Day 10: Drass - Srinagar - Jammu

The previous evening I spent time with Mohd. Sulaiman, a constantly smoking 20 year old who managed Hotel Basara where I stayed. Every shop I looked at in Drass screamed odd spellings. The funniest was a barber shop - it said, "LEDIS AND JENTS -- HIARE SALLOON". My own hotel announced sanitized rooms - whatever they were. Drass, a set of villages with 5000 people occupies its spot in the world as the 2nd coldest inhabited place - it hit a rock bottom temperature of -60 degrees centigrade in 1995. It's also the place where a good part of the Kargil war (the army would correct me as 'operation' not war) was also fought there. Sulaiman told me that the locals ran away from there during the war because the army would drag them into service - like cooking or carrying stuff for the army.

I lost Prashant Yadav's sleeping bag in somewhere in Zoji La - I was too busy climbing the pass and didn't notice until I got into Kashmir. And when I noticed it, I lost balance and fell - dropping the motorcycle on the right side. Hell, I thought. I took a break, ate some crackers staring at the spectacular Kashmir valley with its Ashoka-like trees. Just 20km away, the earth was dry and devoid of any vegetation and look at here! Nature plays amusing games. Sona Marg, a town before Srinagar is just too beautiful - it's indeed heaven on earth. I saw countless sheep basking in the sun and lazily eating up the green, the whole valley was lush green brightened by rain and sun, in the distance were long trees - straight and tall - all this with a background of Himalayan glaciers with its whiteness reflecting the sun.

I've never seen more army vehicles, men and guns in a square kilometer in my life - every 100 mts in Kashmir, you'll see an armyman with a sophisticated gun - every 100mts, literally. The city of Srinagar looks very much like the old parts of Hyderabad - busy, bustling and full of life. I ate in Mughal Darbar - ate Kashmiri pulao - of course and packed sweet Kulchas for iNexters at work. In spite of its apparent normalcy, you can tell that something's not alright - army convoys occupy traffic spots just like rickshaws or cars. The local population seems to have accepted it. The situation in a lot of ways is tense. Only when I left Srinagar I found out that a CRPF vehicle was blasted in the city a few hours ago. Dal Lake seemed quite ordinary - very touristy with the house boats and hawkers. I circled near it and head towards Jammu.

I didn't realize that most of Jammu is hilly and mountainous - it stretches every kilometer and makes it longer. Once the day approached night, I saw close to 10,000 mountain goats, sheep, cows, horses being shepherded home on the highways. It held up all traffic. A little later it started raining and the sky turned pretty dark. I called it a day in a village called Batotla in Jammu - I couldn't understand the surprised expression I saw on the faces of the hotel staff until I was shocked myself when I looked at a mirror. My face with black with soot and sun-tan. With my whiskers and straight hair, I closely resembled Rajnikanth (apologies to his fans).