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The government tourism information office in Drass is hardly a good advertisement for the delights of Kashmir and Ladakh. Its VIP reception center is blackened, a victim of shelling from notorious Tiger Hill, which looms ominously behind the small town. A heavy shell casing is a grim reminder of the unseen foes behind the cease-fire line that splits Kashmir between India and Pakistan. One wonders why Drass has a tourism office at all. Its main claim to fame is that in winter it is the second coldest place in the world behind Siberia. The lowest temperature recorded here is minus 40 degrees Celsius. Then of course there is its position along the Srinagar to Kargil road, an often treacherous and tenuous ribbon cut through the Himalayas. Drass is only around five kilometers from the cease-fire line, as is Kargil, some 55 kilometers west, our next destination. Both were heavily bombarded in shelling that hit the headlines worldwide. A journey not for the faint-hearted at any time, the dangers along the 200 kilometers from Srinagar to Kargil are compounded by the ever-present threat of further conflict. The enemy positions of Pakistan-backed Kashmiri rebels on Tiger Hill have been flushed out by Indian troops now, and the soldiers in Drass look relaxed, though bored. On the arid approach to Drass, the Bofors guns of the Indian army have been removed, to be replaced by mortars, but piles of brass cartridges remind of the fighting that branded this dusty and waterless landscape as a nuclear flashpoint.  Abdul Wahid, a tourism official in Drass, surveys the damage at his headquarters. "What would you do, demolish the building or repair it?" he asks.I tell him I would leave it exactly as it is, and let it become a tourist attraction, but of course it is unlikely India would perpetuate a loss of face. However, the battles that took place up here are beginning to attract some adventurous domestic tourists. Travel agents in New Delhi are offering trips to Tiger Hill. We left Srinagar at 7am to climb, wind and dip our way to Kargil. It will take us more than 13 hours to cover those 200 kilometers, and a few kilometers outside Kargil we will have to drive with our lights switched off to avoid becoming targets in a shelling-prone area. The Srinagar-Kargil-Leh military road, a distance of more than 430 kilometers through some of the world's most isolated and inhospitable terrain, was built after the Indo-Chinese conflict in 1962. Thousands worked on this seemingly impossible task of engineering ingenuity, and many lost their lives in the process. After several days relaxing in and around Srinagar and Kashmir's main hill stations, which have perhaps unjustly been branded as danger zones for tourists, the tensions along this narrow, temperamental and mainly untouristed road that clings to the contours of the roof of the world, are soon apparent. Along the 85 kilometers of river-fed lush valley to Sonamarg in Kashmir, we are stopped several times for identity checks, army convoys squeeze past us regularly, and soldiers on foot patrol keep a constant vigil to prevent separatists from mining this vital military link. Sonamarg means "Meadow of Gold". It is a one-street town in a valley 2,740 meters above sea level, and used to be a magnet for tourists in Kashmir. It looks like a frontier gold rush town, with hotels made from wood and tin sheeting, and dark shacks that serve rice and mutton curry to tired travelers wearing jeans muddied by the pot-holed dirt pavements outside.  No one wants to stay here anymore. The diners are just passing through, and this is an enforced stop. For just beyond Sonamarg is the hair-raising Zoji La, a pass that has been chiseled from the Himalayas, rising in a series of tight, dizzying switchbacks to a breathless 3,529 meters above sea level.The pass is so narrow that the army only allows one-way traffic. A military convoy and dozens of heavy goods vehicles are expected from Kargil and dozens of lorry drivers are trapped here at Sonamarg, unable to move until this long train has completed the crossing. The only quality hotel in Sonamarg, Glacier Heights, has closed down, and planks of wood are nailed across its balcony to deter intruders. Cottages dot the sides of the valley. They offer a beautiful view, but it has been smudged by the presence of a military camp below, and the dozens of brightly-painted trucks awaiting the go signal to snake up the Zoji La. A family can rent one of these cottages for around US$10 a night, but they remain empty. Below, souvenir-sellers open their roadside wooden shops as usual, but they know there will be no customers. I wonder why they don't just call it a day, and move out. I eat rice and curried vegetables with my driver and guide, and drink Kashmiri tea. They eat with their fingers, kneading the food into a ball, as is the custom here. The bill comes to around US$4. We have been here for more than two hours and there is still no sign of the convoy. My guide talks to army officers, telling them I am a journalist who needs to take photographs from Zoji La. He is lavish with his flattery, and amazingly, they allow us to enter the pass, promising we'd have about a two-hour start on the hapless truck-drivers stuck in Sonamarg. I get my photographs, but it is a heart-stopping climb in which we meet the convoy and dozens of heavy goods vehicles and must squeeze past every vehicle on unfenced switchbacks barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. The switchbacks are tiered like a wedding cake, but it is no time to celebrate. Above us, army trucks edge along these tiers coming towards us on tight, blind corners, and our horn proves a life-saver on more than one occasion, for they don't expect to meet any vehicles ascending the pass. It takes us two hours to reach the top, a nightmare in which we crawl at times inches from a sheer drop. This road is only open for six months each year. Snowdrifts reach a depth of four meters. In spring there are avalanches and mudslides, and workmen move in to do battle against the ravages of nature. We can see the trails of devastation and sheer walls of soil, pebble-dashed with boulders, tower above us. I remember meeting Mr Sonam Dorjay, Jammu and Kashmir's assistant director for tourism, in New Delhi. We talked about this pass. "You will pray, sir, you will pray" he said, smiling, and he was right.  At the top of Zoji La, nature paints a new picture. Behind lies lush Kashmir and a bank of clouds. Before us lies Ladakh, endless blue skies and a baked landscape of jagged, bare mountains and valleys that are a moonscape.We drive on to Drass and then towards Kargil, through this endless, unwelcoming, terrain, most of which is too harsh to allow any human settlement. Darkness falls, and at an army checkpoint we are warned to turn off our lights for the next eight twisting kilometers. We are entering a danger zone between the mountains, close to the cease-fire line, which is prone to shelling. A glacial river tumbles far below us in a gorge, a sheer drop from our narrow mountain road. It takes us 30 tense minutes to edge our way along these eight kilometers. Dark shapes loom up and we quickly flash our headlights. Army trucks flash in response. We edge past them blindly. I try not to think of the drop into the gorge. Eventually my driver switches on the headlamps, and we pass a signboard with one memorable word in huge letters: "Relax". We cheer, but it's not over yet. We must negotiate one more shell-prone area further ahead before we drive into Kargil, which found itself firmly on the world map during shelling from the other side of the cease-fire line.  At 2,650 meters, this small town could not have appeared more peaceful, silent streets under a canopy of bright stars.As I eat a simple meal, I am reminded that first impressions can be misleading. "Don't worry, there has been no shelling for three days," a tourism official enthuses. "And most of the shells fall outside of town, in the fields." I plan to spend two nights in Kargil before going on to Leh, famous for its ancient Buddhist monasteries. Sweet dreams. Photos: Mike Currie |
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