Himalaya (2004) Page 12

  Mr Butt admits there were times when he was near to tears. Staff he’d known all his working life had to be laid off, and at the nadir of his fortunes the army commandeered his property and set up camp in the Garden of the Morning Breeze. Things improved briefly from 1995 to 1999 but any hope of a steady recovery is stymied by every fresh atrocity, every fresh confrontation.

  I can only feel grateful to this cheerful, distracted man for keeping going, for his boats are neither functional nor cheap to run. Mine is very splendid, with elaborately carved woodwork inside and out, a carpeted sitting room with very fine crewel-work embroidery and a grand dining room with cedar panelling, chandeliers, cut glass and an oval rosewood dining table.

  This evening the skies darken, the lake empties of boats and after a brief and eerie period of silence and total calm the heavens open and there’s nothing to do but sit tight and watch the rain splashing in great glassy drops on the water lily beds that surround the boats.

  If anything, Dal Lake is even more beautiful in the rain.

  Day Forty One : Srinagar

  The storm rumbles on through the night and as the growls of retreating thunder merge with the cries of the muezzin I reach for my torch (there has been no mains power since the rain began). It’s five o’clock, but I feel wide awake. I dreamt very vividly last night. Super-charged dreams, as if the electricity in the air had given them an extra intensity. I saw my father very clearly and I rushed up and hugged him, something I never did when he was alive, and heard myself say ‘Hello Dad!’ except it wasn’t my voice at all but the voice of my son.

  An hour later dawn is breaking and we’re driving out onto the wet and windswept streets of Srinagar. The night-time curfew has only just ended and the streets are empty save for foot patrols and packs of stray dogs. Srinagar must have been a handsome city once. There are still many tall, steeply gabled, half-timber, half-brick buildings, a few onion domes and a magnificent mosque with roofs, turrets and spires with echoes of Russia and lands to the north.

  The Indian government has 600,000 army and security forces in Kashmir and their ubiquitous presence has coarsened the city and compromised whatever beauty it might have had. Apart from bunkers and armoured patrol cars, there are barbwired and sandbagged surveillance posts, sports pitches that have been turned into army camps, and I’m told there’s not a single cinema operating in Kashmir’s capital now. All have been requisitioned for military accommodation.

  On the corner of the busy main street, Lal Chowk, and opposite the heavily fortified Telegraph Office stands the Greenway Hotel. Two weeks ago two suspected Islamic militants holed up here and withstood a siege for 20 hours before police blew the building apart with mortar fire. Ten people were killed and 40 wounded and the Greenway now consists of little more than half a roof, scorched black walls and a crumpled framework of charred and blistered timbers. Around the time this happened six more people were killed when a car blew up in the vegetable market.

  On the edge of the old town is a patch of green grass and a stagnant rubbish-filled pond. Horses graze and dogs chase, snarl, fight and mate amongst the filth. Next door to this soiled little field is a small cemetery, neatly walled and fenced. Inside, gravestones fringed in green and topped with sturdy metal pennants mark the resting place of those who have died in the struggle. An arch over the entrance announces it as the Kashmir Martyrs’ Graveyard. Most of the graves are inscribed in Urdu, but beneath a cypress a neglected metal sign in English reads:

  ‘Master Shaheed Yawar Says

  Do Not Shun The Gun

  My Dear Younger Ones

  The War For Freedom

  Is Yet To Be Won.’

  It’s rusty and fading and must have been there for some time, unlike two freshly dug mounds, crudely decorated with a border of pebbles, containing a mother and a three-month-old baby killed in crossfire outside the Greenway Hotel. There are some 400 graves here and many more lie in similar plots throughout Kashmir. Flowers have been planted around the place, perhaps to represent on earth the gardens the martyrs are promised in heaven. Though governments may see the Kashmir struggle as the troubles, most of those who lie here saw it as a war.

  This is brought forcibly and uncomfortably home to me by the bizarre conflation of our own patriotic rhetoric that is inscribed above the arched gateway of the Kashmir Martyrs’ Graveyard: ‘Lest You Forget We Have Given Our Today for Tomorrow of Yours’.

