Cool Kashmir

Kashmir
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From Delhi we went up to Kashmir . Upon landing and on the way into town we noticed a large army presence. This wasn’t surprising , given the region’s history . You’d have to be a bit silly to try anything stupid, for those fellows and their large, imposing guns were everywhere. We stayed on a moored houseboat on Dal Lake in the capital, Srinagar . Our room had a wood fire, which was just as well, as it got pretty flipping cold up there. They gave us ponchos to wear to keep the cold out, but the ponchos also served the

Kashmir
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purpose of making us blend in a bit more. They seem to be the regional dress. We had to get a rowboat to and from the mainland, and one day went on a bit of a cruise on it, which was very nice. Our guide from the houseboat kept getting us to go to shops along the way, which we got a tad sick of after the first couple. In the end I just threw him and his commission over the side of the boat and figured we’d guide ourselves.

The only problem was we had to dodge the crap on the ground on the way.

Kashmiri kids
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We went up into the Himalaya for a spot of hiking/trekking. On the first day we rode mules for some of the way up a

mountain and then went back to the house. It was just a bit of a warm up. The house we stayed in was very simple, and didn’t seem to have a kitchen or a bathroom. There was a rather feral dunny out the back, which we avoided. A couple of hundred yards behind the house was a lovely, freezing river. The only problem was we had to dodge the crap on the ground on the way. In the evening the guys around there had a bit of a Kashmiri sing-song in the living room/cooking area. It

In Kashmir
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was quite a surreal experience, one that prats on shows like Getaway

would gush about in a highly annoying way if they ever actually left

their five star hotels to experience such a thing. The next morning we went for a longer walk/ride on a different route. This one took us a lot higher, into an area with a lot of snow. It got pretty tough going after a while, when we couldn’t walk without sinking into thigh-deep snow with every step. Even our four-legged friends had difficulty. It was a real novelty, but summer would be better for an extensive trek. The mountains in that region are just massive.

The horse man
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Kashmiri people look very similar to those from places like

Afghanistan . They don’t look Indian at all, and it did feel like a different country up there. While a lot of Indians are pretty in-your-face, in Kashmir they were more reserved. They weren’t outwardly friendly, but friendly enough when they had reason to speak to us. Most of the blokes look like the types that tend to end up locked in prisons in places like Nauru and Guantanamo Bay . If

they tried to enter Australia or the US with those beards they’d

Wenny in the Himalaya
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immediately be issued with orang jumpsuits and sent off to be tortured

for four or five years.

From Srinagar we got a bus back to Delhi , which took 26 hours or so. It was only about 900km away, but much of it was so winding that it seemed to take forever to cover any distance at all. It was a beautiful journey though, with much of the scenic part covered during

daylight. We didn’t stay in Delhi long before going on a tour of Rajasthan. We

The horse dude, me and our guide in Kashmir
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don’t normally travel like that (doing everything independently is more

our thing), but if there’s any country that’s worth going for part of

it by private car, it’s India . We didn’t have a lot of time, so figured we’d give it a go once. We had a driver called Vicky (male, and a bit of a Fonz at that), who was very amusing and spoke in rapid-fire Hindi. He also had excellent driving skills, especially when he was

sober.