Mission Kashmir Part One: A Wazwan welcome

Ramban appeared like a ghost in a cloud of construction dust, in a crook on National Highway 1A. My eyes were feasting on the green-blue waters of the Chenab, coursing through the valley way below us, a respite for the eyes after miles and miles of hard, undulating terrain. For the umpteenth time, I cursed myself for not doing a thorough homework. Normally, before I set out on a trip, I scrutinize a dozen maps, guides, review sites, and other such things, so that once I hit the road, at every step I know exactly where I am and how much of the road is left. Of course, the signboards and milestones exist for that very purpose, but still it is a comforting feeling when you know you can associate those names on the signboards with those pinpoints on the map that you memorize.

Before this trip, we - my brother-in-law, who is becoming a veteran member of my backpacking trips to anywhere, and I - had ruled out Kashmir because of the arduous travel it entailed. When I set out from Pune on board a Volvo to Mumbai Central, and when we left Mumbai Central for New Delhi on a Duronto Express, we were talking about taking a bus from the Interstate Bus Terminus (ISBT) at Kashmiri gate and heading out to Hrishikesh or MacLeodganj or Joshimath-Auli, but not Kashmir. Then, a lanky co-passenger, a techie from Wipro in Hinjewadi, got talking. Like a monk who had communed with his God, he reminisced about his trips across India and concluded rather smugly that the best place he had ever been to was Kashmir. "It has two shades in a year," he said with his eyes pinched shut and his hands flailing, "In summer, it is greeeen," he said, emphasizing on that 'green', "and in winter, it is whiiite. But, any time of the year, it is beeyoutiful!" The glee on his face was of one who had just wolfed down a wazwan course. Now I'd first heard about the Kashmiri 36-course meal, rather read about it, in Salman Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown". I remembered how it had made my belly growl with an aching for that opulent meat treat. Besides, the whole world had sang glories about the paradise on earth, so Kashmir should have been an obvious choice right from the beginning.

A view of the banks of the Tavi in Jammu

But for my generation, which had grown up hearing only nightmarish stories about this 'lost paradise' and had also seen a war over there, the very notion of traveling to Kashmir, that too as a backpacker, was marred with apprehension. The travel guides forbade western citizens from venturing into this state. The news channels almost always had a story of doom or two to report from here, this paradise as Prince Jehangir so touted. And then, there was the painful prospect of trudging up the road all the way from Delhi to Srinagar. But still, the lure of seeing paradise, white paradise as the co-traveler had described Kashmir, was too strong to resist. 

Before the train crossed from Rajasthan into the fringes of UP, we decided Kashmir was where we were headed. Already, a day had passed since I'd hit the road. The sullen agent at the Punbus Corporation window in ISBT told us about the bus that was due to leave for Jammu at 6 pm. Earnestly, we boarded the bus, which turned out to be quite a comfortable one unlike the wretch who manned the counter. But by the time it was close to midnight and when the bus stopped at a 'haveli' dhaba somewhere near Patiala, we realized that enduring the same journey on the return route would be torturous. The next morning, after reaching a frigid Jammu at 6 am and boarding a shared taxi at 8 am bound for Srinagar 300 kilometers away, bro-in-law sought the assistance of a colleague back in Mumbai to book Srinagar to Delhi flight tickets for us five days later. That was a wise thing to do because as our shared taxi wound up and down again the ghats from Jammu to Kashmir, our bones ached, our behinds were beginning to turn sore, and the cold began to seep into our marrows. My toes were numb in my sneakers - another mistake on this trip; I thought I'd lose a few toes to frostbite by the time the trip was over. 

The inn that overlooked the Chenab river

In the shared taxi, a Scorpio or a Tavera I don't remember now, we were the only non-Kashmiris, looking about dumbfounded as the rest of the passengers chattered with and passed cigarettes to each other. Occasionally, they turned around to smile at us, ask us where we were from, and look immensely pleased to know that we were from Mumbai. Mid-morning, we stopped for tea at some place near Patnitop, where an old chap gave us two cupfulls of salted tea, something we were not accustomed to. "Can we get sugar tea?" I asked apprehensively, and the man nodded. Within five minutes, two cups of treakle-like tea was delivered to our table. Then the jeep ambled on, climbed several ghats, descended some others, and climbed again. The dust that rose from construction and roadwork sites fought with the fresh mountain air of the Himalayas, but thankfully we rode in a jeep that had all its windows rolled up, and so we did not have to inhale that familiar messed up air of the cities that we were running away from. And then, just before we began to tire, the Chenab revealed itself.

The river was icy blue in some parts and an emerald green in others. Whatever its real color was, it was an enthralling sight because this was the first mountain river I'd seen in India after six or seven years, the last being the Beas in HP. We were exhausted from continuous traveling. Hunger had begun to voice its protests quite vehemently. That was when the ghost of Ramban town loomed in front of us.

The inn we stopped at was a humble structure balancing itself on a ledge that overlooked a chasm and the river in it. On the other side of the mountain was nestled a village and a construction site, where a hydroelectric project was taking shape. The inn was full of local travelers mostly and the menu was limited: kashmiri mutton curry and plain rice. I beamed, even recollected some sections of 'Shalimar the Clown', but then I remembered that my bro-in-law did not eat lamb. The waiter suggested rajma (kidney beans) curry and rice and the matter was settled. In no time, I was gorging down large morsels of rice and spicy, brown, tender lamb. Bro-in-law was satisfied with the rajma-chawal, and soon we were muttering our yum-yums and humming in glee.

Perhaps we were too loud or too silly, or it must have been my gluttonous gorging, because two tables away, two adult gentlemen were watching us and exchanging a joke or two at our expense. It was pretty obvious that we were their subjects of mockery for they both kept turning back every now and then, and chuckling. Then, they finished their meal and rose to leave. The second old gentleman stopped by our table and put down a bowl that had curry and a sort of spherical meatball in it. Try this with your rice," he said in a heavily accented Hindi. "It is a specialty of Kashmir and my gift to you. Do not pay the waiter for this. It is my way of welcoming you to our land."

Perhaps it was their ceaseless chortle that made me skeptical. Was this sphere of meat really food or was it a ram's testicle? I was not too sure, so I did not dive into the dish and decided to leave it aside. But the man was watching from the counter before he paid and left, so it would have been rude to not have tried it. So i dug my fork into the meatball and took a piece. Bro-in-law had this look of incredulity in his eyes, but then I took the chance. I put the piece and some rice into my mouth and chewed. It was the most tender piece of meat, nicely spiced, that I'd ever eaten. Had to be testicles, I thought and told bro-in-law. It does not matter now, I said. And it does not taste too bad after all.

Google to the rescue! On the mobile phone I looked up "Meatball Kashmiri cuisine", and the resulting display made me smile. This was a bowl full of 'Ristae', a meatball curry - not testicles though - that was one of the courses of the Kashmiri Wazwan cuisine. I turned around to look whether the old gentleman had left. He was outside with his friend, still glancing inside every now and then to see if I'd tried the curry, puffing curls of cigarette smoke from his mouth. I smiled at him when he looked in our direction and he waved at us, put out his cigarette, and walked away with his friend.