  The only place where the violence seems not to have made a mark is on the water, and along one arm of the lake 60 or 70 houseboats, with jolly names like ‘King of Kashmir’, ‘Himalayan Fantasies’ and ‘Buckingham Palace’, still court the tourists. They’re moored up cheek by jowl, end on to the bank, cabins tweely curtained, fenced sundecks ringed with pot plants, waiting for the next boom. Their design is cosy and old-fashioned and can’t have changed much since the houseboat era began in the 1880s, when the British got around laws preventing outsiders from buying lakeside property by building their mansions on the water instead.

  A white-crested kingfisher studies the limpid surface of the lake. Our presence on the bank has already attracted a flotilla of water taxis and eager salesmen flaunting jewellery, papier-mache and various ethnic trinkets.

  ‘Where are you from?’ shouts one man.

  When we tell him he shouts manically back.

  ‘England! Fish and Chips! Bangers and Mash! Marmite Sandwiches! Good Heavens!’

  August, they say, had been a good month for Indian tourists. Then came the September violence and 30 per cent of the bookings were cancelled immediately.

  I go out again on the lake at dusk. The rain has cleared the air and the water is a mirror, reflecting a huge golden sunset. It’s ironic that of all the places I’ve been on my journey so far, this should be the closest I’ve come to perfect peace.

  Day Forty Two : Ladakh

  The looming presence of the mountains around two sides of Dal Lake reminded me that, after almost two weeks, we were once again getting close to the high Himalaya. This morning, as we land at Leh after a complicated flight from Srinagar via Delhi, the change from foothills to mountains is complete. Nature is not generous up here. The air is powder dry and the rocky slopes all round us are bare and deeply gullied. For the first time in a long while I feel my lungs working, pumping a little harder to pull in the oxygen, for we are at 11,650 feet (3550 m), nearly two and a quarter miles above sea level.

  Sonia Gandhi, daughter-in-law of one premier and wife of another, is visiting this remote province and her convoy of chunky white Ambassador cars, honest but unglamorous, winds its way through the security chicane and out of the airport, while we are still waiting for our bags.

  Nothing is quite as I expected. The porters and baggage handlers are stocky thick-set women wrapped in red cardigans, headscarves and baggy blue pantaloons and they jostle with each other for the heaviest bags. Their features are more Mongolian than Indo-Aryan, with darker, berry-brown complexions and broad cheeks.

  The only similarity with where we’ve come from is the heavy military presence: jet fighters in revetments at the airport, a sprawling barracks on the way into Leh. Once again there is a sensitive border nearby, only this time it’s not Pakistan they’re worried about, but China.

  Ladakh, meaning ‘many passes’, is a part of Jammu and Kashmir but has little in common with the rest of India, nor indeed with the rest of the state. Over half the population is Buddhist and its strategic position on the old Silk Road means it shares more with Tibet and Central Asia.

  The architecture, too, is different from anything I’ve seen so far: stone walls and rugged houses with flat roofs that seem to have bushy undergrowth piled on top of them. (I never worked out if these rooftop toupees were fuel stores or a form of insulation.) The run-down palace that dominates the centre of Leh is on a grand scale and has the same upwardly tapering walls that I’ve seen in pictures of the Potala Palace in Lhasa.

  The streets of Leh are busy, in a low-tech way. A row of men,
some holding prayer wheels, sit cross-legged on the pavements behind sacks rolled back to show off various nuts and spices and fruits. I buy rather a lot of apricot kernels, because someone said they make you live longer, and am tempted by the piles of shawls, scarves and rugs made from pashm, the fine underfleece of goat’s wool that is the speciality of this part of India. The pashmina salesmen look particularly doleful, as their trade, like everyone else’s in Kashmir, is heavily affected by the troubles. They seem to face the situation with remarkable stoicism. I’m back among mountain people - patient, taciturn and politely wary of outsiders. Masters of survival.

  There is evidence that their independence is being compromised by various life-improvement campaigns, from tidiness to road safety. At a busy road junction a prominent and colourful display board advises the locals to ‘Learn and Repeat, Signs and Traffic Signals’.

