Roads, Bridges and Tracks

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

Roads

Roads are the lifeblood of towns, cities and mountain communities and in 1979, we were fortunate to witness, at least in part, how they were made. On one of our travels together through the region, we came upon road workers doing precisely what had been done in these mountains for generations: chipping rocks into smaller rocks, then into stones, coaxing a passage through the terrain by hand and by will.

Equally memorable was the long-handled spade we watched being used. Unfortunately we have no photograph of it. One man pushed whilst a second pulled by means of a rope attached to the base of the handle, the two of them working as one against the stubborn, ancient rock. It was an ingenious adaptation, born of necessity, and quite unforgettable to witness.

These are the roads, bridges and tracks we travelled.

The photographs that follow from the more remote areas were taken by my husband, in the course of his duties as a United Nations military observer along the Line of Control between India and Pakistan. They show a world that few outsiders ever entered, roads carved from cliffsides, bridges thrown across rock falls, and tracks that wound through landscape of almost savage grandeur. I could not accompany him into those regions, but his camera brought something of that world back.

The Skardu–Kargil road was, by any measure, a journey that tested the nerves. There were stretches so precipitous that my husband chose to step out of the jeep and continue on foot a decision that speaks rather more eloquently about the road than any description could.

1979 Skardu Kargil road carved into the cliff

A world apart from that precarious road was the newly completed Karakoram Highway, finished in 1979 though not yet open to the public. A remarkable feat of engineering, it had been constructed through the combined efforts of Pakistani and Chinese workers, but at a devastating human cost. At least 1,000 lives were lost during its construction, claimed by falls and landslides along one of the most unforgiving routes on earth.

The photograph here, taken by my husband on the Pakistani side, shows the finished road lying smooth and broad against the wild terrain surrounding it.

1979 newly finished Karakorum Highway

Other roads wound their way upward with serpentine determination, scaling one side of a mountain only to plunge with equal steepness down the other. The Sonamarg Pass was one such road.

Sonamarg pass road curling around the mountainside 

Along the lesser tracks that my husband travelled on duty, delays were simply part of the journey. It could be mules being led by soldiers up to their station, rock falls or just the mis-adventure of meeting a truck that found itself in trouble on a on a narrow road.

Mule troop on a mountain road, UN jeep in the foreground

A rather large rock blocking the road

A truck in trouble blocking the road

In the towns, a roadside tea stall offered welcome respite, a place to pause, catch one's breath and watch the world go by over a warming brew.

1979 roadside tea stall in Hajira

Bridges

Some bridges, though built with vehicles in mind were altogether more sensibly crossed on foot. One remarkable structure, thrown across a rock fall on one of my husband's official routes, offered a passage that could only be described as hair-raising, particularly for the UN military observers who were required to use it in the course of their duties. The UN jeep is on the far left in the photo.

Bridge across a rock fall

Then there were the bridges intended solely for foot traffic, where a certain quiet bravado was required simply to set one foot in front of the other. Fortunately, neither of us was called upon to cross the one pictured here, the sight of it was quite sufficient.

Crossing a river

Tracks

Where even a rudimentary road would not reach, there were tracks. Tracks belonged to two things: human feet and mules. The mule, endlessly patient and sure-footed on terrain that would defeat most other forms of transport, was as essential to life in these mountains in 1979 as it had been for centuries before. 

In this photograph, taken by my husband along one of his official routes, soldiers make their way up the Deosai Pass on muleback, the animals picking their path with unhurried confidence through the boulder-strewn landscape.

Soldiers riding up the Deosai Pass

What strikes me looking back across all of it, the road gangs chipping stone by hand, the vertiginous jeep tracks and the bridges above white water, is that we travelled mostly safely, and while sometimes it was uncomfortable, we survived to tell the tales.

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

Quirky Tales

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

We were but two of the Australian contingent in Kashmir that year. So far, my stories have involved one or both of us. Kashmir however, had a way of writing its own stories.

The two incidents below both happened in that same year to other Australian officers. As each Australian military observer returned home after his year of service, another arrived to replace him.

