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tor land of streams
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KASHMIR
THE LAND OF STREAMS & SOLITUDES
KASHMIR
THE LAND OF STREAMS
: : and solitudes : :
BY P. PIRIE WITH 25 PLATES IN
COLOUR AND UPWARDS OF 100 BLACK
AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS «#• <=*»
BY H. R. PIRIE <*> <*» <=*>
LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX
COLOUR BLOCKS AND PRINTING BY CARL HENTSCHEL, LTD.
TEXT PRINTED BY WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
D S *u
TO
ALEXANDER HAMILTON PIRIE
FROM HIS DAUGHTERS
BADSHAH BAGH
LOCKNOW
INDIA
314
CONTENTS
The River Road
A Road of the North
A Master of Horse
The Road of the Emperors
The Shepherdess
The Return .
In Chamba
In a Doonga .
A Moghul Garden
Page
17
63
85
IO9
l6l
l8l
209
227
257
COLOURED PLATES
Page
Gate of Chingiz Serai Frontispiece
The Maharaja's Temple on the Jhelum 27
Up the River 37
On the River Road 45
Near Bijbehara 51
On the Road 57
A Track through the Forest 65
Villagers of Tarshing on the Road from Tarshing to Rupal, near
Astor 69
An Outpost of Civilisation 73
The Fort at Astor 79
Crossing the Kamri Pass 87
A Grazing-ground 93
His Village '01
Gujar Women in the Pir Panjal Forests 115
A Gujar's Hut in Kashmir 119
Fellow-travellers • .123
Aliabad Serai, on the Pir Panjal Pass 155
io COLOURED PLATES
Page
A Shepherdess 163
One of the Tribe 175
The End of the Day 183
His Sister 195
The Mar Thar Nullah . . . 201
On the River 229
The House of a Wazir 249
A Stormy Sunset on the Dal Lake . 265
BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
One of the Boat People i
A Transport Pony . 3
An Interrupted Road 7
Petite Vitesse (Sending Supplies up to Gilgit) 8
A Kashmir Woman of the Valley 9
a gujarin of poonch 10
Barges laden with Wood going up River 15
The Ferry l 7
A Kashmiri Hansom Cab 18
A Poplar Avenue • • '9
Fragment of a Ruined Doorway in the Temple of the Sun at
Mart and 21
The Main Street, Srinagar 22
A Road in Spring 23
Pandrinthan (The Temple standing in a Tank) 25
The Takht-i-Suleiman 26
The Happy Valley • 3 [
A Shop Door, Srinagar 33
12 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
In a Back Street, Srinagar 34
Towing 35
The Shikari 39
An Autumn Evening 41
A Country Boat 43
A Gaddi 48
At Islamabad 49
Among the Willows 53
Out of the Beaten Track 55
A Mountain Stream 56
The End of the River-Road 59
In the Apple-tree Canal, Srinagar 60
A Laden Baggage-Pony and Coolie 61
Near the Rajdiangan 63
Camel Transport ........... 67
The Watchers 71
The Last Trees 72
Nanga Parbat, the Fourth Highest Mountain in the World. . 75
Units of the Imperial Service Corps crossing a Pass on the Gilgit
Road in October 81
A Traveller from the North 82
A Master of Horse 83
On their Native Heath 85
The Road in a Storm 89
A Good Road near Gurez . . . . . . . . 91
A Camping-place 95
After Polo 97
Preparing for the Start 100
At Home 103
A Village Elder 105
Starting in State 107
Marching "a la Mogole" 109
BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS 13
Page
Civilisation on the Tonga Road no
A Gujar Woman in Marching Order in
In the Third Zone .... 122
By Ekka to Bhimber 125
In the Serai at Bhimber 127
In Kashmir 128
The Imperial Baggage 129
A Shady Bit 130
A Place to Dream of 134
A Gateway on the Road near Naoshera 135
A Ford below Rajaori 137
The Bungalow, Rajaori 139
Dhanni Dhar 142
A Kashmiri Traveller 143
Old Lalla ............ 144
When the Bridges are Down 148
Poshiana 149
The Pir Panjal (a Minor Pass) 152
Waiting for Orders 153
A Solitude 158
After Watteau 159
Near the Sinthan Pass 161
Our Camping-ground below the Pass 165
Kashmir Goats 167
Bringing in Fodder 168
A Gujar Woman carrying her Baby and Household Utensils . 169
Domestic Duties . . 173
On their Way Up 174
Another Lady .178
In the Village 179
Nearly Home 181
A Ruined Tree 182
i 4 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Coolie Transport 186
A Camping-ground 189
Winter Fodder 190
The Lumeardar 191
A Village Home 194
The Interpreter 197
Footsore 199
Dzunia's Window 203
His Own Hills 205
In Chamba 207
A Girl of Chamba 209
The Rani's Palace 211
In Marching Kit . .212
Part of the Procession 215
A Graceful Dress 216
The Old Temples of Chamba 219
A Modern Shrine 223
In a Doonga 225
One of our Crew 227
The Tonga Road in Baramulla 236
A Srinagar Shark 238
A Riverside Village 239
At Sopor 2 44
A Temple in Badarwah . . . . 246
Tied up for the Night 247
A Good Housewife • • • 254
A Mochul Garden 255
A Willow-edged Stream 257
Grain Barges 2 59
A Gardener of the Dal . . . ... 261
In a Kashmir Meadow 264
Chinar Leaves 269
nr
PANDRINTHAN
HERE are other roads in Kashmir; roads like
colonnades between serried ranks of poplar trees,
"^ the tall, slim, silvery pillars of the beautiful
populus alba, or the sombre stateliness of the dark pop-
lars of Lombardy ; roads bordered by willows, or leading
through marshy meadow-land, or carpeted with snowy
petals from the blossoming branches of apple and pear
and cherry trees, which make fragrant archways over-
head ; many and lovely are the roads of the Valley ;
but the road par excellence of Kashmir is the River, the
Veth as the Kashmiris call it, which is an abbreviation
i8
KASHMIR
of Vitasta, its Sanskrit name, the fabulosus Hydaspes of
the classic historians.
Up and down the wide and placid river go the fiat-
bottomed, slow-moving boats of the country — the wide
grain-barges, the doongas with their roofs and sides of
A KASHMIRI HANSOM-CAB
matting, the deep-laden market boats, and the little fish-
ing-boats so often drawn up near the bank with a wide
net outspread, its wet meshes glittering in the sunshine
like a dragon-fly's wing.
It is long since on the banks of the great river fair
cities rose, enriched with the spoil of conquered countries;
for it is long since the inhabitants of the Valley have had
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A POPLAR AVENUE
PANDRINTHAN
21
kings of their own race. So long ago is it, and centuries
of such dire oppression have intervened, that the glories
of their kings and the grandeur of their cities are for-
gotten ; and the peasants who tell you fabulous tales of
the piles of ruin near their villages, or regard with an
A FRAGMENT OF A RUINED DOORWAY IN THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN
AT MARTAND
almost contemptuous pity your interest in some old
temple, seem not to realise that these are memorials of
the ancient splendours of their own race.
The traces of the rule of these bygone kings have all
but vanished, but the beauty and majesty of nature still
remain, and make it easy to believe that the Valley was
22
KASHMIR
the cradle of demi-gods and heroes, one of the homes of
the ancient Aryan conquerors of India, and the seat of a
civilisation so ancient as to make the great Rameses
seem comparatively modern, and
The days when windy Troy
Flamed for a woman's srolden head
but a tale of yesterday.
/i
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./VfrjBf A.. •/.,... -v'-. *•*"■'• «1
THE MAIN STREET, SRINAGAR
Along the banks of the river, from the " City of the
Sun," Srinagar, one may still trace the ruins of ancient
cities and temples, to where, near its source, once rose the
A ROAD IN SPRING
PANDRINTHAN
25
most splendid shrine of all — Martand, the Temple of the
Sun.
On the way up the river from Srinagar the first of
these is the temple of Pandrinthan. Going by boat, one
anchors just beyond a fine chinar-tree, and below a bank
PANDRINTHAN (THE TEMPLE STANDING IN A TANK)
fringed with willows. After landing, the Srinagar road
is crossed, which here, and scarcely anywhere else, for
a few paces, runs almost parallel with the river. Beyond
the road lies a stretch of turf, then a grove of willows,
under which the clover grows thick and green, while
frequent little pools of water make of it almost a marsh.
26 KASHMIR
Picking a devious way through the pools among the
willows, one comes to some fine and stately chinar-trees
on the edge of a little tank ; and there, in the middle of
the tank, is the temple of Pandrinthan.
It is, perhaps, a morning in early May, clear and
brilliant, after a stormy night. The air is keen and pure ;
iiiyMiftik
THE TAKHT-I-SULEIMAN
a glittering circle of lofty snow-peaks enclose one on all
sides but the north, rising into an azure sky ; the shadows
on the Takht-i-Suleiman, the small, cone-shaped hill
between this and the city, are of the warmest purple ; and
the rocky slopes of the hill at the foot of which lies
Pandrinthan tower above one in bold outlines, unblurred
by any tracery of trees, bare to the wind and sun.
And down in the tree-shaded hollow stands the little
THE MAHARAJA'S TEMPLE
ON THE JHELUM
PANDRINTHAN 29
hoary temple — sole relic of a former splendid capital of
Kashmir. Very tired it looks, the little temple, cowering
down into the protecting water, which twice at least in its
history has saved it from destruction and the wrath of
man. For when the old capital, the first Srinagar, which
stood here and not on the present site of the city, was
destroyed by fire in the reign of Abhimanyu, about the
middle of the tenth century a.d., this temple was the only
building that escaped ; and again, five hundred years
later, when the idol-breaker Sikandar was king, this was
the only one of the temples of Kashmir which escaped
his violence, " in consequence," says Ferishta, the scribe
of Akbar, " of its foundation being below the surface of
the neighbouring water."
But the burden of its thousand years weighs heavy
on its shoulders, and it crouches beneath them in hopeless
sadness, deserted and alone. All round it youth and the
joy of living riot in the fine air and sunshine, in the soft
spring greens of the young willows, in the tall chinars,
the embodiment of vigorous life, glorying in the splen-
dour of their new foliage. Surely the Moghul noble
who planted these trees by the shrine of an alien faith
must have been prompted to it by an instinct of pity for
the little lonely temple.
The date of the founding of the city which once rose
3 o KASHMIR
here is lost in the mists of antiquity. No doubt the
great Asoka, Buddha's famous disciple, was known in its
streets, and meditated on Nirvana within sight of the
serene beauty of the encircling chain of snows. Here,
probably, lived his son, who built the first temple, a
Buddhist shrine, on the top of the Takht-i-Suleiman,
about 200 b.c, which makes it still one of the sacred
places of the followers of that faith, and visited even by
wandering Lamas from Tibet. But the beauty and wiles
of the serpent-goddesses lured him from his faith, and
he fell back to the ancient rites of the worship of the
Nagas, the snake-gods, while his temple has long since
been destroyed and replaced by others.
The victories of the great Laltaditya, who reigned
from 697-738 a.d., no doubt filled its streets with rejoic-
ing and decked its houses with the spoils of India and
Central Asia, though the new Srinagar had already for
more than a hundred years been the capital.
The camps of the army of a later king, the conqueror
and gambler, Shankara-Varman, who reigned about the
end of the ninth century, his "900,000 foot, 300 ele-
phants, and 100,000 horse," must have made of the whole
neighbourhood a resplendent Champs de Mars.
Now no ghost of fluttering pennon or shining lance
disturbs the peace of the valley. The silent hillside is
PANDRINTHAN
3 1
strewn instead with broken fragments of fluted pillars
and blocks of carved stone, with here and there a mound
of shapeless ruin where once perhaps a palace stood. A
little way up the hill is a huge stone fragment, said to be
part of a colossal statue of Buddha that once towered
here above the busy city. Round the grey stone feet,
THE HAPPY VALLEY
worn and defaced with the lapse of centuries, waves now
a field of scarlet poppies, gay and debonair, heedless
that their vivid beauty lasts but for a day.
The temple itself is small, only eighteen feet square,
and made of great blocks of limestone. The roof is
pyramidal and seems to have been jarred by an earth-
quake shock, for though still keeping the general outline,
32 KASHMIR
the blocks of stone have gaps between them and are tilted
out of their proper positions. The inside of the roof is
said to be covered with sculpture classical in design, but
as the temple stands in water at least four feet deep one
must have a boat to see this. Its founder, Meru, the
prime minister of King Partha, in the early part of the
tenth century, dedicated it to Mahadeo ; but the tank
probably had some connection with the old religion of
the country, the worship of the Nagas, a survival of the
gloomy earth-worship still near to the hearts of the primi-
tive hill-men, the cult of the divinities who inhabit
mountain and stream, the senders of storms and floods,
mysterious powers against whom men in these wild
regions wage so unequal a strife.
This little temple never saw the best and most pros-
perous days of the city, for the seat of government had
been moved to the new Srinagar 500 years before its
founding. The decay of former greatness, ruin and
disaster, fire and sword, these were all that its sculptured
stones and cunningly wrought pillars were fated to see.
It had stood but fifty years when a great fire destroyed
the city around it. Already the supremacy of Hinduism
was doomed, and the ancient and splendid Hindu king-
dom of Kashmir was tottering to its ruin. Civil wars
and faindant kings hastened the end, till the last of the
PANDRINTHAN 33
Hindu sovereigns fled before a Tartar invader early in
the fourteenth century. It was left for a woman, a
Hindu princess, Kuta Rani, a soldier's daughter, to raise
an army and drive out the invader. But she stabbed
herself to escape an unwelcome marriage, and with her
A SHOP-DOOR, SRINAGAR
ended the Hindu rule in Kashmir until, in 1819, the
victorious generals of Runjit Singh entered the Valley.
In the intervening five hundred years Mahomedan
dynasties ruled Kashmir either directly or through vice-
roys, and the faith of Islam' became the prevailing
religion.
34
KASHMIR
But through all the changes that have swept the
Valley and left their mark along the river-road in mosque
and shrine, in stately garden or poplar avenue, none has
ever rebuilt the old town, and the little temple still stands
forlorn, emblem of age and desolation.
II
UP THE RIVER
FROM the desolation of Pandrinthan, its hoary
temple, and traces of a vanished city, one returns
to the river and is met by its sparkling, breeze-
stirred surface, the brilliance of the sun of May, and the
sweet singing of many larks overhead ; while the clear
liquid note of the golden oriole, on the branch of a chinar-
tree, reminds one that this cool, song-filled morning is not,
after all, of Europe, but a part of the most romantic region
of the mysterious East.
36 KASHMIR
Going up the river by boat is a mod£ of progress that
combines many attractions. To begin with, all considera-
tions of time are forgotten. It is as if Time were not.
This is not because the speed is such as to annihilate
space and time, for the average pace of a boat going up-
stream might, perhaps, be described as glacial. But because
time simply does not exist on the river, and "non numero
nisi serenas " might well be one's motto almost anywhere
in this charmed Valley.
Near Srinagar, it is true, the midday gun from Akbar's
Fort on the hill of Hari Parbat knocks at the gate of
consciousness with a fleeting reminder of the trammelled
world you have left behind you ; the poor deluded world
which thinks itself so progressive and enlightened, fettered
by time-tables and bound to a dreary treadmill of either
pleasure or duty. Besides, no person of sense remains in
Srinagar, since there are so many hundred miles of allur-
ing jungle in which to forget Time.
On the river-road one may learn with the French
philosopher, "quelle petite place il faut pour la Joie, et
combien peu son logement coute a meubler."
If we have no Time we are rich in sunrises and sun-
sets, glorious noondays, golden afternoons, and nights
filled with the bewitching sadness of moonlight or the
glittering mystery of star-lit skies. The days uncounted
w
>
Pi
I
UP THE RIVER
39
by measured and classified hours are a majestic procession
.of changing skies and lovely landscapes, whose beauty
seems to be heightened by each varying effect of cloud
or sunlight that passes over them in this magic atmo-
sphere.
The Kashmiris themselves have a picturesque way of
THE SHIKARI
talking, which shows what are for them the true divisions
of Time. Official calendars and rigid limitations of
months and dates are little heeded by them, and the
months are counted by the flowers or fruit that come in
them.
" In the time of flowers," meaning apple and pear
4Q KASHMIR
blossom, says the boatman, " it is always like this, clouds
and rain, and sometimes, also, sunshine."
"In the time of mulberries," says the fisherman, "you
will catch many fish at Sumbal."
"When the maize is ripe," says the shikari, "the
bears come down from the jungle."
No one hurries on the river. The boat is towed up-
stream at an average rate of something under two miles
an hour, so I am told by those who have not lost the
habit of measuring things by ordinary standards even in
Kashmir. But this lack of haste is one of the great
charms of the journey. To most people the idea of
travel is fraught with tiresome associations of hurry and
dust and noise, added to the desolating certainty that one
will be snatched relentlessly away from all the charming
places one has brief glimpses of, and where one longs to
linger. The contrast of this leisured progress, without
dust, without hurry, without noise, one's own pleasure
its only law, its only sound the ripple of the water
under the prow of the advancing boat as it glides
smoothly on, is as delightful as it is at first bewildering.
For it seems hardly natural to get so near to lofty snow-
covered peaks and into the heart of the hills without
exertion or labour.
For fine weather the doonga is undoubtedly the best
AN AUTUMN EVENING
UP THE RIVER 43
boat to travel in, for the strips of grass matting which
are one's walls can be rolled up, and one lives practically
en piein air from morning till night, and can sleep with-
out letting them down, which has all the advantages
without the drawbacks of sleeping outside. In stormy
and cold weather, it is true, the doonga is perhaps not an
mm
A COUNTRY BOAT
ideal abode, since, if the rain is heavy, all the mats have
to be fastened down, and one is condemned to almost
total darkness. It is also no easy matter to keep warm
in a doonga when snowstorms are raging within fifteen
miles of one, and cold and piercing winds sweep the
river ; the only possible way to be comfortable is to take
violent exercise on the river-bank.
In spite, however, of these disadvantages, there is a
great deal to recommend life in a doonga to any one
44 KASHMIR
whose horizon is not bounded by ideas of "solid" British
comfort, and who can enjoy a little roughing it. Besides,
on a house-boat, one is haunted by the consciousness that
one is a blot on the landscape, and entirely out of keep-
ing with the surroundings ; while its weight and clumsi-
ness make some of the loveliest reaches of the river
impossible to it. The doonga is certainly picturesque,
and adds to all the other attractions of the river the
charm of a novel sort of Bohemianism.
On one's own doonga one is an autocrat and absolute.
The Kashmiris, according to Sir Walter Lawrence, " like
and admire stern determination in a ruler " ; also " they
yearn for personal rule centred in one." All this it is in
one's power to give them, and it is nice to think one may
be a tyrant to the satisfaction of everybody, and to be
able to go on or stop anywhere as the caprice of the
moment may suggest, without consulting any one or
taking any undue thought for the morrow. Another of
the delights of life in a boat is that travelling no longer
means packing up. The innocent enjoyment of scattering
one's belongings about in the most convenient manner is
menaced by no horror of having hastily to collect and
stow them away.
While the boat is on the move it is usual to establish
oneself on the front deck, which should be decorated with
UP THE RIVER 47
whatever flowers are in season — in May the purple or
white iris.
The river, which shares in the universal disregard of
Time, covers as much ground as it is possible for a river
to do in its course from Islamabad, where it begins, to
Baramulla, where it ceases, to be navigable. It is as if
it were loath to leave the Valley, a disposition which it
is impossible to blame or even criticise ; besides, the
innumerable windings forbid monotony in the prospect,
while the river, like a conscientious guide, shows you
from every possible point of view the lovely changing
landscape.
It is with a dream-like feeling one goes up the wide,
calm river ; following its thousand windings, one passes
in and out of all varieties of climate, sunshine and
shadow chasing each other through the day. It is a
sunny, brilliant morning ; the light breeze made by the
motion of the boat sets the delicate iris petals fluttering,
and the water ripples gaily against the prow; while before
one's eyes a magnificent and ever-changing panorama un-
folds itself, dominated by a splendid succession of lofty
snow-peaks, the serene and silent guardians of this en-
chanted land. Later we pass out of the sunlight, and the
prevailing tints of the afternoon are violet and indigo
under the heavy clouds which hang over the Valley ;
4 8
KASHMIR
while an occasional gleam of sunlight brings out soft and
lovely hues on the lower hills. To the right the Pir
Panjal range towers stern and white against a back-
ground of stormy sky, while, far in front, rises a lovely
range of snowy peaks touched to pale rose and gold
in the rays of the setting sun, which linger on them,
turning the shadowed slopes below to the transparent
violet of the amethyst, the whole like some fair dream
standing at the gate of sunset, of such exceeding beauty
that one can hardly believe in its permanence or reality ;
while, to accentuate its distant, smiling loveliness, we
ourselves move under an outstretched wing of storm, the
dark river mirroring the heavy clouds above.
Ill
THE END
Enough for me in dreams to see
And touch thy garment's hem ;
Thy feet have trod so near to God
I may not follow them.
Rudyard Kipling. To the True Romance.
THE end of the river-road, for those who are
handicapped by house-boats, is at Khanbal — the
port, as the guide-books call it, of Islamabad,
and about a mile from it by road. A charming road, one
49
5o KASHMIR
of the poplar - bordered avenues of Kashmir; young
poplars whose stems of silver-grey frame succeeding
pictures of lovely landscape ; a foreground of marshy
rice-fields, pools of water in spring and early summer,
faithful mirrors of hill and cloud and sky, while in
autumn they are patches of bronze and delicate green,
rose-pink, and scarlet. Beyond them on the right,
across the rich meadow-land, is the range of the Pir
Panjal on one side, and, on the other, the steep, frowning
wall, through a gap in which comes the Liddar. Closing
in the end of the valley are, first, the bare little peak
round which lies Islamabad, and then, across the level
karewah, the lovely, rounded slopes of the Achebal Hills,
the steep, wooded heights which shut in the Nowboog
Valley, and, beyond, the snowy summits across which
lead the passes to Kishtwar, the Wardwan, and high
Zanskar.
But, if in spite of the well-meant advice of friends,
you have risked the discomforts of a doonga, for you the
end of the river-road will be far beyond Khanbal,
through about two miles of devious windings and sharp
corners, where the current runs like a mill-race, to little
islands of young willows which break up the river — now
narrowed to about thirty yards from bank to bank — into
numerous channels. You may take your boat right up
;V
THE END
53
till its bow almost reaches the first of the tiny islands,
where the green bank curves in a miniature harbour just
large enough for your boat, and there you may anchor,
secure in the reflection that no one can be before you on
the river.
wJBifc
AMONG THE WILLOWS
Instead of other boats with chattering servants and
loud-voiced manjis, you have a wide curve of the river
absolutely to yourself; and, over and above this, a nice
bit of land, an apple orchard, with one enormous chinar-
tree.
Sweet peace and deep, the chequered sward
Beneath the ancient mulberry-trees.
54 KASHMIR
A world of vivid green, streaked and dappled with
a sunlight so golden in this wonderful soft air, that it lies
on the velvet turf like a solid thing. From your boat
you look out on the soft grey-green foliage of the willows
rising into a sky faintly blue or flushed at sunset to palest
rose ; beyond the willows is a dark wall of Lombardy
poplars, marking the Vernag road, and for a background
the hills, slopes of pale emerald-green merging into a
haze of blue below the ultimate line of snows.
Between the islands runs the river, purple where dark
rocks rise in its way, running with bronze and golden
gleams over the sand and lighter pebbles, deep blue where
it reflects the sky. Here its clear waters and little rapids
make you realise at last that it is a mountain stream. The
low murmur of the current where it runs deep and strong
by the opposite bank, the merry ripples dancing over the
frequent shallows, the lapping of its wavelets against the
side of your boat speak a most enchanting language,
blotting out all the world you have left behind you and
luring you on to follow further the road by which it has
come.
But it is a most elusive river, and it comes by a
thousand roads — ten thousand, said the ancients.
Some of them — the nearer and more obvious ones, to
the springs of Achebal and Bawan and Vernag, where
THE END 55
Jehangir's Queen wrote, " This fountain has come from
the springs of Paradise " — have been favourite paths of
pleasure for the rulers of the Valley from the time of the
Moghuls, with the magnificence of their summer courts,
to the English tripper of the present day. By short
and easy marches, along good roads, you may go to
these famous springs surrounded by temples and the
ruins of palaces and pleasure-grounds, where the captive
OUT OF THE BEATEN TRACK
water is led by artificial channels and confined in
masonry tanks, swarming with the shamelessly greedy
sacred carp.
But charming as these famous roads may be, it is
never of them that the dancing ripples sing. If you
listen to their eager, swift beguiling, they will lead you
very far, by ways of exquisite beauty and utter desolation,
till from the splendid silence of shining slopes of snow
you look on the white grandeur of the inaccessible heights
dividing the watersheds of the Indus and Jhelum, and
56
KASHMIR
you may even "think scorn of that pleasant land," the
easy, much-frequented ways of the Valley.
At first, perhaps, you will be led through dewy
pasture land, where the pine trees are wreathed with
wild climbing roses, whose white and pink blossoms
overhang the stream, such a stream as the Spanish poet
wrote of —
A MOUNTAIN STREAM
Laugh of the mountain, lyre of bird and tree,
Pomp of the meadow, mirror of the morn,
The soul of April, unto whom are born
The Rose and Hyacinth, leaps wild in thee.
Later you will go through the deep "green glooms"
of the still fir forests, opening out sometimes into sunny
p
<
o
X
a
X
H
Z
c
THE END
59
glades, where, over the fallen tree-trunks, breaks a wave
of forget-me-nots of the palest blue, and here the stream
flashes down in a spray of silver, or lies deep in swirling,
jade-green pools, its voice no longer the whisper in which
first it breathed the secrets of its distant source, but a
THE END OF THE RIVER-ROAD
triumphant chant of rejoicing, filling the lonely forest
and drowning all lesser music.
It will lead you higher, to where, above the level of
the birch trees, lie silver meadows, frosted thick with
small white anemones, where the stream flows through
rocky gorges, swept always by an icy wind, which adds
its voice to the torrent, grown almost too awe-inspiring
in these desolate heights for mere human understanding.
6o KASHMIR
Higher still it will lead you, till, under the deep
sapphire sky, you stand in a vast snowy silence, where
even the voice of the water is hushed. Far down under
the snow it listens, perhaps, to a music too rare and
exquisite for mortal ears, to translate afterwards some
syllables of its magic to the world below.
Those who have followed up one of the mountain
streams which lead you into the heart of this " Abode of
snow," will understand how like treachery it would seem
to disclose an exact route, to measure and map and lay
out marches through all that loveliness which was for
you alone, and into which you wandered almost by
accident. If your Fate is good and you can face the
difficulty, you will find for yourself the end of the
river-road.
P% o
3 == ="■«*.'
4*s
A ROAD OF THE NORTH
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence. — Wordsworth.
THE Gilgit road is one about which there is no
uncertainty. In this it is unlike most other
roads of Kashmir, which have a habit of mas-
querading in many disguises. Sometimes the road is
the bed of a mountain torrent ; wet or dry, it is all one ;
you follow it about on slippery stepping-stones, or fallen
tree-trunks, or hang on to a projecting cliff, or, tout
63
64 KASHMIR
simplement, wade through the water, as necessity or
inclination may dictate. Sometimes it is a wide, upland
meadow, flower-starred, lovely. Sometimes, you would
say, the moraine of a glacier, for you scramble with
difficulty up a slope of sixty degrees, over rocks so large
and so hard to manage that you are reminded of pictures
of people ascending the Pyramids, but a reassuring
tiffin-coolie tells you, "This is the pony-road." The
coolie-road, which he also points out, is a toboggan-slide,
down which it is correct to glissade, and up which
nobody goes if they can help it. Sometimes it is a dark
fir forest, sometimes a much-crevassed glacier, sometimes
a trackless snow-slope ; all these, and many more, varied,
and lovely, and only the more enchanting for their
difficulty, are known as roads in Kashmir.
But the Gilgit road has no compromises nor dis-
guises, no trifling nor turning aside. There is a solidity
and directness, a plain straightforwardness about it, that
is brusque and British, and typical of its builders.
It is persistently unaware of all other possible inter-
pretations of the word "road." It is a Road, and no
more ; and never less. Scenery and sentiment are foreign
to its nature ; if it were possible to do so it would no
doubt avoid both. It is sternly and simply a means of
getting from one place to another, and it is a most excel-
A TRACK THROUGH
THE FOREST
A ROAD OF THE NORTH 67
lent means ; a military road which has overcome such
difficulties in its making as no other road in the world
has had to contend with. For besides the great forces of
Nature arrayed against it, impregnable cliffs, rivers in
flood, avalanches of snow in winter, and of rocks the
rest of the year, snowstorms and freezing winds meaning
certain death to those overtaken by them, with famine
ever in waiting to swoop down on the workers should
CAMEL TRANSPORT
any one blunder or delay in sending up the long caravans
of grain from the far-distant base : — besides all this, the
first rough outline of the road had to be laid by armed
labourers in the face of hostile tribesmen, a brave, if
cruel enemy, posted on the heights above, and only kept
from annihilating the workmen by the fire of the little
mountain-guns which have helped so well to keep the
road. Such is the new road, now, I believe, about twelve
years old.
68 KASHMIR
But even the Gilgit road cannot entirely escape the
charm of Kashmir ; and it is, in spite of itself, beautiful.
A stern and awful beauty, of serried ranks of enormous
mountain masses, of vistas of gigantic snows, of the
sources of great rivers, and of a wonderful purity of
atmosphere ; while from the first hestitating whisper of
spring to the final glowing triumph of autumn it knows
the gentler beauty of flowers, a most lavish profusion of
colour and fragrance on all the mountain slopes.
The Gilgit road has never been a road of pleasure
like the Pir Panjal, but always a road of war, or the fear
of war. It is a road with a past — a long and tragic past
of oppression and tyranny, of treachery and murder, of
suffering and horror, of the forced labour of the slave, the
misery and torture of heat and thirst and hunger on
worn and exhausted humanity; of pitiless cold and storm;
of the unavailing strife of man against the silent, relent-
less denials of Nature.
It is a road which, in the old days, took a tremendous
toll of the lives of men. "The first time I went on it,"
an old Kashmiri transport driver told me, " when I was
a boy of sixteen, I wept much, because on both sides
of the road lay so many dead men."
Even now, in the days of the new road, should a
sudden snowstorm sweep through the passes, the road
g
X
en
<
O
o
<
o
en
o
A ROAD OF THE NORTH 71
over them will be strewn with the corpses of ponies and
camels ; while in winter the post-runners always go at
the risk of their lives ; the snow keeps its own secrets,
but in the spring it is not the bodies of animals only that
are found under the drifts on the road.
At the best of times one comes to places where the
THE WATCHERS (A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF A LINE OF LADEN BAGGAGE-PONIES)
wheeling vultures gather over a baggage-pony which has
succumbed to the hardships of the road. And there are
still terrible bits near Gilgit where all the resources of
science are powerless ; after any great storm the road is
carried away, and can never be mended without loss of
life.
It is a jealously guarded road. Armed sentries keep
72
KASHMIR
its costly bridges, while to travel on it at all a passport
from a very high authority indeed is necessary, and much
of it is irrevocably closed to travellers.
Over it, white and gigantic, towers Nanga Parbat, or
Deomir, " the Home of the gods" as the people call it
who live near by, 26,629 f eet °f snow.
You see it from the top of every pass ; and at the end
THE LAST TREES
of the steep, high-walled gorges of the road it looms up,
a white barrier, so incredibly high that it seems the
mirage of a snow mountain floating in the air. Every-
thing on this road is on so stupendous a scale that, as one
rides day after day through these mountains, one is dazed
by their vastness and beauty, their solemn desolation and
NANGA PARBAT, THE FOURTH HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD
A ROAD OF THE NORTH 77
silence, everything in one that feels is steeped in the sense
of it, while
the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
are forgotten as if they had never been, and nothing
seems real that does not match their greatness and
simplicity.
