Trekking in the Himalayas
Trip Start
Aug 03, 2007
1
2
10
Trip End
Oct 18, 2007
Srinagar,
India
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Srinagar is a strange city. Our tracking guide (Shafi) and houseboat staff all said "Kashmir is safe; we're all happy to see you!" But when we started to head out the front door to go see the city they would run over "Where are you going? You can't go there, the army is there." They would always have this "Sure it's safe, but just don't go by yourself" song and dance. Of course, that's convenient because then they could charge us for a person to show us around
Floating Market-1
. In the end, we did a bit of both, took them up on the guided boat tour of the early morning market on Dal Lake, but biked around the city and up a big hill to see a Hindu temple.There is a strong army presence. They are everywhere but haven't given us any problems. According to Shafi, the Indian Army receives international funding for the "troubled Kashmir area". So they keep sending too many troops up here and keep cashing in that bonus check. The board army then picks fights with the locals. Understandably, the locals (via Shafi's narrative) aren't too happy about this. The locals think the army should just clear out. The original reason the beefed up army was here was the '89 conflict with Pakistan and that conflict has continued into the early '00. But, it has remained calm for a few years. Shafi thinks if the army keeps picking on the citizens of Kashmir just trying to put their lives back together, someones going to loose their temper.
Anyway, enough with the soapbox. We hadn't really thought about trekking in Kashmir until our houseboat manager gave us the sales pitch. We had been planning on trekking outside of Leh, like everyone else. But Kashmir is much less touristy and much more green and lush then the Leh and Ladak area. So, we signed up for a 6 day trip
Houseboat
.What a beautiful place! The Kashmir Himalayas are stunning with rocks jetting everywhere. We really lucked out with the weather too. It only rained twice and both times at night. The first day we climbed from 8000ft to 11000ft and stayed up high for the trip. Not too bad for us sea level folks. As you can see from the pictures our group included horses. That's great for hauling things around but not so great when you seem to be always stuck behind them. PU what a smell.
There are a lot more people living in the mountains then I thought. They are shepards so almost all of the area we hiked though is grazing for sheep, goats and cows. (Great, more poo). Our horses had a hard time competing with them for grass to eat. As we walked we could watch the shepards tending the flocks or washing the sheep in the river before shearing them. The sheep did not look pleased to be tossed into the snow melt river. One family we passed by was spending the afternoon playing cricket. What a funny thing to see, people playing cricket in the middle of the Himalayas!
We got invited into one shepards home. Shafi knew the family, so we got to go in and have tea and bread
Srinagar
. What a privilege to be able to go into their home! The home is built into the side of the hill and has a sod roof. Three of the walls are exposed and the lower half is made of rock, the upper half is open. It's only one room, about 10x30ft with blankets on top of straw to sit and sleep on. The cooking fire is off to the side. Obviously these people spend the majority of their time outside, the house is mostly for cooking, eating and sleeping.Speaking of eating, Shafi was also our cook. Quite a good one, thank goodness! For lunch and dinner we had rice and a curry topping. The one exception was our lunch of french fries and peanut butter. I guess they're not sure what to do with peanut butter. For breakfast we'd have fried eggs and white bread. Shafi and the other porters, Jacob, Zubear and Asfaf would eat about half the curry we'd get but a whole lot more rice. I would guess that 80% of their caloric intake was from white rice. That's pretty incredible considering they were running around the mountains all the time trying to keep the horses from wandering off.
So, we had a great time wandering around the Himalayas and now get to head off towards Leh. There are a two 13,500 ft passes between us and there, so we're trying to get phyced up for that. Whooie, high altitude bicycling.
