elnomada.org-Rainawari by shikara
I have a liking for challenges beyond my means. I believe that they keep me alive and give me a measure of how old I am becoming. I am not sure that I like the idea of becoming physically old so I put the body to test at times to prove myself right. It does not always work.
In one of my middle-age crisis I came to the idea of crossing the Himalaya by bike. To walk the distance would have been probably very enjoyable and self-rewarding. But nothing I would consider a challenge.
Probably this is where the idea of the bicycle came to me.
I learned to bike when I was seventeen. For most people biking is a childhood natural step. I was not that lucky. I was supposed to travel to Holland with a youth group and had the idea that the Dutch got nowhere without a bike. Being on foot there seemed to me a way of losing face. At that tender age this was nothing I was going to accept. Besides, my intuition was not farfetched.
Several weekends of training at the old roman circus of the city where I grew up, while carrying a baby pink bike of a spoiled cousin and the help of some joggers caught unaware the same spot brought me unsteadily but definitely over my goal.
I was luckier than my mother though. Her father forbade her and her sisters to bike altogether. He stated that they would lose their virginity by doing so. After all, he was a physician and knew about those things.
All of this is just to say that when I got into a bike at Srinagar I had less that a steady pedal and what is worst, I was aware of it.
Himalaya is a broad territory over several countries. In some of them the roads are rather flat for being jungle regions in the plains at the foot of the range, like south Nepal or in high plateaus in the Tibetan regions, like in Chinese Tibet or Mongolia.
I chose none of them. I bought a ticket to Srinagar in the troubled Kashmiri region of North India and never checked the news before doing so.
I ignored that the region had changed a lot in terms of security. Never a peaceful place since partition, it was a troubled tragic place when I first spent time there around the year 2000.
It seemed like sometime in the dark ages. Indian Army was overwhelmingly deployed all over the territory. The proportion was in average one soldier for 14 civilians. Srinagar was a bunker on itself. Every 200 meters there was a checkpoint secured with sandbags at the least.
India had a double goal to defeat insurgency and Pakistan.
15 years later, insurgency and Pakistan stand in the same place. India grew economically and put his interests in more pacific and intelligent things. Kashmiris sandwiched between two nuclear Powers and pulled by several extremist groups still struggles to be the independent pearl of the region. While they are divided two thirds one third between India and Pakistan through an infamous “line of control” regulated by the UN, they seem to be undeterred on feeling Kashmiri, independent and above all, a welcoming country.
In 2016 though, Kashmir was relatively calm and thriving. Tourism was back to levels previous to 1990 and most bunkers had vanished. Instead, the budget saved in defence brought great development in the rest of the country, including the marvellous metro in Delhi.
A month before leaving, Two days after a separatist leader from the main separatist group Hizb-ul-mujahideen, was killed in an area 80 Km south of Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley. It all started all over again after six years of relative calm. Demonstrations were widespread and police repression rife. By end of July the civilian death toll grew to 43 casualties according to the national pro India newspaper “The Hindu”. Most of them were civilians, including at least a young woman. Despite the cutting of all phone and Internet networks, Kashmiris were coordinated and organized and raised their voice.
I felt not so sure about this being the best moment for jumping into a bike starting at the Kashmir valley, around me definitely all were warnings and requests to call the trip off. I flew to Delhi and still did not know my final decision. So I followed my usual train of thought when it is about critical decisions. I had the bike. I had the ticket. I had the intention. To go back probably gives bad luck.
I flew to Srinagar and as soon as I put my feet on land I knew that my decision was right. The air smelled the right thing and the sky had the right color. I was mistaken with a local and asked not to register (registration being only for foreigners) and asked in Kashmiri if I needed a taxi.
I wondered how far a taxi would bring me in the middle of a curfew that I did not feel like braving. After some negotiation they brought me to the outskirts of the city, at the shores of the Dal Lake.
I put the bicycle still in a box on a local boat, the yellow shikaras and realised that I had no idea where I wanted to head. After some thinking I decided to try the place I knew would be further away from trouble and gave the name of an old acquaintance. Two hours and a dream sail later I arrived at Nagin Lake.
Srinagar was welcoming me. I had the feeling of arriving home.
Next chapter: The Srinagar I knew.