Below the first part of the road, flowing north to join
the Astor, runs the Kamri River. It has some of the
strength, the resistless power of the sea. Rising in foun-
tains of clear green, breaking into snowy spray round the
base of an enormous boulder, it might be the surf on
a rocky coast. But no breaking wave of the sea, even in
mid-ocean, has the delicate transparency of colour of this
mountain stream.
There are pale, lovely blues, so clear that even the
bluest sky seems dull and opaque beside their delicate
brilliance. There are exquisite greens merging into blue on
one side and violet on the other, so transparent, so cool, so
edged and inlaid with the silver of the dancing foam that
they are quite unapproachable in any medium. There are
all the subtle, varying shades of colour made by the
shadows of clouds and hills, which can be painted only
by the sun on water crystal-clear, in an air as crystalline.
And all this colour is vibrating with life and motion ;
7& KASHMIR
for ever hastening forward with the force born of a
descent of five thousand feet in about thirty miles.
It talks, too, with the voice of the sea. Near it you
can hear no other sound but the thunder of breaking
waves, the rush of the onward-flowing water. It speaks
of power and of great content, a sure, unswerving pur-
pose, an absolute certainty of achievement, underlying all
its mad haste and uncurbed riot. It is resonant with
rejoicing, the joy of a beautiful thing that comes from the
beauty of the mountains and goes to the beauty of the
sea. And it is deep with tragedy, the tragedy of sever-
ance and isolation, for its language is not for men to
understand. The clue to it is lost ; for surely once men
knew, and it is this that draws one so irresistibly to
listen to it ; and it may be that some day men will know
again, and this is why one is haunted by the sense of
being on the verge of understanding while yet it ever
escapes one, like a forgotten name which your lips just
miss pronouncing.
But a day comes when one must leave the road, and
go back to the ordinary, everyday world. The last camp
is between two lakes. There is a gorgeous sunset and a
golden western sky. But in the north is storm, a dark
pall of cloud pierced with gleams of orange and scarlet,
like a dome of smoke and flame. Behind the clouds, up
THE FORT AT ASTOR
A ROAD OF THE NORTH
81
there on that northern road, you know the great hills are
whitening in the snowstorms which for six long months
of winter will close the road.
„i:!j : ' iswi
,,,
UNITS OF THE IMPERIAL SERVICE CORPS CROSSING A PASS
ON THE GILGIT ROAD IN OCTOBER
The outline of the hills is gradually merged in the
piled clouds above them till they become a towering, fan-
tastic outline of grey against a clear evening sky. Over-
head comes a sound at first like rustling paper, turning
to the long vibration of a violin string ; a flight of duck
82
KASHMIR
going to their night's resting-place on the lake. The
sound is often repeated ; there must be thousands of them.
At first you can see them, far up, long wavering lines
against the sky, till at last in the fitful moonlight, veiled
by clouds, they are a sound and no more.
They, too, have come from the North, though none
but themselves know the secrets of their road.
■;C- ^.^^"X-
A MASTER OF HORSE
A MASTER OF HORSE
HE carries his commission in a small book, some-
thing like an account-book, covered with brown
paper. On its first page is printed a sort of oath
of allegiance.
The idea of that gorgeous coronation in the Abbey, on
which the eyes of the world were turned so few years ago,
seemed incredibly remote and unreal here, north of one
85
86 KASHMIR
of the great passes leading to Gilgit, one of the gates
to " the highest mountain system in the world."
But for splendour even the Abbey, ablaze with all
the magnificence of that proud ritual, could scarcely have
rivalled these great mountain gorges, hushed and solemn
in the wonderful stillness which is at the heart of the
higher hills. Autumn had passed in flame along the hill-
sides, hurrying before the icy breath of swift-following
winter, and so one walked in a world of gold and rose
over which towered Titanic pinnacles, white and dazzling
with the first heavy snowfall of the year.
It was here that he showed me his commission. After
the oath of allegiance came his name — written by some
one else — with below it his thumb-mark, for he could no
more write his own name than the Barons of Runnymede.
In this way he bound himself to be a loyal subject of the
King across the water ; the King whom neither he nor his
have ever seen, but of whose greatness they have heard
dim rumours, and whose name is a very real and sufficient
symbol of Power, and, above all, of Justice — the insaf
(justice) which he loves and longs for.
Further on in his book are other facts about him, the
setting down of which has, one feels, a somewhat sinister
meaning, for they will only be needed if an avalanche, or
a sudden blizzard, or a stray shot, or any of the other
A MASTER OF HORSE
89
chances of travel or of war in these wild regions should
send him on his last long journey.
He has many of the qualities of a soldier, blind
obedience to orders, and a fatalistic disregard of danger.
He has also some much-cherished medals gained in
frontier campaigns — Chitral and the Malakand.
THE ROAD IN A STORM
But he is not a soldier. He is only a transport-driver,
a Kashmir merkaban, jemadar of eleven hundred ponies
employed on the Gilgit road. He is a very small unit in
the great scheme of the Imperial Service Corps ; but on
him and his like depends the fitness for an army of that
road which is known as the " key of the Hindu Kush,"
9 o KASHMIR
leading through the grandest mountain scenery in the
world, flanked on one side by the largest glaciers outside
of the Arctic regions, and on the other by the great Nanga
Parbat and other giant snows.
As soon as the northern passes are open he is sent
for to Bandipore on the Wular Lake, where the road
begins. This may be any time from early in June to the
middle of July, as it depends on the amount of the winter
snowfall. From this time till October, when the passes
are again closed by snow, his ponies carry grain up to
Gilgit and the most remote outposts, provisioning them
for a year, for, after the winter sets in, nothing can reach
them.
He knows the road as the palm of his hand, for has
he not gone backwards and forwards on it all his life ? —
even long ago, in the days of what was known as "the
old road," which was no road at all, but often a death-
trap, from which you only escaped if your kismet was
good.
But Doran Sahib (Colonel Algernon Durand, the first
"Warden of the Marches") changed all that, for he went
along here, and made war on the Yaghistanis and ordered
this fine new road to be made.
There are two gods he swears by. The first is "Doran
Sahib," who, he firmly believes, can have no equal any-
A MASTER OF HORSE
9i
'.■9. t*
MJid
A GOOD ROAD NEAR GUREZ
where ; and the second is Colonel Yielding, who, many
years after, organised the splendid transport system of
this frontier. Words fail to express his devotion to
92 KASHMIR
Yielding Sahib, for did he not treat the merkabans of
Kashmir as if they were his own sons ? Ponies, says my
friend, were brought from Yarkand and the Punjab and
many distant places to choose from, but of them all
Yielding Sahib said the Kashmiri ponies were the best,
and so none but Kashmir ponies work on this road.
Did he not also make this alternative road, over the
Kamri Pass, so that the ponies might have good grass ?
From above Gurez as far as Gurikote of Astore there
are two roads — one over the Burzil and the other over the
Kamri Pass. The Burzil route is through bare rocky
nullahs, and grass can only be got from the dep6ts at
each stage ; but this route is usually chosen by travellers
and troops, as it is a better road, and there are log-huts at
the stages. The Kamri Pass is higher than the Burzil, and
so the road is not open quite as long as the other, but it
leads over grassy mountain slopes, with nullahs opening
out of it where there is splendid grazing, so the ponymen
always go by it.
" Except in my own village, there is no better grass in
the world," he says, with confidence. We are in a nullah
on the Kamri route, where he is resting his ponies, and
feeding them up for a few days. He is on his way to
Gupis, half-way between Gilgit and Chitral, with rice,
and is due to arrive there about the end of September.
Mae
A MASTER OF HORSE
95
He has just been down to Bandipore with a mountain
battery, about which he seems very pleased, as he has
been highly commended by one of the authorities for the
way in which he did his work. The Kashmir Imperial
Service troops are the only ones which have artillery, and
A CAMPING-PLACE
the splendid work these little mountain guns have done
is written in the history of many a frontier campaign.
He evidently thinks it a great distinction to go with the
" tope-khana " (artillery).
His next trip will be with us. The passes will then
be closed, his term of service over, and he will be free for
his private affairs till next year. It is to arrange about
96 KASHMIR
dates that we have stopped here to interview him. For
we are old friends. It is now September, and we made
his acquaintance in May, when we happened to camp
near his village, and he and his sons and his ponies took
us and our belongings up to a snow-bound mountain
lake, about 13,000 feet above sea-level. He is very proud
of his ponies, and justly so, for they are really wonderful
little creatures, and take their loads over ground where
one feels it is only just possible to walk.
My riding pony he is especially proud of. He is not
much to look at, stands 12.0, and is black and furry,
but his paces are the easiest and his intelligence marvel-
lous. In fact, he understands alpine climbing so much
better than I do, that, in the worst places, I close my
eyes and lay the bridle on his neck, while he daintily
picks his way over the slope of a glacier, or the brink of
a worse abyss than usual, up or down a rough flight of
rocky steps, or round an abrupt and slippery corner with
a raging torrent below. He has been, I am told, a
renowned polo pony in his day, and he certainly still has
a great liking for " riding off," and hates to see anything
in front of him. He regarded me at first with deep
suspicion, not being used to " sahibs," but learned to like
apples with all the fervour of an acquired taste, and to
allow his nose to be stroked. They bought him, they
"AFTER POLO"
(Characteristic dress of the people of Astor, all of whom seem to play polo)
A MASTER OF HORSE 99
told me, somewhere on the frontier, after the Tirah cam-
paign, from a man whose name I cannot recall, except
that it began with Sirdar, which is the title of the heir of
a ruling chief in those parts!" My ordinary, everyday
vocabulary is too limited to understand the whole history
of the transaction, which I am sure would be interesting,
but I got the impression that the Sirdar was on the
losing side, and thought it wiser to escape across the
border, turning his belongings into money as far as pos-
sible. This hardly agrees with the horse's alleged age,
which is six, but I could never get them to admit that he
was a day older.
Our friend owns about fifty ponies, but only those
which the Bandipore dep6t have picked and branded go
on transport service ; with the others he does as he
pleases, and since we made his acquaintance a certain
number have been reserved for us. But he is an old
man, he says, and will soon give up the road. And, by
the goodness of God, he has sons who, even now, go
with his ponies for him. Except for the service of the
Sircar, he himself never goes any more with his ponies.
All the rest of the year, even to go to the nearest village,
he rides, he tells us ; he never walks now.
His sons toro, as they call it, always on the road.
They are big, stalwart creatures, who can do a march of
lOO
KASHMIR
twenty-six miles over a high and snowy pass without
losing the elasticity of their stride, their optimistic view
of life or the grave politeness of their manners, and will,
at the end of it, attend to the needs of their ponies and
bring wood from the forest for your camp fire with the
greatest goodwill.
PREPARING FOR THE START
They and their father are all absurdly alike, belonging
to the fair type of Kashmiri, with reddish hair, faces
burned red by the sun, and grey or light brown eyes.
The eldest is a born nomad, never in his village for more
than a week or two at a time, and happiest when he is on
the move with his ponies. He has been all over the
A MASTER OF HORSE
103
frontier, to the Pamirs with some sportsmen, and knows
besides all the passes of the Pir Panjal equally well.
The youngest, who is exceedingly nice-looking, very
like the radiant David of Michelangelo, the shepherd-
boy fresh from his fight with the giant, would prefer, he
shyly affirms, the life of a zemindar (farmer). They have
some fields and sheep at home in their village, and he
kfHt*%
lV ^i;:»<i;:.
AT HOME
would like to stay at home and do zemindari and get the
wool ready for making puttoo (the excellent homespun of
Kashmir). But it has now become his adut (habit) to
go with the ponies, and so he, too, is a nomad from
necessity.
Their village is a very lovely one, with unusually
lovely surroundings, even for Kashmir.
io4 KASHMIR
It is a mountain village surrounded by fragrant forests
of fir and pine, and gay with every wild flower of the
year. Above it, grassy meadows climb to the snow-line,
the best of grazing, where their ponies run wild through
the spring and early summer, till the summons comes for
Gilgit, getting into splendid condition and learning to be
as sure-footed as the ibex, whose haunts are not far off.
These men think there is no place in the world like
their village, and they are not far wrong. When they
are crossing a pass which takes them out of sight of
Kashmir, they stand for a moment facing the Valley and
recite a prayer, and the same thing happens on the way
back when they first come in sight of it again. They are
very faithful sons of the Prophet ; the old father seems
to be exceedingly religious, and has brought up his house-
hold very strictly.
It is a hard life that they lead. For at least six months
of the year they are on the move, sleeping in the open
with no more shelter than a pile of pack saddles, in all
weathers — rain, and hard frost, and heavy snow. But
they seem thoroughly to enjoy it, and look as if it agreed
with them.
Riding up the last slope of the last pass, on our way
back to Kashmir from the north, we overtook and passed
a string of about a hundred transport ponies and their
A MASTER OF HORSE
105
drivers coming back unloaded, their service for the year
over. The men were singing lustily ; not very melodious,
but very light-hearted and gay.
"Why are they singing?" we asked, in the true spirit
of the globe-trotter, of the home-sick boy who was with
our ponies.
"Are they not," he said, "going back to Kashmir?"
F
TO BHIMBER
IT is now a mere skeleton of a road; usually as elusive
and dependent on the imagination as the skeleton
army which haunts the battlefields of peace ; the
rocky, boulder-strewn outline of the highway along which
the Moghul emperors once used to migrate to Kashmir,
with "the gorgeous magnificence peculiar to the kings of
Hindustan."
109
no
KASHMIR
It is marked by no "triumphs of modern engineer-
ing" like the new road in the Jhelum Valley; progress
and civilisation, science and speed, in the shape of mail-
tongas and invalid phaetons, have passed by on the other
side. The steepness and height of the Pir Panjal barrier
are not to be trifled with, and it is evidently a road which
CIVILISATION ON THE TONGA-ROAD
admits of no compromise between the ponderous elephant
transport of "slow and solemn marching a la Mogo/e,"
and the air-ships of a levelled and communistic future.
In the meantime one can always walk. There are
also baggage-ponies, which are available for transport,
when the snow is not too deep on the pass, and the
lumbardar of Bahramgalla chooses to make twenty-eight
log-bridges in the space of five miles (knowing they will
A GUJAR WOMAN IN MARCHING ORDER
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 113
all be swept away by the next storm), or if the mountain
torrents are in a fit state to be forded. In these circum-
stances the "pony-road " is considered " open." Otherwise
there are coolies for one's baggage. To within five miles
of the pass ponies can always go, but, as the road has
no object unless one crosses the pass, its "openness"
depends on those five miles and the state of the snowy
defile above.
There is one psychological moment for this road :
when the hot weather is not too far advanced to make
the first marches unbearable, and, at the same time, has
advanced far enough to make the pass practicable, and
when the whole range of the Pir Panjal is still a gleam-
ing vision of snowy summits filling the hot day's march
towards them with alluring promises, and adding to
every rose-flushed sunset or splendour of storm along the
dark lower hills the ethereal beauty of a white ideal.
If you can seize this moment you will also find Spring
on the other side of the Pass. A spring which has left
behind somewhere in Northern Europe the sudden frosts
and biting winds which made it a somewhat alloyed de-
light there, and has brought only its lovely, changing
skies, its soft, veiled sunlight, and its orfevrerie of all the
most charming flowers of the year: purple iris, pale mauve
violets sweeter than any garden ones, delicate waxen
ii4 KASHMIR
arbutus, little skies of forget-me-nots of the palest blue,
and cloudy patches of white anemones lighting up the
darkness of the still fir forests which cover the hills below
the snow-line ; while, as one nears the valley, spring dies
out in a rosy mist of apple-blossoms against the delicate
silver-grey of Kabul poplars, where it meets summer in
wild rose-bordered paths among the lower levels.
It is impossible to give any date for this combination
of circumstances as it probably varies each year ; and it
may only have happened this year because of the unusual
winter. But if you are what the Kashmiri calls a Kismet-
wallah you will no doubt cross the pass on the one and
only day whether it comes in May or April.
But one ought to begin a road at the beginning, not
at the end. This road begins at Gujrat, between Lahore
and Jhelum. Here you leave the railway. It is a very
unpretending beginning, of so little consequence that no
mail train ever troubles to stop here. The most the mail
will do for you is to leave your carriage behind at Lahore,
where it shuffles aimlessly about from one line of rails to
another, and, after much hesitation, chooses the very
sunniest spot it can find to wait in from midday till
" 13.45" for the passenger train which will take you to
your unimportant destination.
