On the highway to Heaven

Jammu to Srinaghar

 

With Mix still feeling ill, we booked three seats in the jeep so that she could lie down. Thank goodness for PVM instant millie meal, this was the only thing either of us could handle to digest and hold in our stomach (to those budget boulderers that swear by Ace, absolutely no comparison...the nutritional value of PVM wins hands down ;). The journey was prospected to last 7 hours. Considering that it's only 300 km long, this perplexed me slightly. However, the fact that our driver was never exceeding 50km/h seemed to explain it. The signs on the road side provided a fantastic source of entertainment along the way. Here are some of my favourites:

 

After whiskey driving risky.

Life is short enough don't make it shorter.

Don't be silly in the hilly.

Mind you, the tortoise also won the race.

Life is a journey, complete it.

Drink & drive. Eat your peril.

You are driving on a highway not a runway.

 

It surprised me that people took these speed warnings to heart, but they would overtake on blind corners, hooting loudly to warn oncoming traffic. When we hit the first mountain pass, everything suddenly snapped into perspective. Oh, how to put he majesty of the Great Himalayas into words? Suddenly 30km/h turned into a frightening speed when overtaking around blind corners, 1000 m sheer vertical drop to the side. Zigzagging up and down mountains. The previously entertaining road signs now cast a morbid shade on the experience. To the enjoyment of our co-travellers and the dispair of our driver, Mix took a couple of chunders out of the car window. Spectacular mountain views opened onto rice field valley vistas as we arrived in Kashmir. 

 

Srinaghar, City of Gardens, finally welcomes us at 9pm after over 11 hours of travel. Glittering lights and gently rocking shikaras (gondolas) on Dal Lake. Arrival in a magic fantasy land of water, calm and cool, as we are steered across the lake to our houseboat. We melt into our new surroundings, charmed beyond expectations.

Jammu Blues

2008 ** : Kashmir declared most dangerous place in the world by Bill Clinton (for all that his opinion is worth). Our journey a 30 hour train ride (sleeper class, suffocating heat) from Mumbai to Jammu (jammu & kashmir province), on the Pakistani border. Our ticket reservation status RAC - still don't know what it means, but the result is that two people have to share one seat. Still struggle to follow the logic, noone seemed to be able to speak enough engllish to elaborate. very unhappy mikhaela and a restless night. Most vital gear for the ride: Black Diamond spot (headlamp...like all good things available at drifters), used by mix to fend off three freaky guys that had settled half a metre from her and were staring at her sleeping at 1am. Nothing as unpleasant as a 75 lumen light shining directly in your eyes. Good work Black Diamond!

Eventually arrived in Jammu. I was distraught to find the airport closed when I got there...no luck at fetching my bag and getting clean that night. In the mean time Mix had come down with a ghastly flu. Unsure at this point whether we would be able to continue our journey the following day. Delicious fruit shakes, friendly hand shakes (from shijk-like looking men), only non-Indian people in town it seems. Plenty of blatant stares on us, everywhere.

The morning comes, I am reunited with my bag. Mix is down, unable to travel on. Me still hobbling up and down, down and up the dusty, scorched roads of Jammu. The heat is unbearable. In the night I am hit by food poisoning or something of that sort. Spend the remaining hours hugging the toilet.

Finally the morning comes after an unfulfilling night's sleep. We decide to take a Jeep and head north towards Srinaghar.

** author's comment: misread the Lonely Planet. Bill actually said this in the 90s... some two decades ago. Some incidents happened in 2008, but they weren't as bad. No worries, Kashmir is a safe place. Sorry for misrepresenting history.

A tumultous start to a long journey...

Ah, why is there this preconception that mountaineering is dangerous? Damn the people that invented staircases and kitchen floors, on which one can twist one's ankle when performing the simple task of trying to pick up one's luggage. On lives my opinion that the most ordinary tasks result in the most painful accidents. Yip, just a couple of hours before departure I unfortunately twisted my ankle, resulting in a lot of pain and intense swelling. Sigh. The up side was being wheeled around all airports in a wheelchair, thus skipping queues and gathering many sympathy points. On the flip side Mix and I lost quite a lot of credibility when claiming that we were on our way to the Himalayas to do mountaineering. Either way, I didn't imagine arriving in Mumbai in a wheelchair...

...Just as I didn't imagine that I'd arrive without my luggage. The pro of my bag still being in South Africa is that I didn't have to lug it around Mumbai, which would have been close to impossible with my foot. Instead JetAir will send it to meet me in Kashmir. Luckily Mix bought a set of Black Diamond trekking poles (at Drifters ;)which I put to good use hobbling around the streets of Mumbai.

Other impressions of Mumbai: sticky heat and suffocating humidity, smells that "assault the senses" (quote Mix) - interesting insert for climbers, Bombay duck is not a duck but a smelly fish that people dry on the streets of Mumbai for consumption -, cleaner streets and less people than expected and Indians that want to take photos of us. We had a good chuckle sitting at The Gateway to India, a great colonial arch by the sea, as three sets of Indian families discretely sneaked up to us to pose for a photograph with us. Haha.