Day 3
We got up that morning feather-light enough to float in to the serenity of Gulmarg, another mesmerizing village of Kashmir. Driver Mohammed collected us on time. This time, we were enthralled as we approached the next great adventure of our journey. The Gondola cable car service, which was claimed the highest cable car system in the world then was our target. We reached Gulmarg, but Mohammed dropped us two hills below the cable car station which we had to climb. The choice which was left in front of us was to hire horses and travel on back of them as all other tourists did.
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| High at Apravat |
The wildness of our minds, the back ache which most of us had acquired from previous day's horse-back ride and the unreasonable price they offered for the ride, left us with a unanimous decision of trekking the hills ourselves. But, as we started climbing, we realized that the task we had started was herculean because first of all, none of us knew the way to the cable car station, Google map could not be obtained as we had no internet access, secondly because the horsemen who clung to us to convince us for a horse-back ride were not willing to guide us. Situation was not easy because it was Ramadan month and one of our honeymoon couples were fasting, yet all of us managed to climb up and reach the destination on time.
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| view from Apravat |
On the trek, we stopped in meadows carpeted with common daisies and pine trees lined up on each sides. Life of Kashmiri common people is not that colorful as portrayed in many films. It is true that there are beautiful women, lovely kids and handsome men. But my heart was pained to see many of such little kids begging alms to the tourists on the way. Women and children stood with little sheep, rabbits, doves and goats, asked us to get photographed with the animals so that they might get a 10 rupee as reward. It is hard to live in a place where the schools remain closed almost all the days, where you might hear gun shots more frequently than prayer call outs, where you might not have a stable income due to wars, militant attacks, movements and encounters, despite its wild beauty.
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| panoramic view from the Apravat |
We fetched tickets from the counter, the journey was in two halves, which ended in a peak called mount Apravat. We had to get into a different cable car for the second leg of our journey. I wondered what would happen had the cable connecting the mountains got detached, as we started our climb. A month later a whole family of tourists were killed in an accident where the cable got disconnected accidentally by a tree which fell across the cable. Six of us were together in the same unit. We crossed thick vegetation and rocky cliffs as we were reaching our destination, the majestic Apravat. The cable car dropped us on the foot of the snowy mountain peak, and we climbed it together. Sun was blazing, but we did not feel the heat till the next day when we found ourselves all sun burnt. Our fellow climbers had protective hats, sunglasses and sun screen lotion applied all over their body, where as none in our group relied on any of it. On the way up the peak, we ate fresh white snow to quench the thirst and lied down in the white snow bed when ever we felt fatigued. Many tourists who were inspired by our spirit to climb, followed us to the top. On to the sides of Apravat, there was a line of control by Indian army, and my curious husband who went to explore to that extent was sent back. We could see a military watch area on the top of Apravat and I wondered who would be able to survive there, when it snows. That was my first time of watching and getting close to fresh white snow, soft as cotton,I felt that I was in paradise. We slid through snow half the way to get back to the cable car station. The car started slowly moving towards the bottom, as I vehemently tried to capture all the beautiful colours God had added to that canvass including the snowy white of Apravat, the shades of green, grey of the rocks and the green of the pine forest.My soul had already started to fly to the images of the next fairy-tale destination Pahalgam like a string-less kite.
to be continued...
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| panoramic view from the Apravat |