In the times of the Moghuls the road seems to have
as h
W
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S5
W
o
I— ' I— I
a &h
•p
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 117
begun at Lahore, and it was usual to start "at a prosperous
hour,"\w\\h several thousand cavalry, infantry, and "stirrup
artillery" for a bodyguard. On the first day " the fortu-
nate camp" would "alight at the garden of Dilamez and
spend some days there" After fourteen days of camping
varied by occasional marching, you would arrive at Gujrat.
This place was founded by the Emperor Akbar, "who,
when he was proceeding to Kashmir, built a fort on the
other side of the river, and made the Gujars, who had
hitherto been devoted to plunder, dwell there. . . . The
Gujars live chiefly on milk and curds and seldom cultivate
land!' (This is the account of it given by Akbar's son,
the Emperor Jehangir, in his Memoirs?)
The people who keep herds of cattle are still called
Gujars in Kashmir. They are a wandering race, spending
the winter in Poonch or Jummu or the Punjab, and
bringing their flocks and herds back to the pastures of
Kashmir in the spring. Those of Poonch and Jummu
seem a different race from the others, and are often very
handsome. The women wear the picturesque dress of
the North, full Turkish trousers and loose embroidered
shirts, with a most becoming little red cap. They are
tall and dlancdes, and exceedingly graceful, and the dull
reds and smoky blues of their clothes are exactly the
right colours for the forest paths on which you meet them.
n8 KASHMIR
They seem mild and peaceable enough now, whatever
their past may have been ; perhaps the terrible prospect
of having to give up their roving lives and the freedom
of the forests to settle down in the cramped ugliness of
a town was enough to reform them.
In the jungles of Kashmir you pass through three
distinct zones. The first and lowest is the zone of the
Gujars. Here, in the forests, you come to lovely, open
meadows, called margs, where the hills forget to be as
steep as usual. Under the shelter of a group of pines
or in a shelf of the hillside will be a hut built of logs, its
flat roof covered with beaten-down earth, the summer
home of the Gujar. These huts are usually wrecked by
the weight of the winter snow, and have to be rebuilt in
the spring. The Kashmir peasants are wiser and build
their houses with sloping roofs for the snow to slide off.
But the Gujars either cling to the traditions of the past
as to the shape of their roofs, or have as little fore-
thought as the cricket in the fable, who sang and danced
through the summer and trusted to luck and the hearth
of the hospitable stranger for the winter. Or it may,
perhaps, be easier to build a hut if you have a hillside for
one of its walls and make your roof by fixing branches
firmly in the side of the hill. This style of architecture
has also the advantage of making it difficult for your
A GUJAR'S HUT
IN KASHMIR
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 121
enemy to find you, as it is very hard to distinguish it
from the surrounding landscape, and, in the old days,
evidently all the rest of the world were enemies, for the
hereditary instinct of the Gujar still is to flee from a
stranger.
Above the Gujars comes the zone of the chanpans,
shepherds, whose flocks number thousands, and who lead
them above the line of forests to "alpine pastures," grassy
downs, where the green spreads with incredible rapidity
following the line of melting snow, and patches of ex-
quisite little alpine flowers, short-stemmed to escape the
fury of the winds, come up in a day in swift response to
the first touch of the sun.
The third zone is the place of the goat-herds, and this
is so high that it climbs over the snow-line and goes
down on the other side, leaving the pleasant pastures of
Kashmir far behind for the steep valleys of Maru Ward-
wan, and the stern heights of Suru and the borders of
Ladakh, and Baltistan. In the passes leading north you
may meet them taking their flocks over, the women and
children bringing up the rear with the stragglers, the
lame, the disabled, and the latest arrivals, the very tiniest
of all carried carefully over the snow with a bleating
mother in the wake. They are a very pretty sight these
gentle fellow-travellers, but their roads lead too near the
122 KASHMIR
haunts of ibex and red bear for them to be welcomed by
sportsmen.
On the Pir Panjal road one sees all these different
types, all on the move towards their summer quarters,
but each herd usually goes by a different track and there
are many passes used only by them for their yearly
immigration. For the ordinary traveller the first stage is
IN THE THIRD ZONE
Bhimber. From Gujrat to Bhimber the road runs, like
the road to Camelot, through
Long fields of barley and of rye
That clothe the wold and meet the sky.
It goes due north towards the low foothills, which are a
grey silhouette against a pale grey sky, the higher hills
hidden in a heat haze.
Bernier, the Frenchman who went to Kashmir with
&
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■J
W
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O
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w
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS
125
the Emperor Aurangzebe, talks about " burning Bember."
" We are encamped" he says, "in the dry bed of a con-
siderable torrent, upon pebbles and burning sands, a very
furnace :"
But if you go to Kashmir at the proper time of year
the country round Bhimber will be delightfully green,
BY EKKA TO BHIMBER
and you will not be so unwise as to camp in the un-
shaded, glaring bed of the river. Most probably you
will not be in tents at all, but in the cool stone bungalow
with trees near by and a little garden, which seems meant
by the malt (gardener) for a vegetable garden, but where
126 KASHMIR
nothing really flourishes except small pink roses, very
double and very scented.
The Bhimber one comes to now is a sleepy little town :
absolutely silent from an hour before noon till about four;
and, in the cool hours of the morning and evening, filled
with the drowsy creak of Persian water-wheels, when the
women come down for water, through the flowering
pomegranate-trees, from the flat-roofed, dull-red houses
under the hill.
The sole trace of the vanished glories of the Bhimber
of Moghul days is the ruined serai. " The splendid serais
of the Pir Panjal route " were mostly built by a Moghul
viceroy, Ali Mardan Khan, who spent jQ 10,000 yearly on
his journey to Kashmir, and who had such a magnificent
way of doing things that he was supposed to possess the
philosopher's stone. Many of these serais are still in
very good preservation, and those that have fallen into
decay seem to have been helped to it by the hand of man.
Their massive, arched gateways, their battlemented walls
and turrets, their size and strength, give them somewhat
the appearance of mediaeval fortresses, and they are
magnificent relics of the empire of the Moghuls, of
whom only the greatest, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jehan,
and Aurangzebe, visited Kashmir.
Part of the serai at Bhimber has been rebuilt recently
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS
127
to be used as a treasury and other Government offices and
as quarters for some of the officials. The small, smug,
squared neatness of the modern part contrasts pitifully
with the great masses of roughly hewn stone, grand even
in ruin, of which the former building was made ; and the
uncompromising plainness of the new doorways, mere
IN THE SERAI AT BHIMBER
square holes in the walls, seems more sordid than ever
beside the noble lines of the old Moghul arch.
Bhimber has forgotten the marvellous summer courts
of the Moghul days, the five hundred elephants and thirty
thousand coolies who must have created considerable
excitement in the town (and perhaps not entirely agree-
able excitement) as they passed through in the train
128
KASHMIR
of an Emperor who was supposed to be " marching
light."
In these degenerate days through the almost deserted
streets of the little town passes only an occasional Eng-
lishman, trudging along, with his modest camp equip-
ment carried by five or six baggage-ponies, while the
town wakes up to a languid, momentary interest, some-
what less languid, perhaps, if the travellers are English-
women, and then sinks back into its former attitude,
drowsing at the foot of the hills : the deserted gateway
of the old Imperial road.
4T -"",.
'''fill
'
"-,--> ml' •"■mi
>mu? ,
^* *■ .... . *«H
II
Mes en/ants, dans ce village,
Suivi de rois, il passa :
Voila bien longtemps de (a. — B£ranger.
ON the first four marches out of Bhimber you
desire earnestly, like Falstaff, to be " Diana's
foresters ; gentlemen of the shade, minions of
the moon." But shade is mostly absent, especially for
the first few miles, and marching by moonlight is some-
times impracticable. A sun which begins to be fierce
almost from the moment it rises ; a rocky road without
shade or beauty, reflecting the heat and glare ; hillsides
black and bare, rising in smooth, round ridges like iron
pontoons, and a steady climb over them for five shadeless,
129
13°
KASHMIR
gasping miles; then a descent through a valley, green and
cultivated, and pretty enough, but almost equally hot : —
that is the history of the first march.
The next day is much better. The bare hills give
place to low, pine-covered spurs, and, in the valley, one
follows the course of a little river, with quantities of
A SHADY BIT
pink oleander growing along it. It was perhaps here
that the Emperor Jehangir wrote : " / marched the whole
way through the bed of a river, in which water was
then flowing, and the oleander bushes were in full bloom
and of exquisite colour, like peach blossoms. . . . I ordered
my personal attendants, both horse and foot, to bind
bunches of the flowers in their turbans, and I directed
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 131
that the turbans of those who would not decorate them-
selves in this fashion should be taken off their heads.
I thus got up a fine garden."
This Emperor was a great lover of Nature, and had
besides a highly artistic temperament. His court may
have found it rather trying sometimes if he often insisted
on their sacrificing themselves pour itre belle as on this
occasion ; but it was not then the age of tolerance any-
where. In Europe they still burned heretics at this time.
In his diaries of his journeys to Kabul and Kashmir,
in the midst of accounts of wars and rebellions, he never
forgets to notice any new flower he comes across, or a
specially fine group of trees, or perhaps a river, like the
Nain Sukh in Badakshan, which, he says, the redoubtable
Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni named " the eyes repose!'
In the school histories of one's youth the Emperor
Jehangir is passed over somewhat hurriedly, and one only
gathers the impression that he is the sort of person of
whom the less one hears the better. But his own memoirs
paint a very interesting and original character. He seems
to be without that proud consciousness of his own merits
which rather disfigures the great Akbar. The calculating
selfishness of Shah Jehan and the cruel bigotry of
Aurangzebe are not his failings. It is rather striking
that he never makes any attempt to conceal the amount
G
132 KASHMIR
of wine he drank ; he tells you the exact measure, how
many times a day it was brought to him, and what a bad
effect it had on his health ; and he is naively grateful to
the Empress Nur Jehan — the Light of the World — for
persuading him gradually to reduce his allowance till it
came to a more moderate number of cups a day.
Perhaps it was excess of temperament, an unpardon-
able fault in a king, that led to his downfall. If only he
had been born poor and in Italy, he would probably have
been a shining light of the great cinque cento.
From other sources one learns that he had many great
qualities as a general and a ruler, especially in his youth,
before his fatal vice had developed. In the annals of
Akbar's time, by Ferishta and others, one constantly finds
that whenever there was trouble or revolt in any part of
Akbar's empire, " Prince Selim " — as he was then called —
was always sent for to settle it, and Prince Selim usually
did it, and successfully.
He was also the keenest of sportsmen. None of the
other emperors seems to have had such a passion for
shikar as this one, and the Pir Panjal in his day must
have abounded in game of all sorts. It is only compara-
tively recently, within the last twenty years, that ibex and
markhor and barasingh have been practically exterminated
in the Pir Panjal range.
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 133
At the end of this march one comes to Naoshera,
a small and pretty village in a bend of the River Tavi.
There is here a very fine Moghul serai, in much better
preservation than the one at Bhimber. The narrow,
crooked village street, paved with cobble-stone, climbing
past the buttressed walls and deep archways of the old
serai, has a very mediaeval air ; one would say Vitre' or
Le Mans, were it not for the domed mosque on the other
side of the road, and the passers-by in the picturesque
Punjabi dress.
On the next march there are lovely glimpses of the
distant snows of the Pir Panjal, now only five marches
ahead. The way, if you walk by the coolie-road, is at
first a very rough short cut, through a curious jungle of
cactus ; it grows so thick that neither wind nor sun
reaches you as you climb the stony, steep little track to
the top of the spur. After this come little lanes edged
with flowering pomegranates and white wild roses; a river
that begins to have the transparent emerald colour and
the verve and dash of a mountain-stream ; and, later on,
there are pine-woods with, among them, a tall, flowering
shrub something like an American locust-tree. Its flowers
grow in erect clusters, lovely, vivid splashes of trans-
parent yellow against the blurred background of the pines.
This march takes you to a place which every one pro-
134
KASHMIR
nounces differently. The old historians write it Tinguescq,
but the modern pronunciation sounds like " Chingiz."
The view from here is lovely. The river runs far
below, white with foam in the silver-grey of its pebbly
bed ; on either side, closing in its valley, are dark wooded
A PLACE TO DREAM OF
hills ; and, at the far end, the snows of the Pir Panjal.
The bungalow, small, and cool, and breezy, is on a high
cliff above the river, but it is the ruined Serai near by
which is entirely fascinating.
Here, as the last colours of sunset faded from the sky,
and the snows turned to ashen grey, and the chill moun-
tain wind fluttered the gay silks and muslins of the poor
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS
i35
shivering ladies of the Empress' suite, they brought the
body of the Emperor Jehangir. It was fitting that he
should die here, the last camp from which, on the way
down, one sees the snows of Kashmir ; this Emperor,
who, when he was dying, and they asked him if he
wanted anything, turned his face to the wall, away from
the wearisome sight of all those people, time-serving,
cruel, grasping and ignoble, insincere and self-interested
all, among whom he must have known that it was im-
possible for an emperor to find a real friend, turned away
to close his eyes and dream of the fair, wild places that
he loved, as he answered " Only Kashmir."
I N
yv'H'Tl
-iwrtlfl,
"Illll//-
** ,
III
Better also is the sight of the eyes than the walking of the soul. — The Preacher.
ONE should leave Chingiz in the cool of dawn,
before the moon has effaced itself in the slowly
brightening sky, while the stars still linger big
and brilliant over the sharply pointed peaks of snow, and
before the first ray of sunlight lies red on the western
gate of the Serai.
For it is a hot road to Rajaori and a long one, in spite
137
138 KASHMIR
of the smoothness of the way, with its fragrant border of
white wild roses, past little hill villages, and through
barley fields, instead of the jungle paths of the last
marches. Rajaori is on a river, a river which has to be
forded before you reach your camping-ground. Once
some one was inspired to make a bridge over it, but he
apparently got discouraged after building one very mas-
sive stone pier, which still stands there, while the town
people wade backwards and forwards as they have always
done. The current is very strong, especially when the
river is swollen by the melting snow on the Pir Panjal,
and also after storms, and the river sometimes cannot be
crossed for two days at a time, when all traffic, from a
gaudy wedding procession to a roving cow which has
crossed over to graze on the other side, is held up till the
water goes down again.
The bungalow is a curious little place, "partly Sara-
cenic and the rest ad libitum" made up of a little arched
veranda overhanging the river, and four little cells of
rooms joined on at the four corners. Through the scal-
loped arches you look out on one side on the river and
the town opposite ; on the other side, through the vine-
like leaves of a small chinar-tree, is a little world of green
and shade, an orchard of cherry and peach trees, and
their reflections in a tank facing the bungalow. It is a
THE BUNGALOW AT RAJAORI
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 141
neglected remnant of an old Moghul garden, of which the
best part is outside the bungalow enclosure : a grove of
fine, shady trees under which there is room to camp.
They are the only trees for miles around, and so all the
birds of the neighbourhood are obliged to live here ;
early in the morning and at sunset there is a pastoral
symphony, which entirely eclipses the roar of the river,
and it would need an orchestra of several hundred violins
to compete with it successfully.
Rajaori is a town of walled forts and turrets and
arched gateways at the end of a promontory between two
streams, the larger of which is the Tavi. Rajas of Rajaori
ruled this kingdom from the seventh century to the
beginning of the nineteenth, when the last was de-
posed by the ruler of Jummu. A strong little Rajput
town it is in its pretty valley, looking up to the line of
snow, with, at its feet, the rushing mountain stream. In
the old days, before modern war was invented, it must
have been an impregnable position, only to be taken by
treachery. Many and bloody were its feuds in those days.
Now all are forgotten, and it is profoundly peaceful. On
the hill above it Dhanni Dhar, the empty shell of a strong
Sikh fort, symbol of its last struggle, is even more peace-
ful still. Its garrison is a solitary sepoy, who seems to
prefer masquerading as a peaceful ploughman, though
142
KASHMIR
his ploughshare shows no trace, even on the closest
examination, of ever having been anything so alarming
as a sword.
From here to Thana Mandi, the next stage, it is still
easy marching along level roads following the curve of
DHANNI DHAR
the river, through more fields and villages. Just before
the end of the march you have a short climb to the Serai,
in front of which blooms purple iris, whose fragrance and
rich colour tell you that at last you are nearing Kashmir.
There are two villages, one called Thana and the
other Mandi, with about half a mile of hillside between
them. Of the old Moghul serais this one here is almost
the only one still inhabited. It is the winter residence of
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 143
a colony of blacksmiths, who, in summer, move up to
Poshiana just below the Pass, where they shoe the bag-
gage-ponies which cross during the season.
At Thana Mandi there is always a mythical bear in
the offing, where, however, it seems to prefer to remain,
as one never hears of any one getting it. There is also
A KASHMIRI TRAVELLER
an old shikari who was once with General Kinloch and
several other celebrated sportsmen. The passing traveller
is now his only distraction, for he is an old man and one
hand is disabled — a sahib's bullet that went astray.
The march from Thana to Bahramgalla is at last a
real hill march. The air blows keen from the snows you
are approaching as you cross the Rattan Pir, a ridge about
M4
KASHMIR
eight thousand feet high, the first of the two high, abrupt
steps — for so far the road has been fairly level — by which
you cross the mountain barrier. This is an easy three-mile
climb, up grassy slopes to the ridge, from which there is
a fine snow view of Tuta Kuti, the Crystal Mountain, as
OLD LALLA
the local legends call it, and the slopes to the west of the
pass, where the snow still reaches far down into the forest.
From the top of the ridge it is a lovely, shaded walk down
to Bahramgalla, through fir forests where wild violets
grow, and white peonies are beginning to show them-
selves, and the chestnuts are in bloom.
Bahramgalla is a wild and lonely little gorge. The
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 145
river raves and foams far below, and all round, shutting
one in very close, are the grandeur and silence and peace
of the hills. It is a place of waterfalls. This little
rocky gorge opens into another most lovely one, longer
but almost as narrow, its sides covered with forest and
threaded by streaks of silver, where the water hurls itself
over rocky ledges or through green clefts arched with
flowers. But the most beautiful of all is the first, the
one nearest Bahramgalla, the Nur-i-Chamb — the Marvel
of the World. Black and frowning are the rocky walls
that frame it, an iron prison for the white, ethereal, spirit-
like thing that flings itself from so far a height into so
deep a pool below.
Bahramgalla is also a place of storms ; thunder,
which the echoes make a long, continuous roar, wild
tempests of wind and rain which mean fresh snow on the
pant sal (mountain) above.
It is, the inhabitants say, a somewhat sukkut place.
In Kashmir you learn the elastic capacity of this word.
It means all that the English words " hard " and " diffi-
cult" mean, and much more besides. There are sukkut
roads and sukkut hills, sukkut seasons and sukkut people.
Lumbardars may be sukkut and even sahibs, when they
threaten to shoot people who disobey them. I have also
heard of one sukkut memsahib ; this adjective was
146 KASHMIR
applied to her because she travelled far into the unknown,
beyond Changchenmo, doing the long marches of twenty
miles and more on foot, and with ease. They said she
was French and a princess, but anything more definite I
was unable to discover.
With a vocabulary consisting of sukkut, nimmel, and
changa, you may go far in Kashmir. Nimmel is what
you call the radiant days of deep blue skies and purple
shadows on the hills, of fresh breezes and a comprehen-
sive and satisfying delightfulness. Changa is nice, the
most nice possible, and it is also used to signify
assent, as the French say Men, or the schoolboy says
righto.
The lumbardar of Bahramgalla is rather a personage.
To begin with, his name is Shah Jehan, and he is also
somewhat of "a mountain of mummy," though not
unpleasantly so. He has read history, it seems, and he
is also very proud of having visited Kashmir en globe-
trotter, without any other reason for going.
" None could understand it," he tells you. " They all
said, ' What work brings you here ?' and I said, ' No
work. I came to see, like the Angrez sahibs.'"
Bahramgalla in winter is exceedingly sukkut accord-
ing to him.
" Seventeen yards of snow last winter," he says.
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 147
I suppose my feelings show in my face, for he hastens
to add, " Not all at once."
It is true the traveller's little rest-house looks as if it
were built for difficult weather, for it is most solid, and of
a shape and quality to resist the severest storms. It
belongs to the Raja of Poonch, who hospitably places it
at the disposal of the passing traveller.
On the next march you pass the place where the
Emperor Jehangir fired his last shot, the day before he
died. It is a very steep place indeed. The cliff on one
side goes up several hundred feet sheer from the river,
and on the opposite side is a little flat place, where they
say he was carried to. The game was driven on the
opposite side ; he fired at a deer and wounded it ; the
animal went a little way and fell dead. One of the
beaters went after it, missed his footing, and was killed,
falling to the bottom of the terrible cliff. It is said the
Emperor took this as an omen, foretelling his own death.
This march is up the gorge of waterfalls, like'a High-
land glen on a somewhat larger scale. It is a short march
but a steep climb, especially if you go by the coolie-road.
While you are still on the pony-road beside the river you
have constantly to cross little bridges made of branches
and twigs, kept in place by stones laid on] them, and
looking like very untidy hawks' nests. One feels a slight
H
148 KASHMIR
hesitation at some of them ; but to see them rocking but
safe under the passers-by is reassuring. Later on there
are snow-bridges, a welcome change. You camp [Tat
Poshiana, after which comes the real ascent to the pass.
The Poshiana "season" does not begin apparently
till rather late in the year ; perhaps with Ostend, it
WHEN THE BRIDGES ARE DOWN
is at its height in July. At any rate, in April and
early May it is deserted, and the empty huts of the
summer visitors are a welcome shelter from a wind in
which it is impossible to pitch a tent.
" This is the wind of the Pass" say the coolies with
pride, as you turn a corner and are nearly taken off your
feet by a chilling blast. Poshiana is an eerie little place,
with an end-of-the-world air about it — a little group of
huts built into the hillside on the edge of a precipice. The
friendly, sheltering forests are below you. You have
climbed past the edge of them and all round you are bare,
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 149
grassy, or stony slopes. It is very cold and the huts have
very dark interiors, with an atmosphere vaguely reminis-
cent of many generations of summer visitors and their
flocks and herds. But a fire and tea and, in due course,
a lamp are cheering, and, after all, there are not many
POSHIANA
hours to be spent here, for the coolies are very firm about
starting early next morning, and it needs all one's powers
of persuasion to arrive at a compromise of four o'clock for
the start. They seem to think as soon after midnight as
possible the proper time, but this appears to us as un-
necessary as it would be uncomfortable.
After a few hours of dark and cold in the hut one is
i5o KASHMIR
very glad to get up and start by the light of a moon so
large and round and near that it seems to be standing at
your door, half of which was accidentally burned in the
kitchen fire last night.
It is a long climb up to the top of the " Pir." Also
one does not feel tremendously energetic at four in the
morning. And it is rather aggravating when you have
toiled up a steep ascent, which, to your sleepy brain,
seems to have lasted untold hours, to find you have to go
down to the level of a stream further than you have come
up and then begin your climb all over again — the real
ascent this time. At this place and hour one cannot help
feeling that a little modern engineering would be worth
a good deal of historic past.
The Pir Panjal, though not yet " open " and still under
snow, does not present any insurmountable difficulties
even to the amateur in climbing, and the Alpine clubbist
would probably disdain it altogether. The only real
difficulty is fatigue, for the ascent is steep and long, and
some people might be affected by the height — which is
about eleven thousand five hundred feet — and find a little
difficulty in breathing. In one place there is a climb of,
perhaps, five hundred feet or a little more, up a rather
perpendicular snow-drift, where your coolies look like
little black ants crawling up a whitewashed wall, but with
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 151
grass shoes this has no terrors, though you have to go
very slowly. Near the top you cross several snow-slopes,
where there are stones slipping down from above with an
exceedingly high velocity, and here you have to follow the
coolies' example, to watch your chance and run across, so
as to avoid being hurled into the snowy abyss below ; a
proceeding which leaves you somewhat collapsed and
breathless, for it comes at the end of an excessively steep
climb of three thousand feet.
It is hard to believe there is anything very dangerous
about it, till some one points to the drift below and says,
" Down there a man and three ponies were buried by an
avalanche a few weeks ago." And this is why you have
to get up so early in the morning, that you may get to
the top before the sun has had time to melt the snow on
these steep slopes enough to make them ready to slip
down. But if you are fortunate in your weather, and
height does not affect your breathing, the radiance of sun
and sky and snow and the quality of the air up here make
tragedy seem impossible, one of those "old, unhappy, far-off
things " which do not belong to your world at all, this
world of wonderful air and a white winding plain, which
is the Pass, bordered by hills of snow ; and the top of
even a minor pass seems the only place worth living in.
But there is not much time for loitering, for the snow
152 KASHMIR
gets more difficult to walk on later, and the coolies, with
their usual morbid fear of storms, even on the most
brilliant of days, have hurried on to get out of the pass as
quickly as possible, and your tents are far ahead.
&&*?
THE PIR PANJAL — A MINOR PASS
After three miles of an almost level, snowy plain come
grassy slopes still wet and spongy from the newly melted
snow, and gay with tiny flowers no higher than the turf,
patches of pure and brilliant colour, the richest purple-
blue to match the sky, bright rose-pink and pale mauve,
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS
153
the most dainty of carpets, with a delicate, aromatic
fragrance which seems to belong to grass and flowers
alike at this height.
At the end of this gently sloping plain is Aliabad
Serai, a deserted ruin, emphasising the loneliness of the
WAITING FOR ORDERS
place where it stands. It is impossible to camp here at
this time of year, as it is too unsheltered from winds and
storms, and there is no firewood near. After the Serai,
the road descends in long zigzags along bare slopes with
tremendous cliffs going down to the river.
Once upon a time there lived here a Giant called Lai
Golam. He was a cannibal — like all giants in those days
— and he lived in a cave just above the road. You had
i54 KASHMIR
to be very careful in going past his cave ; indeed, the
wonder is that any one ever got past at all, for his
favourite amusement was to throw the largest rocks he
could find at the passing traveller, and when he had
wounded or killed him, he took him up to his larder in
the cave. Perhaps the giant was not a marksman, or,
and I think this is more likely, there may have been in
those days a good fairy at the very top of the Pir, who
would show you how to get past him if you asked her
nicely, and if you were the sort of person the fairies take
to. What happened to the Giant afterwards no one
knows, or, if any one does know, he must have promised
not to tell. Anyway, the cave is empty, and you can
see it ; but the new road, very wisely, goes above it,
in case of accidents, for with giants you can never be
too careful.
After many miles of winding down along a narrow,
slippery path, which looks like a thread laid along the
middle of vast bare hillsides, the proper camp will be at
a place called Doobjee. But, if you prefer your own way,
you will choose instead a most lovely spot called Sukh
Serai — built, they say, by a Moghul lady — on the left
bank of the river, and somewhat off the road, to which
you return afterwards by a rather sukkut short cut along
a cliff overhanging the river, where even the sure-footed
JZ If!
o <
PL,
< B
THE ROAD OF THE EMPERORS 157
coolies crawl on hands and knees. Sukh Serai is a little
green glade of the forest, shut in by dark fir trees, with a
background of snow. The river, whose tiny beginning
you saw far up on the Pass, is here too deep and strong
to be forded, a resistless rush of green and silver breaking
in snowy foam over the rocks in its way.
From here you may, if you like, march down towards
the valley next day. It is, at this time of year, and on such
a day, a march of dream-like beauty. There are clouds,
not dark nor heavy, but only just enough to show you in
rapidly changing moments how lovely a grey day can be;
there is sunlight of every varying degree of brilliance
down to the soft, silvery tones beloved of Corot A day
which would be the despair of a painter, for no two
moments are alike, and all are exquisite.
And before you is the valley — a haze of delicate, misty
blues and greens, ending in the abrupt walls of the Lidar
and Wardwan valleys, still white with the winter snow.
But there is no need to look forward to any Land of
Promise on the horizon, for all round you is a country
whose charm is much more powerful than the too ordered
and serene beauty of the valley. Here, on the mountain
slopes, is an enchanted land of forests of fir and silver
birch and maple, of green stretches of moorland dappled
with all the flowers of an English spring, including
158
KASHMIR
the golden gorse of Scotland — the "whins" whose faint,
sweet scent makes a shy apology for their excessive
prickliness — besides apple and pear and cherry trees all
in bloom. And after the flowers are gone, there will still
remain the true Kashmir, the land of mountain streams,
of forests and snow, of solitudes too exquisite to be
lonely, of Nature untroubled by human meddling.
slip
I, till Kill/ ,,»(/
<«*•/ ,/•
THE SHEPHERDESS
■^
^
THE SHEPHERDESS
SHE was no dainty, high-heeled blonde of the
era Louis Quinze, no model for Fragonard or
Watteau. The splendid energy of Franz Hals or
of the great Spanish masters would have delighted in the
freedom of her pose and her wild grace and vigour.
Her environment, too, was far removed from the trim
elaboration, the ordered and trained luxuriance of those
parks with stately allies and sculptured fountains, where
the artificial yet charming ladies of Watteau disport
themselves ; playing at life in a golden land where " it is
always afternoon."
161
1 62 KASHMIR
The shepherdess and " her house," she said, came from
Swat and Bonair. My acquaintance with those parts is
limited to hazy recollections of snapshots I have seen in
the dim past, in the collections of various amateur
photographers returned from the Tirah campaign ; hence
I could form no definite mental picture of the surround-
ings to which she belonged, beyond a general impression
of vastness and desolation.
But it would be hard to imagine a more fitting back-
ground for her than the place where we met. Round us
was the dark fir forest through which gleamed the flash-
ing silver of a mountain torrent, thundering down the
narrow gorge, on its way to join the Brinwar stream, one
of the " thousand sources " of the Jhelum. Above the
line of climbing forest rose the lofty snowy summits
which guard the Wardwan Valley and Kishtwar ; those
happy hunting-grounds where red bear and ibex wander.
She stood, a tall and slender figure, beside a great,
grey rock, in a grassy, flower-decked glade of the forest.
The sun gleamed on the massive squares of silver strung
on bright blue beads, which formed her necklace, and the
long and clinging lines of her garments emphasised the
grace and suppleness of her bearing, while their sombre
hues harmonised well with the gloom of the crowding
firs behind her.
"iiiikl
L
km
A SHEPHERDESS
THE SHEPHERDESS 165
She wore a sort of shirt of dull, dark red, which
hung loose from her shoulders half-way to her knees, and
was embroidered (the work of her own hands, she told
OUR CAMPING-GROUND BELOW THE PASS
me) at the throat and down the front. Below this were
very full Turkish trousers of the darkest blue, threaded
with curving lines of red, and falling in swirling folds to
1 66 KASHMIR
her ankles, where they fitted tight, showing a slender
ankle and a bare and shapely foot. Round her forehead
was a straight band of dark blue, attached to a close-
fitting cap of the same colour, from the back of which
fell a sort of cape as far as her shoulders, the whole head-
dress resembling very much in shape and effect the
chain-mail caps worn by the Crusaders, and giving her
somewhat the air of a warrior-maid, the dark-browed
Valkyrie of an Eastern Saga.
Her eyes were beautiful, wild and soft as a deer's,
shaded by long, dark, curving lashes. The effect was
simply irresistible, when, in a sudden fit of shyness, she
gazed down at what would have been the point of her
shoe had she belonged to the West, and the dark fringe
of her lashes lay soft on the lovely curve of her cheek,
while a smile lurking on the charming mouth brought
out the dimples in her cheeks and chin.
It is hardly correct, perhaps, to call her a shepherdess,
for there were very few sheep in her flock, which consisted
mostly of goats, the long-haired goats of Kashmir, more
like wild forest creatures than domestic animals. There
were hundreds of goats which streamed by, an endless
sea of tossing heads and soft, rippling, silky hair. Very
tame they were, too, and very interested in us. One
would suddenly become aware of our presence, and stop
THE SHEPHERDESS
167
to look at us with the air of having been confronted with
an unusual phenomenon ; the others, coming up behind,
and seeing him standing, would stop to see what he was
looking at in a ridiculously human fashion, and a circle
would soon form round us, very much in the same way
KASHMIR GOATS
and with the same quickness as a street crowd. Then
the nearer ones, growing bolder as we sat still, would
come up quite close, sniffing at us and licking our hands
and dresses, while they gazed at us with eyes that could
almost speak.
There were several other women with the herd, all
1 68
KASHMIR
dressed very much in the same way, and most of them
tall, graceful, and very handsome, while beautiful eyes
had been dealt out to them all in the most lavish manner.
Each woman usually carried on her head a huge jar, or
BRINGING IN FODDER
an assortment of the family cooking-pots, while almost
every one had slung from her shoulders, in a square of
red or blue cloth, a small bundle, soft and warm, her
baby, usually sound asleep. Besides their necklaces,
though none had so massive or so long a one as our
shepherdess, a universal ornament was a most effective
A GUJAR WOMAN CARRYING HER BAUY
AND HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS
THE SHEPHERDESS 171
arrangement of small, white, china buttons, sewn on at
regular intervals round the arm-holes and shoulder-seams
of their shirts, and often along the sleeves and round
their edges.
I had never before realised the decorative possibilities
of the common white button. It was the sort which is
only met with on the garments of one's childhood, when
it is usually situated down the small of one's back ; and
among one's early recollections it figures in many a frantic
but futile struggle to button one's clothes oneself, for
somehow, at the critical moment, nurse usually contrives
to be occupied with some other small person, and de-
scends on one only in time to undo the heroic but mis-
guided effort of many agonised minutes. How much
more sensible to use the tantalising button solely for
adornment, and then in places where one can admire the
effect oneself!
Our shepherdess had a small daughter, who now
appeared on the scene — a lovely little creature, fair-
skinned and rosy, with starry eyes, like her mother's ;
but in their brown depths lurked the wildest spirit of
mischief as she tried to entice her mother away to
play with her, and fluttered round like a naughty
butterfly, interfering greatly with our attempts at sketch-
ing her.
172 KASHMIR
Presently the head of " her house," who was also her
husband, sauntered up, and offered to conduct me round
their camp, for they were going to halt here for the night.
Seated on a rock near by, he had been engaged in reading
the Koran to an attentive circle of listeners, the other men
of the tribe, to whom our shikari had devoutly joined
himself.
He shared in the universal good looks, the head of
"her house" — for he was very handsome, and young to
occupy such a position. His height, his dark, flashing
eyes and coal-black hair, and the clearness and fairness of
his skin made him a striking figure, and the sort of
mantle of striped cloth, in which scarlet predominated,
which he draped over his shoulders, added to his
picturesqueness.
When I asked him where their home was, he pointed
to the steep crags and gloomy forest.
"What home have we?" he said. "This is
our home to-night. Every day in a new place ; we
wander always ; everywhere is our home, we have no
other."
Then he showed me what he called their "tents."
Beside the stream, wherever there was a little flat
place sheltered from the wind and rain, each family had
its camp. Except the trees and rocks, other protection
THE SHEPHERDESS
173
there was none. The ground where they slept was covered
with freshly gathered pine-needles or spruce branches, and
rolled-up felt rugs or blankets were the only signs of
personal baggage where warmer clothing might possibly
lurk. Lying about near each encampment were several
DOMESTIC DUTIES
large, hairy dogs, which he said were very fierce, and pro-
tected their enormous straggling flocks from possible
thieves and also from the red bear, which they sometimes
encounter on the heights where they graze. But, as a
rule, the red bear seem to be silent, unsociable creatures,
who dislike the noise and stir brought by the goats and
i 7 4 KASHMIR
their guardians, whose advent drives them to seek regions
more wild and desolate still.
This especial herd, numbering more than two thousand
goats, had come from beyond Maru Wardwan, from the
lofty grazing-grounds of Zanskar, and were on their way
through Kashmir to their winter quarters. They were
ON THEIR WAY UP
obliged to go round by one of the passes on the Kishtwar
road, for was not the Hoksir Pass, their shortest route,
closed to them this year, by order of the State and Major
Wigram Sahib? I tried to console him by saying that
the Sinthan — the pass on the Kishtwar road — was a
much easier one, only a little over eleven thousand feet
high.
ONE OF THE TRIBE
THE SHEPHERDESS 177
" But," he said, " our goats like the high places. They
cannot eat the grass that grows in the low nullahs." To-
morrow they would all go on to another nullah, loftier,
steeper, and more rocky than this one ; a haunt of red
bear, our shikari said, where their goats would be more at
home.
Before we left he asked me for some medicine for an
old man, who, from his appearance and the description of
his symptoms, evidently was far gone in consumption.
I told him how sorry I was that the doctors had not yet
found a medicine for his disease. He seemed to find it
hard to believe that I could do nothing, and was so dis-
tressed that I bestowed on him a bottle of cough-mixture
which we somehow numbered among our possessions. He
was very pleased, and their faith in the powers of the
Angrez was pathetic.
We passed their camp again late that evening. In the
dark shadow of a tall tree-trunk, by the fitful gleam of
the firelight, we saw our shepherdess crouching near the
leaping flame ; beside her slept her little daughter wrapped
in a ragged blanket. The sun had long set and night had
fallen on the forest, though on the towering, snow-crowned
peaks that shut in the nullah a faintly roseate afterglow
still lingered, turning soon to ashen grey. Faintly through
"the noise of many waters" came the plaintive wail of
i7 8
KASHMIR
a baby, like the cry of a lost spirit, and down the gorge
blew the icy night wind, colder than the snow-fed waters
of the tossing stream among the rocks below.
..,'•',!.." :
B9 wibH^:
!&*.••
THE RETURN
THE RETURN
THERE had been heavy rain the day before in
the valley, and snow on the summits of the
lofty peaks that enclosed it. The deep blue of
the sky was enhanced by radiant masses of white cloud
still hovering near the mountain-tops.
The valley lay at an elevation of about eight thousand
feet. South and west were the gently sloping hills that
divided it from Kashmir, while to the north and east
towered the rocky barriers of the Wardwan. Many small
hamlets nestled, each in its own fine group of spreading
walnut trees, and wild apple and pear, cherry and apricot
181
i8 2 KASHMIR
grew everywhere ; straggling and uncared for, but covered
in the season with fruit, which is rarely allowed to ripen
so eager for it are the villagers, and so childishly im-
provident, for they eat it long before it is fit for use.
Wild flowers grew thick on the grassy slopes where
the cattle were feeding, and hedged the maize and rice
Wm
A RUINED TREE
fields with wavering lines of colour ; pink, and all shades
of purple, from the palest mauve to the deepest violet,
feathery tufts of white, tall and slender and swaying in
the breeze, and a profusion of starry yellow heads.
It was a place where one might live and die content,
having seen Nature in all her fairest moods ; the stern
grandeur of the winter snows ; the smiling, changeful
loveliness of spring ; and the exceeding beauty of the
>
<
Q
a
X
H
O
Q
Z
w
w
a
H
THE RETURN 185
clear, late autumn ; while, dividing the seasons, came
the massed clouds and mist and pealing thunder of the
rains.
Karima toiled slowly along the road at the bottom of
the valley. He was going back to his own village. He
had walked all day for many weary days, and he was
burning with fever.
In the spring — how long ago it seemed! — the Maharaja
Sahib had sent to all the villages in the valley for men
for the begar. They were to go to Tibet — Karima called
it Cheen — to help the Angrez in the war. From his
village he alone had gone. They had met at Islamabad,
the starting-point for their long journey, two hundred and
fifty men from the tahsil. There had been the march
down to the plains and then a tale of fresh wonders every
day, beginning with the railway and ending with the
building of the bridge across the great river in far Tibet,
where the guns of the Angrez had to cross. Then the
fever had taken him, so that the sahibs had sent him back.
There had been many days in the train, and now, through
the hills, he was walking home.
If he had been well it would not have seemed long ;
forty miles a day, unladen, would have been nothing to
him, starting in the star-lit dawn and walking till night
overtook him. But with this fever, this endless aching in
186 KASHMIR
his bones, each step had grown more toilsome than the
last, and he lost count of the days he had been upon the
way. But now, at last, the end, so long looked forward to, so
yearned for, by every fibre of his weary frame, by every
throb of his home-sick heart, was near. How often in
those interminable marches, over the high desolate plains
of Tibet, those unending stretches of barrenness and
solitude, a fierce sun by day and a biting cold at night, he
COOLIE TRANSPORT
had thought of this valley — its rich verdure, its bloom
and beauty.
As the fever grew on him the idea of it had possessed
him more and more ; and he had walked silent, uncom-
plaining, seemingly stupid and brutish to the superior
intelligences who used him, while his brain steeped itself
in memories of his home, and his unseeing eyes, heedless
of what surrounded him, had been turned always to this
beloved valley. So he had walked, his eyes glued to the
ground, in a long line of laden coolies, following mechani-
cally the footsteps of the man before him. Now all that
THE RETURN 187
was over, and he was going home. How cool the waters
of the little mountain streams he crossed were to his
burning feet ! He did not go by the little log-bridges on
the road — the sahibs might use them if they liked. He
had taken off putties and chuplies and slung them, with
his thick puttoo coat, over his shoulder. Beside the last
stream he crossed he sat down where it dashed itself over
a great rock in its way. The muffled roar of the water
soothed him, and he watched the hurrying, sparkling
drops of spray hurl themselves into the deep pool below,
a bewildering multitude. They had come a long way too,
all those shining drops ; this nala — how well he knew its
course through the shadow of the fir trees — came from
that snowy peak closing the eastern end of the valley.
He had been there only last season with the sahib, who
shot the ibex and the bear. How the water hurried ! His
tired eyes watched it till they closed and he slept beside
the stream, in the flickering shadow of the willows. When
he woke it was afternoon, and, on the vivid green of the
sloping meadows, there were long, blue shadows from
pine and walnut and apple trees.
He rose to his feet, aching in every limb, and wandered
on. The road here, as it climbed through the grassy
pasture-land, was bare and treeless, hot in the afternoon
sun. He dragged himself along, feeling strangely inclined
188 KASHMIR
to burst into hysterical weeping from sheer weakness,
while his legs seemed to move automatically, as if they
did not belong to him. The road might have been one of
the dreary roads of Tibet for all he cared or heeded, so
absorbed was he in the mere effort of getting on ; till
a grateful sense of cool and shade roused him to notice
where he was. The path was climbing through the silvery
grey of little willow trees and a tangled hedge of wild
flowers beside a tiny stream. He was very near home
now, and his dulled eyes noted each well-remembered
turn of the road. Those maize-fields to the left were
Wahaba's, and a fine crop they looked ; there would be
no famine this year — even in Srinagar the time for
floods was over. They had already begun to collect the
winter fodder ; he could see, above the tall heads of the
maize, great bundles of grass in the forked branches of
the pollarded willows drying in the sun.
He was nearly spent now, the pain in his back was
growing intolerable. He felt he must be increasingly
careful of how he raised each foot and put it down. Here,
at last, was Wahaba's house, the first house in the village,
with its hedge of woven willow branches, looking some-
thing like coarse basket-work. Then the road passed
through the camping-ground where the sahibs stayed who
were going to shoot in Maru or Kishtwar. Next came
THE RETURN 189
a bridge, and, to the right, two great walnut trees, the
finest in all the valley except those at Nowboog ; in their
shadow stood the little ziarat (shrine) with its walls of
red-brown logs. He had not far to go now. Here were
the fields of sdg with their wooden palings, which marked
the centre of the village, and opposite, across the stream,
was the lumbardar's house. To-morrow he would go
&
-I."
A CAMPING-GROUND
there ; for to-morrow he would be well. If only he could
reach his father's house ! He would lie down on soft,
warm blankets in that long upper room, with its little
windows level with the floor, so that as you lay you could
watch the road and see who went by. Perhaps she would
pass, Dzunia, the lumbardar's youngest daughter. He
looked again with longing towards the house across the
stream. Was it not for her that he had gone on the
K
190
KASHMIR
long begar to distant Cheen, so that he might have
enough "double" rupees to satisfy her father and
win Dzunia? To-day he would be content if he could
see her pass ; to-morrow — ah ! to-morrow he would
be well !
WINTER FODDER
In his father's house they would give him tea, the
good Kashmiri tea, hot and thick, in a little pale green
bowl, and he would lie in great content and watch all the
pleasant, well-known life around him ; his mother sitting
in the ray of late sunlight that would lie across the floor
from the westernmost window, spinning the grey wool
"THE LUMBARDAR"
(The headman of a village is called the Lumbardat)
THE RETURN 193
into puttoo for winter wear, while his eldest brother's wife
ground the kunak (wheat) into flour, and his little sisters
went and came with laugh and chatter, fetching water or
washing the sdg for the evening meal, or playing with his
brother's baby.
Only a few steps further. On the right of the road
was the bunnia's shop, looking like a toy house of wood,
very clean and new, with its carved lattices and deeply
sloping roof. There were several men sitting in the
narrow veranda behind the low, carved railing. He
knew them all ; they greeted him and asked him many
questions. He answered vaguely and at random, hardly
hearing their words, so possessed was he with the desire
of reaching his father's house. They shook their heads
as he passed on. " It is fever," they said to each other ;
" he will not live."
The end at last ! On the left of the road two apple
trees made a natural gateway, and a little path led through
his father's maize-fields to his home, a typical village
dwelling of Kashmir. The family were still in their
summer quarters, the long upper room with its walls of
rough logs with many spaces for light and air. He heard
the drone of the spinning-wheel, and some one was sing-
ing. Then, from a window, he was seen, and they all
poured out, running down to welcome him. Somehow
194
KASHMIR
he climbed the steep outside stair, he could never remem-
ber how, then he fainted.
When he awoke to full consciousness again he was
lying by the window of his dreams. Some one was talk-
ing outside, just below the window. There were several
voices ; one was foreign, talking broken Hindustani with
A VILLAGE HOME
a curious accent and using many strange words. That
must be a sahib, for it was thus the sahibs talked. Then
a voice translated into Kashmiri. " He will live," it
said.
Who would live ? he wondered. Who was it they
thought might die? There was the sound of a woman
sobbing. Again came the stumbling words, the foreign
accent, and, after it, the shikari translating :
HIS SISTER
THE RETURN
197
"The sahib says to tell you he will live. Do not
weep. Give him of this dewai (medicine) when he
wakes. Afterwards give him this, so much every day.
If the fever returns give him the white dewai, here, in
these papers."
THE INTERPRETER
What could it all be about ? He tried to rise, to go
downstairs to find out. But, to his surprise, he fell back
on his blankets. He must have been even more tired
than he had thought.
Presently some of them came back upstairs. He
opened his eyes. How strangely weak his own voice
198 KASHMIR
sounded as he asked, " What is this ? To whom does the
sahib give dewai ? "
" It is to thee, my son," said his old father, coming to
sit by him. " It is as the sahib said," he continued,
seeing with joy that his son was awake and restored to
consciousness. "Thou wilt soon be well. By the will
of God this sahib came to Deuss, and such rain fell for
three days that he could not go on to Kishtwar to shoot
immediately. The sahib, showing great kindness, cared
for thee all these days and gave thee his medicine. Now
the rain is over and he goes to-morrow. But thou art
well, my son."
Karima had one more question. " How many days is
it since I came ? " •
" What matters one day or two days ? But I will not
lie ; it is to-day the fourth day."
Then Karima drank the medicine his mother brought
him, and lay back content. He would get well, the sahib
had said so.
With the curious childlikeness in many things of the
hill-men of Kashmir, he had implicit faith in the powers
of the sahibs. His own belief in his recovery no doubt
helped greatly the medicine given him by the Doctor
Sahib, who had been weather-bound below the pass, and
had found absorbing occupation for the long, dreary hours
THE RETURN
199
in nursing his patient through a bad spell of fever.
Karima's fine constitution, too, had played its part, and
in a fortnight, though still very weak, he could venture
down the steps, and very slowly, with many halts, along
the road.
It was evening, all his people were out in the fields,
*■
'**('■
FOOTSORE
or gossiping in the village ; his brother had taken a dali
(basket) of fruit and vegetables to a sahib who was
camping here for the night, and would doubtless give him
much bakshish.