  As I’m reading it a black cow, followed by her calf, emerges from behind the board and, without signals of any kind, saunters off into the rush-hour traffic.

  I think we should use cows for traffic calming at home. They’re much more effective than sleeping policemen. And they give milk.

  The road safety campaign extends beyond Leh. As we drive across the desert, following the slim green band of cultivation along the River Indus, we’re treated to an assortment of useful warnings: ‘Peep Peep, Don’t Sleep’, ‘Drive Like Hell - You’ll Be There’ and ‘Be Mr Late Rather Than the Late Mr’, which is marginally our favourite. The road surface is good, better than you’d expect in such a remote place. The reason, of course, is that the highway is built and maintained by the army, or ‘The Mountain Tamers’, as they like to call themselves.

  It’s not road safety they’re worried about up here, it’s invasion.

  The scenery has a spare and minimal beauty and the buildings along the way, though few and far between, are very dramatic. Some ten miles along the highway to Manali, the walls of the old palace of the kings of Leh rear up along a prominent ridge to the north of the road. A king hasn’t lived there for 400 years, but the evidence of power and wealth still clings to the place, both in the scale of the ruins and, on a nearby hillside, row upon row of crumbling white monuments. From a distance they resemble lines of half-melted snowmen, with the outlines of once square bases, conical middles and pointed tops now soft and imprecise. These stupas, or chortens, as they’re called in Tibetan, contain the remains of lamas and monks from the monastery attached to the palace as well as members of the royal family and their possessions.

  They vary in size, the highest being almost 20 feet tall. Usually situated in favourable geomantic locations, their design represents steps to enlightenment. They are constructed on five levels, with the square base symbolizing the earth and the tapering tops the sky and stars. As I wander among them I can see that few are intact. Most are leaning or cracked down the sides and all look as if they may have been opened up at some time. Intriguingly, many seem to have been freshly whitewashed, suggesting someone is still looking after them.

  I have the feeling, as I stand in the middle of this field of whited sepulchres with little more than a stand of poplars growing in the valley below, that there was a time when these bare hills on the banks of the Indus must have supported a small empire. What was so different then? More water perhaps, a wider flood plain or perhaps just the power and influence that came from living on the Silk Route.

  As we head east more stunning monasteries and temples appear out of nowhere. Thikse straddles an outcrop of rock with the smaller outbuildings that are the monks’ quarters wrapped around the steep sides below it. This has been a working monastery (or gompa, in Tibetan) for nearly 1000 years and 60 lamas still live here.

  The richest and most striking of the great Indus valley gompas is Hemis, another half-hour’s drive along the main road and then by a side track up into a narrow gorge squeezed between walls of striped granite, folded and thrust upwards at 45 degrees to the plain below.

  The last part of the climb to the monastery is up a long stone staircase. By the time I reach the top my breathing is shallow and my legs feel like lead, but the dramatic entrance makes me glad I persevered.

  Despite the narrow site, the courtyard that opens out beyond the main gateway gives a heady sense of space. High stone walls rise on three sides while the fourth is open to the bare rock slopes beyond. The walls are covered in paintings and a line of prayer wheels runs along one side. Another mighty flight of steps leads to the prayer hall, whose entrance is flanked by wooden pillars with carved figure-heads and richly coloured paintings of dragons and gods. A wooden gallery runs around the walls and an arcade below has what look like very ancient wall paintings of the Buddha. Among the treasures of Hemis is a thangka so precious and huge that it is only displayed in public every 12 years. 2004 is the next time it will be exhibited. We’ve missed it by a matter of months.

  We drive on as far as Chemrey Gompa, another monastery topping a carefully selected crag. Can’t help but marvel at the careful painting of these monastery walls and the way the white, brown and maroon, and the timber and stone construction, harmonize so elegantly with the dry and tawny landscape around.

  By now, all of us are feeling the press of altitude and by the time we’ve returned to Leh and eaten momos (Tibetan stuffed dumplings) and noodles, none of us has much energy left. There only remains one thing to do before bed and that’s to raise a glass of beer to Roger and Nigel, who were both with me exactly 15 years ago today, filming my departure from the Reform Club and the start of Around the World in Eighty Days.

  Nepal

  Day Forty Four : Kathmandu

  We arrived here last night from Delhi on the penultimate night of Dasain, a big Nepali festival, and though badly in need of some rest and recuperation after our Indian adventure, the final day’s celebrations cannot be missed.

  To start the day we’ve been asked by Pratima Pande, a formidable, energetic, Gordonstoun-educated Nepali, to watch a puja, a ritual act of worship, at the home of one of her in-laws. This being the first time I’ve ever been to Nepal, I’m craning my head out of the car window as we drive there. I have a sense of streets that are less hectic and a city much easier on the eye than those we’ve seen these past few weeks. Buildings look like buildings rather than structures for supporting billboards.

  The house is comfortable but not opulent. As we arrive a group of musicians are parading around the garden before taking up a position on the far side of a small swimming pool. It’s a bit of a squeeze, as two of them are wielding large, curved horns.

  I’m told that this is Bijaya Dasami, the ‘victorious tenth day’ of the Dasain festival and Pratima and her husband, mother-in-law, brothers-in-law, nephews, nieces and cousins are here to celebrate King Rama’s victory over the demon Ravana, helped by Shiva’s consort, Durga.

  I’m desperately trying to get all this down in my notebook when the music starts and the family priest, an unassuming, modestly dressed figure, who looks as if he might have come to fix the plumbing, steps forward. The exact timing of the puja is very auspicious and it cannot be delayed for foreign film crews. He sets the ball rolling by applying a dab of yellow to the forehead of the oldest member of the family, Pratima’s 82-year-old mother-in-law. Today, Pratima tells me, everyone in Nepal, from the King downwards, will wear this mark, the tika.

  After some light family argument over the exact order of things, the ceremony continues, in strictly hierarchical fashion, with the five brothers, and then the children, kissing the feet of their elders and giving each other the male tika, made from a preparation of curd, rice and vermilion powder. Jamara, shoots of barley, are placed on the head or in a garland around the neck as a symbol of fertility and longevity.

  As an outsider I’m struck by how seriously all this is taken. Pratima’s brothers-in-law are hard-nosed, professional people, one a doctor, one a banker, two others in the army. They’re dressed in the labada salwar, a knee-length tunic, with tight leggings and black leather
shoes, but over it they wear a Western-style sports jacket.

  Many of them have been educated in Britain or America, their children speak fluent English and go to private schools. Yet here they are taking part in an ancient and rural ritual with a thoroughness that one can’t imagine among their counterparts in the West.

  The first thing to remember, says Pratima, is that not only is Hinduism the religion of 90 per cent of Nepal, the Nepalis take pride in being more scrupulous in their observance of festivals. The Indians, she says, have shortened their ceremonies.

  ‘We take three days to get married. They do it in a day!’

  She herself is off to a private audience at which she will be given tika and blessed by the King, who is some sort of relative (they’re both from the Rana family). This afternoon, he will be doing the same for the public in the grounds of the palace. Would I like to come along?

  The prospect of meeting the king of a country I’ve only been in for 12 hours appeals in a surreal sort of way, and I scurry back to the Yak and Yeti Hotel to find a tie and get my only jacket pressed.

  There is a certain amount of morbid curiosity here, for the Nepali monarchy was very nearly wiped out in June 2001, when the King and Queen and seven other members of the family were murdered by the Crown Prince, who then turned a gun on himself. Rumours abound as to what really happened but it seems he was a heavy drinker, loved guns and flew into an hysterical rage when his father refused him permission to marry the girl he wanted.

  At three o’clock I’m with Pratima in the grounds of the Royal Palace, blinking a little wearily in the bright sunshine as King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, the late Crown Prince’s uncle and incarnation of Vishnu the preserver, descends his front steps between statues of guardian animals - dragons, horses, peacocks, dolphins and elephants - to the strains, and in this case strains is the right word, of a Scottish-sounding dirge weirdly played by a pipe band in red and white plaid scarves and white gaiters.