This piece was written in 2009 – things have not changed a great deal in spite of recent reports of curfews in Indian Kashmir. Travelers should not be put off. Things on the ground are seldom as bad or as dangerous as the media would have us believe and the Kashmiris, after all, are desperately keen to rebuild their tourist trade and will look after you.
For tourists prepared to ignore the dramatics of the world’s and especially the rest of India’s press stories, the divisions in the state of Kashmir and Jammu are not as obviously the great wound between India and Pakistan but more the difference between the lush and beautiful valley and it’s courteous and dignified people and the barren hills of the plateau of Ladakh. Leh, the capital of Buddhist Ladakh, only a handful of decades out of the relative isolation of an inaccessible kingdom in the Himalayas, has become, for its brief summer season, a tourist and trekking hub, with foreign tourists apparently outnumbering locals in the main bazaars of the town. In the winter, ‘though, carpeted in thick snow, the tourists and the traders from Jammu and Srinagar who cater to them return from whence they came and traditional Ladakhi life once again holds sway as sociable and fun-loving locals drink local beer, chang, and party with friends and family to survive cold so extreme that toothpaste freezes in the tube and changing clothes is out of the question.
Life in Ladakh in the past could hardly be said to be easy but the extraordinary contentment with a subsistence life that revolved around seasons, family, community and religious ritual and festival is still apparent in the villages away from from Leh where work and play continue for the moment with much the same rhythms as the past. NGOs these days struggle here as in every underdeveloped and poor area to improve health, education, nutrition, hygiene and high child mortality rates but awareness of other lives has not so far diminished the good humour and high spirits of Ladakhis. A passionate pride in home place and environment is habitual among Indians, indeed to the extent sometimes that the outsider is left wondering how on earth this vast country holds together at all even without politically inspired problems. In Ladakh this means that most Ladakhis who leave for work or education have return as their goal and remain at all times deeply rooted in their villages and mountains.
In the Kashmir valley too there is enormous pride in everything Kashmir has been, beloved of Mogul emperors and as much by the less glamorous invaders of the British Raj. The intensity of pride in the valley means a deep distrust of close neighbours, even the peaceful Ladakhis whose morality and honesty is questioned no less than that of plains’ Indians. Kashmiris are prickly, no doubt about it, but they have been so regularly and endlessly damned by the press and by ill-informed foreign politicians with little understanding and no experience of the people or situation of the valley, that they can hardly be blamed for that. As it is the extraordinary handicrafts of Kashmir, the exquisite shawls and carpets in particular have been ruthlessly exploited by greedy markets and traders, not, it has to be said, all outsiders, to the extent that there is little appreciation these days for pieces once understood as works of art and now merely as commodities. The Chiru antelopes that provided the fine wool for fabled shatoosh shawls for hundreds of years are almost extinct, the effect of an impatient market with no patience with rarity value. Factories in Lubhiana and elsewhere produce thousands of pretty enough machine made and cheap versions of shawls that would otherwise take weeks, months or even years to produce and ersatz versions of Kashmiri carpets are made on looms around the world.
There are those like the Kashmir Loom Company and other determined and foresighted businesses fighting with some success for continued recognition of the old skills that make a handmade shawl or carpet as much to be valued and understood as an old master painting. They are up against other problems as young people dismiss old family traditions and skills in favour of quicker, easier ways to make a buck. It is only to be hoped that the skills can at least be kept alive by the encouragement of a few and the discerning collectors who are their clients. It is hard ‘though, when a carpet made by hand over two years and involving the skills of a dozen craftsmen from 4 or 5 families sells wholesale for a couple of thousand dollars, the price only rising later by hundreds of percent for the retailer’s profit.
Tourism should once again be the other money spinner for the valley but the scare stories and the advice of foreign ministries and offices abroad have created impregnable barriers to most holiday makers. Good value, stunning scenery, excellent food, magnificent fishing, beautiful gardens, remarkable culture and unique shopping, do not, it seems, outweigh the conviction that every delight comes with attached explosions. As it is the houseboats on the Dal and Nageen lakes are fuller than they have been, young Israelis, against all advice of their government are the most apparent nationality both here and in Ladakh, but it is not enough. They are as a rule traveling on a freedom kick after compulsory military service and often more interested in cheap drink and dope than culture and carpets.
Since I was last in Kashmir, three years ago, there have certainly been changes and not only in the weight of motor vehicles in Leh. Perhaps the wheel is turning a little towards a greater optimism. The new, young and energetic Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, inheritor and emulator of a family tradition, is setting about the infrastructure of the state with a will. The precipitous road through the mountain passes from Srinagar to Kargil and on to Leh is being improved dramatically and even at a relatively early stage the journey time has been cut by some hours. The promotion of skiing and winter sports in Gulmarg and Sonamarg may become increasingly effective against the vast costs of skiing holidays in Europe and as the essential infrastructure for winter tourism grows. Other sports such as golf are being catered for with new international level courses – Omar Abdullah’s Father, Farouk, was not loved for his use of public money to build a perfect golf course in Srinagar at a time of extreme strife, shortage of housing and public works but such extravagance may pay dividends in time.
Meanwhile a razor wired and massive army presence causes the greatest depredations on the state and adds the most visual weight to the doomsayer stories we all read and hear so regularly. Less obvious than it was in Srinagar a few years ago, the people of the valley still detest this colonizing force and the cost of its existence. Whereas, in more laid back Ladakh, a hearts and minds approach of school building and fraternization has created a reasonably easy relationship, mistrust of the political and military centres of Hindu India combined with local pride does not allow any hope of a comfortable compromise in the valley. For the outside spectator the costs of its massive army, a permanent occupying and ill occupied force throughout Indian border territories, is, in the face of extremes of perpetual poverty in rural and urban India, mismanagement at best, immoral at worst.