The Tree at the Cliff's Edge

Mountain roads in Kashmir were not for the faint-hearted. Narrow, precipitous, and hugging the sides of terrain that seemed indifferent to human passage, they demanded both concentration and a certain fatalistic acceptance of whatever lay around the next bend. 

Another of the Australian contingent, we shall call him DC, found himself one day being conveyed along one of these vertiginous tracks in a jeep. The scenery, one imagines, was spectacular. The experience was about to become more so. 

Without warning, the back wheels of the jeep slid sideways over the cliff edge. DC was thrown clear of the vehicle and, in the manner of a man whose luck was holding by the most slender of threads, landed in a tree partway down the slope. It was not so very far below the road, but far enough.

He gathered his thoughts, assessed that he was in one piece, and began the scramble back up to the road. From there, he could see the jeep still teetering at the cliff's edge, its driver desperately spinning the wheels in a frantic attempt to haul it back onto solid ground.

Just as he managed to regain his footing on the road, the jeep was flung over the edge of the cliff. 

DC crept to the rim of the cliff and peered down, bracing himself for the worst, fearing for the life of the driver, imagining the terrible sight that might await him.

There, in precisely the same tree where DC himself had so recently been deposited, sat the driver. Alive. Uninjured. His pride as a UN driver, one would suggest, had not survived quite so intact. The jeep was long gone.

AI generated image

The Wrong Landing

There is something quietly dispiriting about arriving somewhere entirely different from where one intended to be. Such was the fate of another Australian observer, we shall call him AB, as he completed the long, wearying journey from Australia to what was meant to be his new home for the coming year.

It had not been an easy decision, leaving his wife and young children behind in Australia. Kashmir was no place for small children, the living conditions demanding, and the posting itself with long absences on field stations, carried its own particular uncertainties. So AB had said his farewells and embarked on the considerable journey alone, sustained no doubt by the knowledge that a friendly UN face would be waiting to greet him at Srinagar airport.

The plane landed. AB gathered his luggage and made his way into the terminal, scanning the arrivals area with reasonable expectation.

No one from the UN was there.

He waited. He looked again. He ventured outside into the unfamiliar air and, with a certain careful tone, asked a bystander for directions to UN Headquarters.

“No, Sahib” came the reply. “There is no UN Headquarters here.”

The aircraft had been diverted. AB was standing not in Srinagar but in Chandigarh, more than five hundred and fifty kilometres from where he was supposed to be.

One imagines a long moment of silence.

It was, as these things go, nobody's fault in particular, simply one of those maddening inconveniences that travel occasionally inflicts. But as an introduction to a year's posting in Kashmir, it was not the most auspicious of beginnings.

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

Papier Mâché and People

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

Papier Mâché

In Kashmir, papier mâché was not merely a souvenir industry. It occupied a space between inheritance and commerce. In the old quarters of Srinagar, artisans still worked within workshop traditions that had evolved over centuries. They shaped paper pulp or board into boxes, trays, vases and ornaments before covering them in lacquer, gold and fine floral painting. The term itself referred as much to the decorative tradition as to the actual paper-pulp of the object.

It relied on painstaking labour. The moulding of the shapes, the hand painting and the application of the lacquer all required specialist skills.  The decorative elements often included leaves and curling vines, animals, gold scrollwork, lakeside and garden scenes. 

We chose two small bells, finely wrought and glowing with colour. They were modest things, by the standards of the grander pieces on display, yet something in their craftsmanship appealed to us. They have hung on our Christmas tree every year since, reminders of a time we have never forgotten.

Kashmiri papier mâché  bells

The Working People

No portrayal of life in Kashmir would be complete without reference to the hardworking people of the region. Our snapshots cover a range of workers in a variety of situations.

The carters with their beasts of burden

The wood carriers, usually women climbing to the remote posts in Baltistan

The sweeper in autumn

The women leaf carriers

The soldiers with mules delivering water and kerosene to their mountain posts

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin