FEBRUARY 19, 2022 – When I was a kid, I tacked a world map to my bedroom wall. Kashmir was depicted in white and blue stripes, reflecting that it was in dispute between India and Pakistan. No such striping appeared elsewhere on the map, thus rendering Kashmir especially exotic. Once I discovered that the world’s highest mountain range occupied Kashmir, I was even more intrigued by what appeared as the top of a Sikh’s headwrap—when I saw that India’s boundaries outlined the portrait of a Sikh with a pointed chin.
When I planned my odyssey, Kashmir was definitely “on the map.”
Getting there from Delhi was a magical journey. It started aboard an aged, night train bound for Jammu on the Pakistan border. I made reservations for a compartment and upon boarding, discovered I had European company, the first I encountered in India: John Chapple, a 52-year-old BBC producer, whose wife and sons were back in London while he searched India for film ideas; and “Thierry,” a shrewd 20-year-old, long-haul, French traveler with an impressive knowledge of India. In no time we three established an easy rapport.
(John and I became especially good friends. Months later I was a guest of John and Stella at their family’s beautiful home outside London. Several years afterward, they were dinner guests at our house in Minnesota.)
Late into the night, we swapped stories about India. While we described scam artists we’d encountered, a spry old Québécois, Julian, joined us from a nearby compartment. When I mentioned “Lawrence Mitchell” (See 2/16 post), he laughed and said, “Same guy tried to scam me yesterday.”
Before the train departed Delhi, an unofficial-appearing attendant in traditional Indian garb came along to take breakfast orders. I requested my usual—toast, eggs, and bacon . . . and chai—but was skeptical that anything would materialize, especially given that the order-taker wasn’t taking notes. At a stop early the next morning, however, my breakfast, along with John’s and Thierry’s, magically appeared in our compartment. We feasted like royalty.
In Jammu we found our way to the bus station and signed up for a “Class A” bus departing at 1:00 p.m. for the overnight trip to the Kashmiri capital. In my letter home I described the vehicle as a “ramshackle veteran of many rugged, mountain miles.” [. . .] “For nine hours,” I continued, “we bumped along, up and down a steep winding mountain road. Or so it was called, but in fact it was an obstacle course of ruts, mud, boulders, and chuckholes. In sections the top-heavy bus leaned over cliffs and stopped my pulse. Such a hairy ride, of course, included spectacular scenery.”
A notable feature of the bus was that the structure above the windows move in the opposite direction from the structure below the windows as we rocked and rolled our way north. I concluded that after many punishing journeys, the vertical supports between windows had weakened considerably. Given the weight of over-loaded roof cargo, I wondered if we’d all be crushed by an implosion of bags and belongings . . . goats and chickens.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