Lying by his window he had seen Dzunia pass. She
was hurrying along as she always did ; a slim slip
of a girl, in a ragged garment of coarse puttoo, a
2oo KASHMIR
folded white cloth on her head above a little cap, a head-
dress with something of the air of that once worn by the
Roman peasantry. She had glanced up at his house
for a moment and he had seen again, for the first time
since he came back, the face for which he had gone to
distant Cheen.
It was a somewhat wistful face, with great, shy, light-
brown eyes. Her hair, too, was light brown, braided in
many small braids, all caught together at the ends,
reaching below her waist, and finished off with a large
tassel of black wool, according to the decree of fashion in
these parts. All round her forehead, soft, light-brown
curls, blown by the wind, escaped from under her little
cap. Her skin was very fair, and showed a delicate colour
in her cheeks. There was a rebellious air about the pretty
mouth. Dzunia was going to keep watch in her father's
fields, to sit in a quaint little erection of straw and dried
branches, like a huge nest, to scare away the birds and
keep a look out for other pilferers. Her brother would
not come to relieve her till late in the evening, and she
had at least three hours of lonely vigil. She would break
it by running home presently for a bowl of tea, but it
was dull work.
Besides, only last evening, and not later than eight
o'clock, a black bear had come and eaten much before he
S3
<i
J
<
a
THE RETURN
203
was driven away. It was easy for men, who were not
afraid, like girls, to drive away black bears ; but for her,
she did not like it at all, and — who could tell ? — the bear
might come earlier to-day.
Karima had heard of the black bear ; he knew, too,
^40F^fftn^,
dzunia's window
that Dzunia always had the afternoon watch, with the
few minutes' break when she hurried home for tea. If
he walked up the road towards the Sinthan Nar he might
meet her coming back. Then he could tell her that soon
she would not need to watch any more in the maize-fields.
So he went up the road.
2o 4 KASHMIR
It was a golden evening, after a perfect September
day ; the sky a dome of turquoise, unflecked by any cloud.
There was a faintly aromatic scent in the air from the
hedgerows where grew many a flowering weed of autumn,
and from the feathery grasses nodding in the wind. Here
and there tall sprays of larkspur lifted their delicate heads,
so deeply exquisitely blue. In the meadows below the
road the creamy flowers of the scabious, with their faint,
sweet scent, stood like pale stars amid the deeper yellow
of the wild asters. The plumed heads of the maize were
a lovely shade of pink, the colour which the afterglow of
sunset would soon paint on the grey crags above the lofty
eastern boundary of the nullah.
In the road lay a little pile of stripped cobs ; this was
done by the bear last night. Near by the path branched
off into the lumbardar's fields. By this Dzunia would
come presently. He sat down on a stone by the roadside
to wait. A cold wind blew down the gorge from the high
peaks shutting it in, lightly powdered with newly fallen
snow. He drew his warm blanket closer round him.
There, to his right, was the Mar Thar Nala. How often
he had longed to see that range of towering summits,
sharply pointed and rugged, fairy-like pinnacles of snow
from early in the winter to late in June. Now the evening
was laying deep shadows of sapphire and amethyst along
THE RETURN
205
their lower slopes, while their crests were golden in the
setting sun.
Ah ! it was good to be in his own country, among his
own hills. And there, on the path, coming towards him,
was Dzunia.
= 5 "=
"'JlMlii,,
J'""""""".,,
w
IN CHAMBA
THE town of Chamba is the capital of the hill-
state of Chamba situated to the north-east of
the Panjab, between it, Kashmir, and Ladakh.
The scenery is wild and beautiful, there is good shoot-
ing to be had, and the kindness and courtesy of the
Raja of Chamba to those who travel in his country are
well known in the north. There are several peaks rising
above 18,000 feet in this State, and it is bordered to the
north and east by the huge peaks of the districts of Pangyi
209
2io KASHMIR
and Lahoul, which are over 20,000 feet and make a back-
ground for the nearer snows.
The history of this State is very interesting, and is
well authenticated from the time of the great Sahilla-
Varman who ruled Chamba early in the tenth century ;
one of its greatest chiefs, whose name is still a household
word. The present town of Chamba was founded by him,
to please his daughter, who accompanied him on some of
his warlike expeditions, and he made it the capital of the
State. After a career of conquest which extended from
the hill-states of the Sutlej to the fierce Tartar invaders
of the north beyond Kabul, after building his new capital
and many great temples, he abdicated in favour of his
son, and ended his life as an ascetic among the hills
beloved of his childhood, the sterner beauty of his early
capital, Brahmaur. For about fourteen centuries the
same race has ruled in Chamba, a branch of the Rajput
family still reigning at Oodeypur in Meywar, the oldest
of the Rajput dynasties of India. During all these cen-
turies there has never been wanting an heir of the royal
race to succeed to the throne and to rule, on the whole,
for the good of his people. Anarchy has therefore been
unknown and invasion practically so.
The town of Chamba itself is in a valley not higher
than 3000 feet, bordered on one side by snow-capped
IN CHAMBA
211
mountains nearly as high as Mont Blanc. The centre of
the town is a large, flat, open space — the polo ground.
Round this runs a road bordered by a very neat and
nicely built bazaar ; climbing up the hillside behind the
<n
Mtunto
\
1 1
THE RANI'S PALACE
bazaar rise temples, the houses of the better classes,
and the palaces of the royal family. The town has a
very well-kept and prosperous air, and is remarkably
clean and orderly, and Chamba has the reputation of
being a model State.
2i2 KASHMIR
Having marched down from Kashmir through Kisht-
war and Badarwah, we spent a few days in October in the
Forest Bungalow in Chamba kindly lent to us during our
stay, a delightful house with a large garden. After the
long and difficult marches we had done it was very
pleasant to rest here, and during the day we found it a
IN MARCHING KIT
fascinating and sufficient occupation to watch from the
upstairs veranda the procession of life on the road which
ran past the gate.
This road came from Kashmir, also from Badarwah
and Kishtwar and Padar — a land of shikar and sapphire
mines. Pangyi might also be reached from it, and, if you
went far enough, even Leh. In this respect it was rather
IN CHAMBA 213
like the road to Rome. From almost anywhere on the
borders of Kashmir most roads lead to Leh if you only
go far enough, and it is only by being very firm about it
that you can avoid going there too.
For the last few miles the road has followed the
course of the Ravi, here a mountain-stream, wide and
deep ; it has passed, about five miles away, a plain where
no field or garden is ever allowed to be since the tragedy
enacted there in days gone by, when a ruling chief of
Chamba and his brother were treacherously murdered
here. Later, it has come by the Garden of Sirol, a
neglected pleasaunce round which linger the ghosts of
long-dead romances, like the faint fragrance of the late
roses bordering the grass-grown walks. Afterwards it
has again followed the stream, and crossing a tributary
by a suspension bridge, has climbed the steep side of the
plateau on which stands Chamba, " the happy" as its
name means.
Along this road pass the hill-people of all stages of
wildness, their dress varying with each difference of tribe
or village. Among them are the tall Gaddis in full-
skirted coats of white homespun hanging in voluminous
folds from the waist almost to the knee, and belted with
ropes made of goats' hair. A high felt cap completes this
costume ; and if the wearer is one of the jeunesse dorde
2i 4 KASHMIR
of his village he will have a long and carefully arranged
curl hanging over his right shoulder, and a necklace of
large turquoise and silver amulets.
Among the feminine passers-by the dress of the
women of Chamba is the most attractive. They wear an
outer garment with a short, high-waisted bodice ; on to
this are gathered innumerable folds of muslin, so full as
to have the effect of accordion pleating, and reaching
nearly to the ankles ; the colour is usually pale pink,
blue, or yellow, and sometimes even a dull red. Beneath
this they wear a shirt and long Turkish trousers which
fit very tight from the knee to the ankle. These are
usually of some contrasting colour, or white, and as the
overdress is not fastened in front the effect is very pretty
as it swirls open with each movement of the wearer,
showing glimpses of colour underneath. The ladies of
Chamba are very clever with the needle, and do a sort
of embroidery in silk which is exactly the same on both
sides ; these are usually processions of figures, very
heraldic in drawing, and reminding one rather of the old
tapestries of the Norman ladies of long ago.
The women of Chamba are very graceful, with
gentle manners, and sweet voices having the curious
pathetic timbre which seems to belong to the hills, and
have in it the feeling of their great waste spaces and
IN CHAMBA
215
sombre forests, the chill of night, and the loneliness of
evening.
Among the passers-by have been the horses of the
Raja's stud, among them some nice animals taking their
daily exercise along this road ; and, returning from pas-
ture, the cows of the State dairy, a model institution. A
red Lama from Tibet comes every morning to sell us
te^as
iU»
PART OF THE PROCESSION
eggs, an uncouth creature who seems to think a camera
an infernal machine and flies before it. A great incident
of the day is the passing of the State elephant, when it is
taken down to the river for a bath and an airing ; it is a
strange apparition in these parts, and an unfailing source
of interest and wonder to our Kashmiris.
At sunset, as the colour fades from the wall of snow
2l6
KASHMIR
which looks down on the little town, the worshippers
gather in the courts of the temple of Vishnu. It is the
hour for evening prayer, the farewell to the sun, since
Vishnuism is only another name for sun-worship, the
A GRACEFUL DRESS
cult of the god of the " million, molten, spears of morn,"
which the Aryans brought with them from their lofty
home in Central Asia, and grafted on the gloomy earth-
worship, still surviving as Shivaism, which they found
among the aborigines.
Here, in this hill state of the North, both faiths
IN CHAMBA 217
still endure side by side ; while even nearer to the hearts
of the primitive hill-men is a still earlier belief, the wor-
ship of the Devas, the demons who inhabit mountain and
stream, and whose temples — small, square, wooden struc-
tures, with conical roofs and rudely carved doors — are
met with everywhere along the line of march, by the
cool waters of many a spring, or, high on a lofty peak,
looking towards the pinnacles of eternal snow where the
gods have their summer home.
No beneficent, joy-giving deities are these Devas, as
one might perhaps imagine from the splendid sites of
some of their temples, but dread divinities whom the
trembling villagers propitiated till within the last fifty
years by human sacrifices, and to whom they still go to
fulfil the wishes nearest their hearts, the desire for a
son or for an abundant harvest. All-powerful they are,
terrible and relentless, incarnations perhaps of the storm-
winds, the bitter cold, the death-shroud of the snow, the
hidden crevasse in the glacier, or the engulfing avalanche,
the great forces of Nature which, in these lonely heights,
baffle continually the strength and will of man.
It was natural that the fair-skinned, high-hearted
Aryans, men of a nobler race, should bring with them
a brighter and more hopeful faith ; for were they not
akin to those others who, going westward and settling
218 KASHMIR
in the fairest country of Europe, gave the world its
ideal forms of beauty — the Apollos and Athenaes, the
Aphrodites and Hermes, and the thousand lovely shapes
whose names are lost, but which still give substance
to our dreams of beauty ?
But the tribe who wandered east and south little
knew the fatal power of the land they went to. Won-
derful and magnificent it must have seemed to them ;
a land whose beauty goes hand in hand with terror, a
grandeur of lofty mountains, of mighty rivers, of seem-
ingly boundless plains of a fertility undreamed of; but
a land where they must have learned the futility of
man ; where the fierce heats and torrential rains, the
sudden pestilences, the climate that saps his strength
and leaves him powerless in the grip of the forces
whose caprice he learns to call Destiny, made them
in the end adopt the dark creed of the Destroyer.
But in Chamba, where Nature is kinder, where a
temperate climate makes life easier, the worship of the
Preserver, Vishnu, is the most followed still.
Through an arched gateway we pass into a paved
enclosure, where six temples stand in a row beneath the
palace wall. The northernmost is the temple of Vishnu.
More than a thousand years ago, in his new capital, the
great and unforgotten Sahil-Varman built this temple,
IN CHAMBA
219
and ever since, at sunset, the same worship has gone on
in this ancient shrine of the Sun.
The brief, grey twilight lingers round the tall grey-
temples standing side by side ; the rich carving which
covers them is blotted out in the gloom, while their form
■■■iKMmnmsHMH
THE OLD TEMPLES OF CHAMBA
alone shows a distinct mass against the pale evening
sky. They are very impressive, these silent temples,
on which the giant circle of mountains looks down,
their height and nearness dwarfing the little town at
their feet.
As the twilight deepens the air vibrates with mysterious
sound, the first drowsy murmur of the temple music. The
22o KASHMIR
priest is already before the altar in the lighted temple,
muttering to himself texts of the ritual. In a small side-
temple, dedicated to a holy man — the religious director of
the great Sahil-Varman — a bell is rung, and at this signal
the whole enclosure wakes to life. The bar is removed
from across the open door, the priest chants aloud his
invocation, in which the worshippers join, a curious
rhythmic cadence, in a plaintive minor key.
The instruments too begin fortissimo, almost drown-
ing the wailing voices with their wild uproar ; the clang
of cymbals, the frenzied ringing of bells, the blare of horns
and trumpets, while the air throbs with the beating of the
great drums outside the temple. These drums are spoils
of war, brought long ago, across a snowy pass, and by
perilous hill-paths, from Kishtwar, where the victorious
army of Chamba camped for six months before returning
with their booty.
While this wild confusion of sound goes on the priest
is burning incense at the altar, and folds of dense, white
smoke float upwards in front of the idol, veiling the
wonderfully human face and the great eyes which, by
some device of the man who made them, seem to persis-
tently ignore the worshippers, seeing instead, with startling
clearness, a grim jest to which mere human vision is
blind.
IN CHAMBA 221
They were cunning artificers in these hills a thousand
years ago, and they fashioned with wonderful skill this
gigantic figure, out of marble brought by the king's son
from the sacred slopes of Mount Abu, many hundred
miles away. Sahil-Varman had ten sons, and he sent
nine of them to bring the marble. They came back with
an enormous block, but when it was being cut a frog was
found embedded in it. This made it impure, and though
parts of it might be used for making smaller deities,
another piece must be brought for the giant image of
Vishnu. So the nine were sent off again, but the Fates
were still against them, for on their way back they were
attacked by overpowering numbers and killed in spite of
their valiant resistance. The king then sent his only
remaining son, who was successful, and returned in safety
with a perfect block for the sculptors. The court in
front of the temple is paved with marble, perhaps from
the first block, gleaming and polished by the feet of
centuries of worshippers.
Suddenly the clamour of the instruments stops, the
clouds of incense clear away, and one can see the
silver with which the carved altar is inlaid, and, high
above it, the huge image, resplendent with gilding and
colour and hung with masses of flowers, close-strung
ropes of narcissus and marigold covering every available
222 KASHMIR
space, and making besides an archway over the figure.
And once again one sees the curious, staring eyes and
the gleam of the diamonds on its brow.
Before the altar the priest raises high above his head a
small lamp, shaped like a lotus-leaf, emblem of the Sun,
and this he revolves slowly seven times from right to left,
the way of the Sun ; while outside, in the marble court,
the worshippers murmur prayers. Then the priest backs
towards the door of the shrine, and, still facing the altar,
the lamp is again slowly circled seven times, at the end
of which he turns to face the entrance and raises the
lamp towards the Garud, the bird of Vishnu which stands
on a pillar outside the temple.
Again a bell is rung, and the priest makes a circuit
of the temple, still going from right to left, and then
takes up his place at the door while he circles the
lamp again seven times. He then advances to the altar
and bows before it, while a bell is rung to show that the
ceremony is over. The worshippers now crowd forward
to the door and prostrate themselves at the threshold,
while a privileged few go inside to say their prayers at the
altar. After this the sacred food which has been offered
to the shrine is distributed among the worshippers, and
the crowd gradually melts away, for night has come and
the rising moon is already lighting up the gilded symbols
IN CHAMBA
223
which crown the temples, the intricate, lacy pattern of the
Sun of Vishnu, and the three-pronged 'trident of the
destroyer, Shiva.
WkL.tik,
ARRIVAL
THE route usually chosen by visitors for reaching
Kashmir is the Jhelum Valley route, a driving-
road entering Kashmir territory at a place called
Kohala, after which it follows the course of the Jhelum
River for about a hundred miles to Baramulla. This is
227
M
228 KASHMIR
the entrance to the Valley of Kashmir, and here the
Jhelum, until now a mountain torrent thundering along
steep gorges, widens out into a broad river, navigable for
about eighty miles. To go by this route you leave the
railway at Rawul Pindi and drive by tonga to Baramulla,
where it can be arranged to have a boat waiting for you,
on which you may begin the leisurely existence character-
istic of one part of Kashmir.
