around the world in 180 days

We flew from Delhi to Srinagar, in Kashmir, which in the not-so-distant past has played host to a few skirmishes between India and Pakistan. After the Soviet Union imploded and pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, many of the mujahadeen fighting there came here and fought in the flare up that occurred in the early 90s. Things have been quiet here since 1995 or so, with tensions rising a bit a few years back when India and Pakistan both started rattlng their sabres and revealed their nukes to the world and falling again since then.
The legacy of this past is still very much alive in the heightened military presence in Srinagar. The airport looks like a military base, with lots of camoflaged buildings and soldiers everywhere. The town is also occupied, with soldiers manning every major intersection, brandishing automatic rifles and patrolling with stern looks.
Before we came up here, we asked specifically about the safety of the region, knowing that it had been a dangerous area in the past. We read about the military presence in our Lonely Planet and I asked the travel agent that booked us if this was still the case (quite often, Lonely Planets are several years out of date, despite being a 2006 edition or whatever; it’s been a source of frustration for us) and he assured us that it wasn’t. He was apparently engaging in the ancient art (quite common in India) known as lying.
There’s nothing to worry about, though. The military are here because the area is disputed; they’ve been here since Partition Day in 1947 (or ’48 or ’49, I can’t remember), when Pakistan became the world’s first muslim state, and they’ll remain here as long as the gov’ts of India and Pakistan can’t get along. There haven’t been any attacks here in years and we’re keeping a close watch on the news, so if anything does come up, we’ll be out of here immediately.
The people we’ve met since we arrived have told us about the damage the war has done to the people of Kashmir. Tourism is the main industry in this area, along with associated industries like woodcarving and carpet weaving, and in 1989 when the last war began, tourism vanished as an income source. Many Kashmiris moved away, some starved and a few managed to remain. Both men we’ve met spoke of the war with great bitterness. “It’s not the people,” they both said. “It’s the governments.”
When we arrived, we also got to have a money talk with the boat’s manager, who wanted to sell us a bunch of additional activities that we couldn’t afford. He put together a beautiful package that would have been an extra $700 on top of the $400 we already spent to get here. It was way out of our budget and we told him so, but he didn’t believe us. “You never talk money with two people,” he kept saying. “Americans and Saudi Arabians. Americans have all the money and Saudis have all the oil.”
We tried to explain that not everyone in the US is rich, but he wasn’t buying it. Of course, we are rich, for India. Just being able to come here is a great privledge and wen both feel very fortunate to have been born in a place where a trip like ours is possible. That still doesn’t mean we can just throw away money like it means nothing. After some tough talk, we managed to work out an itinerary that’s more in line with our finances. I think part of the problem is that most Americans he sees here really are rich, and don’t sweat dropping $1100 on five days of vacation, but I don’t think most Americans that come here are traveling for as long as we are either.
Enough is enough. Goodnight.

Tags: India, Kashmir, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 5:00 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.