean walls and environs!  Most of all, everywhere, simply everywhere, nature astounded us with her bounty....It was a journey through paradise for Rs 18 — a 55 km-odd train ride through verdant landscapes that seemed unchanged for centuries. I was surprised that more visitors did not opt for this hassle-free way to take a peek at another face of Kashmir.  As our red and blue train zipped along, a patchwork of eye-wateringly green rice-paddy fields zigzagged into the distance as hazy blue mountains looked down benevolently. Next season, golden yellow mustard flowers would bring forth another visage...  Tall, thin poplars and luxuriant willows marked farm boundaries, their narrow frames offset by the grandiose spread of the ‘royal’ chinars, heavy and wide with antiquity. Streams gurgled every few hundred yards, and birdsong marked a departure from city sounds.  When we got off the train and walked down the high railway embankments — not usually the most savoury of paths — we were greeted by a profusion of wild white daisies and purple thistles, not to mention ganja plants with their distinctive leaves!  Further down, there were acres of orchards — walnut, apricot, almond, apple — their boughs already laden with ripening fruit. Smiling indulgently at my city-slicker exclamations at seeing walnuts still in their fruit stage, one of our armed escorts reached out and plucked me a couple, still in their fleshy casings. Was I in Eden? No, Kashmir.  That’s why, an official informed us that a militant had been eliminated in an encounter not far from a neat, new station we stood at. The windows of another station had been broken some days before by locals angered at something that had nothing to do with the railways. Warnings about unattended bags were repeated over the intercom. The CRPF jawans at intervals along the track and at important bridges, also warned of the snakes that inevitably lurked in this Eden, but it was hard to dampen my feeling of exhilaration.  How could anyone be anything but excited at seeing a playful spring curving amid the walnut trees as boys splashed around, and then realising that it is the mighty Jhelum — or Vaith as the Kashmiris call it, harking back to its Sanskrit name Vitasta?  Or seeing walnuts piled up on market floors like peanuts during a Delhi winter? Or hearing the wrinkled Noor Mohd Bhat insist that just three  A short train ride through Kashmir strands of precious saffron from his crocus fields in Pampore would be enough for any biryani or sweet dish....  There was also a sense of serenity. Through the wide windows of the train I saw another reality of Kashmir, a reaffirmation that life goes on regardless in countless villages, even if the cities reverberate to the beat of geo-politics. Coaches containing normal people trying to live normal lives — college girls on day trips, a bent-over village craftsman laden with wares for the market, middle-aged ladies on shopping expeditions — underlined that thought.  Above all, the very fact that this train plied up and down the troubled valley thrice a day without hindrance or violence (even when everything else is brought to a halt) showed that the yearning for normalcy was as real as other more vocal aspirations. My train-ride through paradise was truly a revelatory experience....