Baramulla will always be marked with a white stone
in my memory, because it was the beginning of many
months of wandering among the beautiful scenes of
Kashmir, as well as for its own charm, its bloom and
freshness, and the delicious coolness and purity of its
mountain air, so welcome a contrast to the fierce heat
of the sun-scorched plains below. When we first saw
Baramulla it was white with blossom and the air was
filled with fragrance, for all its famous apple orchards
were in flower, and pear and peach, apricot and cherry-
blossom, made it a dream of beauty.
We reached it one afternoon in early April, weary
with our long tonga drive — two restless days of jolting
and shaking over one hundred and sixty miles of road,
up hill and down dale. It was the day of Baisakh, the
spring festival of the Hindus, and as we drove along the
last half-mile of poplar-bordered level and turned through
*•
(4
W
>
1—1
Pi
W
K
H
O
5 «
r;
IN A DOONGA 231
the streets of the little town they were gay with pro-
cessions of holiday-makers, through which our tonga
threaded its way with much tooting on the horn.
Our boat and servants had been engaged for us
through a friend, and were to meet us here.
We were driven up to the gate of the Maharaja's
rest-house on the river bank, which was crowded with
stalwart boatmen, who seemed rather interested in our
arrival and anxious to claim us as passengers. From
them presently emerged a very small, fat, and rosy boy,
who fixed round, inquiring eyes on us, and, without
saying a word, took possession of my sunshade and fell
in behind us.
"Does he belong to us?" I asked, and was told he
was part of our crew. His father now appeared on the
scene, an elderly person with one eye and a short beard
dyed red, clad in a loose white cotton shirt and flapping
overalls of the same material, which seemed somewhat
inadequate for the climate, since it was a cold and cloudy
afternoon. He led us along the river bank, crowded with
boats of all sorts, varying from doongas of many degrees
to the large house-boats in which a pitch of luxury may
be arrived at once undreamed of.
Our humble doonga was distinguished by a general
air of newness and cleanness somewhat lacking in the
232 KASHMIR
others. We had been very urgent about these points
when we wrote to order it, and the result was satisfactory.
The matting on its roof was new and golden yellow, a
contrast to the greys and drabs of the dingy mats on
most of the other boats, and it was gay with muslin
blinds freshly dyed in pale shades of pink and mauve and
scarlet. The one-eyed one, whose name was Rajba (a
name some form of which is given to all those born in
the month of Ramazan), and whom we found was our
skipper, ushered us into his boat with pride, and his wife
rose up from scrubbing the front deck to welcome us.
The boarded floors were dark brown and beautifully
polished, and a carved pattern ran along the gunwale.
Everything seemed absolutely clean, and we quite shared
the skipper's pride in our boat, which we named the
Mirliton, for it was gay and cheap and pretty, and the
strips of colour made by the blinds were very suggestive
of those carnival toys of the Paris boulevards.
The doonga is the boat of the country ; an almost flat-
bottomed wooden hull surmounted by a wooden frame-
work covered with thick mats forming a sort of deck-
house. These were once the only living-boats on the
river, and are still much used by sportsmen, subalterns,
and sometimes even by ladies, though the greater number
prefer the house-boats, of recent introduction, which are
IN A DOONGA 233
certainly more comfortable, but are also more expensive
and less characteristic of the country. House-boats may
be lived in elsewhere, but nowhere except in Kashmir
can you experience the delights of a doonga.
Our boat was about 60 feet long ; part of it was
divided into four rooms, each about 9x12, with wooden
partitions between them. There were two long decks
fore and aft, partially roofed in and protected by mats ;
the front deck made a delightful fair-weather sitting-
room ; on the after-deck lived the boat people. Our
rooms were roofed with several layers of matting, and
the side-walls were also of matting, arranged to roll up
so as to make windows. Inside the matting were
muslin blinds, which could also be drawn if necessary,
with a gap of about a foot between them and the
sloping roof, giving glimpses of the surrounding country.
Besides this we had a cook-boat— the same sort of thing
as the doonga, but on a smaller scale — in which lived our
servants, and where the cooking was done.
The furniture consisted of a bath-tub, some wicker and
canvas chairs, two wicker tea-tables, a small deal table for
meals, a certain amount of crockery, and other necessary
articles. We had brought our own camp beds, silver,
linen, cooking utensils, and various odds and ends to
make the boat comfortable, intending to add to our
234 KASHMIR
luxuries and decorations in Srinagar, where embroidered
felt rugs, fascinating curtains and decorative articles of all
sorts can be had in abundance.
For all the magnificence above described, including
a crew of four for our own boat and two for the cook-
boat, we paid about £3 a month. The crew were sup-
posed to be " able-bodied seamen," but the term is officially-
allowed to include women and children above the age
of twelve ; our actual crew consisted, we found, of the
skipper, his wife and daughter, and a hireling, who varied
from time to time, while the cook-boat was manned by a
very ancient mariner and a voluble and rather nice-look-
ing young woman, whose name sounded like Mary, and
who was the cook's wife.
While we explored our floating abode, the crew and
their friends brought over all our luggage from the tonga,
and arranged it about the boat, which, we discovered,
had any number of lockers under foot where things could
be stored. To arrive at these the boards under your feet
are lifted up, making your flooring somewhat rickety,
and an incautious step on a loose board will set your
best china rattling in an alarming way ; but you soon get
used to this, and acknowledge that the boat must after all
have the defects of its qualities.
Tea was ready by the time our baggage was disposed
IN A DOONGA 235
of. A very welcome and festive meal it was in our little
sitting-room with its pretty blinds, whence we could
watch new-comers, less fortunate than ourselves, wrang-
ling with the boatmen, and attempting — in vain, I am
sure — to drive a better bargain than the smiling Kash-
miris. Our boat seemed to catch the public eye and be
much sought after, and several attempts were made to
board it by would-be tenants, unaware that it was already
occupied, until they were severely warned off by the
skipper's wife, who mounted guard on the bow. We
were further enlivened by some excellent buns, bought
from a man who paddled alongside in a small boat. He
was, we found, a minion of the dak bungalow, who drove
a thriving trade with passing boats. He had, doubtless,
seen our servant bringing the tea-kettle along the bank
from the cook-boat, for he appeared on the scene at exactly
the right moment.
During tea we took in with great content the ideal
nature of our surroundings. On one side was the bank
to which we were moored, an apple orchard in bloom
making a fairy-like vista of the foreground ; beyond were
many miles of green and level meadow-land, from which
rose low hills. The soul of spring was everywhere — in
the delicate greens of the slim poplars, the varying tints
of the young foliage on the other trees, whose leaves
236
KASHMIR
were not yet large enough to hide the tracery of the
branches "against the sky, and in the wealth of fruit-
vpm«.
THE TONGA ROAD IN BARAMULLA
blossom, white, or faintly flushed with rose. On the
other side were the waters of the Jhelum, a broad and
IN A DOONGA 237
placid stream, very different from the foaming tumult of
waters we had followed so long on the tonga road,
dashing itself impetuously down its rocky channel
on its steep descent to the plains more than 5000 feet
below.
In our doonga the quiet and cessation of motion
were delightful after the turmoil of four days in
train and tonga. It seemed too at first very strange
to be so near the water, for when the side mats are
rolled up and the blinds open there is nothing be-
tween you and the river any more than if you were on
a raft.
Later in the evening we strolled along the roads
under the white and scented sweetness of flower-laden
branches, through a poplar avenue, and climbed a hill
blue with wild forget-me-nots. We had first been to the
post office to send a telegram and to make an ineffectual
effort to cash a fifty-rupee note, as all our change was
exhausted.
With this object we also visited the Kutcherry
and the Treasury, and inquired in the small bazaar,
establishing, I could see, a most misleading reputation
for wealth, and all in vain, for no one could give us so
much change. On our return we went, as a last resource,
to the dak bungalow, where the khansama, a cheery and
2 3 8
KASHMIR
prosperous-looking individual, produced the money at
once.
There was no longer any obstacle to continuing our
journey, but it was now nearly dark, and there was no
moon, so we decided to wait till morning.
V /; . { \
fiV
&
W&K.'''^ mix
II
UNDER WAY— B ARAM ULLA TO
SRINAGAR
WE left Baramulla about 8 a.m. It had been
showery earlier, but now pale gleams of sun-
light seemed to promise better things. We
tied up at the bank for breakfast two hours later, having
239
2 4 o KASHMIR
come about four miles ; the crew had theirs at the same
time, and halted for at least an hour.
In this lovely and romantic country, if anywhere,
does one feel "the passion for perfection," the true artistic
attitude towards the Art of Living ; and since it adds to
the general harmony to have a contented and cheerful
environment, we made no attempt to "hustle the East"
especially as we felt quite unequal to coping with it.
When a start was again made we walked for several
miles to get warm ; it was a chilly day with a stinging
wind. Our way was bordered with young willows, and
slightly raised above the surrounding country. One had
to be "very handy with one's feet" to keep from stepping
on thousands of tiny frogs, who leaped about the path in
a panic-stricken manner. The land all round was almost
a marsh from the effect of the flood of the previous year
and the newly melted winter snow.
That evening we arrived at Sopor, where we tied up
for the night. This is a large village of over a thousand
houses. Our first view of it was of a mass of mud huts
looking like an outgrowth of the steep brown bank, rising
in a peaked, uneven outline of gabled roofs against the
stormy sky. As we looked it was swept by a yellow
wave of sunlight which painted it like a pale ivory
carving on a background of indigo storm-clouds, through
BARAMULLA TO SRINAGAR 241
rents in which gleamed the snowy heights of the northern
ranges.
Sopor is at the entrance to the Wular Lake, the
passage of which is often dangerous because of the
sudden storms which sweep over it ; and at this time of
year the boatmen will rarely cross it, going instead by a
side-canal. As we neared Sopor the afternoon turned
stormy and bitterly cold, with violent bursts of wind and
driving rain. We shut up our little sitting-room, except
for a few inches of window, put on all our warmest wraps,
and with kangras (the Kashmiri fire-basket) at our feet
devoted our energies to keeping warm, while I read in our
guide-book how, near this place, a former ruler of Kash-
mir nearly lost his life in attempting to cross the Wular
Lake in a storm, while three hundred boatloads of his
followers were wrecked. Just at this point in my reading
a gust of wind struck our exceedingly top-heavy doonga,
making it lean over in a most alarming way, and the door
opened to admit the skipper, who seemed rather per-
turbed, and proceeded to fasten down our only window
and secure things in general with bits of string. A crisis
of some sort seemed to be going on, so we left the Sty-
gian darkness of our salon and moved on to the front
deck to watch events. Fortunately we were very near the
bank, where the river was very shallow. The wind blew
242 KASHMIR
from the shore, and on the opposite side of our doonga
we saw the whole crew, including the cook and the valiant
Mary, standing in the river and pushing against the boat
with all their might to counteract the force of the wind.
At last, in intervals between the gusts, they succeeded in
towing us into a sheltered place, where we moored for the
night.
Later we heard of two impulsive sahibs travelling at
the same time who, considering any yielding to the boat-
men a sign of weakness, had insisted on crossing the
lake, were caught in the storm, overturned, lost some
baggage, and had altogether a rather "paltry" time.
The old name of Sopor was Suryapur, the town of
Surya, who combined the professions of engineer and sage
about a thousand years ago, and had a great reputation.
It is told of him that when the river was flooded because
it was choked by rocks, he put an end to the flood by
having several boatloads of money thrown into the
water. The banks were thronged with people to watch
so irregular a proceeding, who dived in after the money,
and in the course of their efforts to find it cleared the
bed of the river.
It was too cold and wet for us to explore Sopor, but we
saw the ruins of a fort built by Golab Singh, the first of
the Sikh rulers of Kashmir. We could not help seeing
BARAMULLA TO SRINAGAR 243
this, as we were tied up almost opposite. The next day
was clear and sunny, and the boat started before we were
up. It was warm enough to spend the whole day on the
front deck, where we could fully realise how ideal a mode
of travelling this is. The average pace of the boat is
about two miles an hour, which makes you almost feel
you are not travelling at all, except for the gradually
changing landscape. The smooth water below, the vary-
ing April sky above, the splendid exhilaration of the air
— mountain air with a dash of spring — this wonderful
world of snowy peaks and violet-shadowed hills, of green
meadow-land and flower-decked banks — all this was our
own, emptied of all other human beings to contest our
right to it ; the only people in sight, those distant figures
on the towing-path, headed by the infant in a fluttering
scarlet garment, looking at this distance like a large and
animated poppy.
So in great content we proceeded on our way, trying to
decide whether yesterday, with its storms and wonderful
skies, or to-day's serenity of sunshine were more beauti-
ful. We passed Sumbal about midday, where there is
one of the curious bridges typical of Kashmir. There
is good fishing here later in the year, in the mulberry
season.
After Sumbal the mountains approach closer to the
244
KASHMIR
bank, and a small conical hill rises very abruptly near by.
This is called Aha Thang, and behind it lies the little
Manasbal Lake. We put off visiting this lake till later, as
it was famous, we were told, for its lotus flowers, which
AT SOPOR
bloom early in July. When we did go there on the
30th of June, it was a breathless day of blazing heat, with
the thermometer in the nineties. We had not realised
how hot it would be, expecting somehow to find April
weather still lingering in the spot we had passed in April.
BARAMULLA TO SRINAGAR 245
I had arranged to make cherry jam that day — not the
coolest occupation in the world ; but the cherries were
there, everything was ready, and it was not to be evaded.
How hot it was, even in my thinnest muslin frock, as
I finished, and wondered if I could ever again find
fascination in cherry jam. Our anchoring place was to
be under ^fakirs garden, we were told, famed for its fruit;
but as we turned a corner — below the ruins of a Moghul
summer-house — we came upon another doonga, its occu-
pant a man in his shirt-sleeves, who seemed to be pursu-
ing coolness on his front deck. There was no room for
our boat, so we had to seek another harbour further on.
The little lake is very lovely ; its waters of a most
translucent clearness, so that the boat seems to float in
mid-air, there is so intangible a line between the elements.
But alas ! there was never a lotus. They said the
reason of this was that in the scarcity which followed the
flood of the previous year, the starving people had eaten
the roots when all else failed. We had meant to spend
some days here, but the heat and airlessness — it was very
shut in — and the clouds of mosquitoes as the sun went
down, defeated us ; so taking advantage of the moonlight,
we went back to the more open river, leaving the tenant
of the other doonga whistling " Kathleen Mavourneen "
undeterred by mosquitoes.
N
246
KASHMIR
To return to April and our journey up the river through
those days of varying loveliness. Everywhere there was
colour. The level fields were gay with golden, quivering
stretches of flowering mustard ; the misty grey of the
willows near the bank contrasted exquisitely with the
delicate vividness of the new greens decking the poplar
trees, and the bronzes and purples of the unfolding leaf-
buds on the great chinars. Beyond were the hills shadowed
deep with wonderful rich tones of violet and azure, and
above their forest-covered slopes towered the whiteness
of the higher ranges and their gleaming fields of snow.
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TO SRI N AGAR
OUR last halting-place before reaching Srinagar
was Shadipore, a small village with beautiful
groves of chinar trees near by and a distant
vista of hills and snows, at the junction of the Sindh
247
248 KASHMIR
river with the Jhelum. There is good fishing near here in
May and June, and the way up the Sindh from here to
Ganderbal (about fourteen miles) is very pretty, with
lovely mountain views. Ganderbal is the first stage on
the road to Leh over the Zoji La Pass, and is besides a
favourite camping-ground in the summer, as it is cooler
than anywhere on the Jhelum.
From Shadipore to Srinagar the scenery is not very
interesting till one gets right up to the beginning of the
city, where the accumulation of suspended traffic and
picturesque life on the banks of the river make a varying
and fascinating scene. The round-limbed, rosy children
playing on the bank, and their smiling, graceful mothers,
whose level brows, beautiful eyes, and finely chiselled
features would be noticeable in any country, make a
succession of charming pictures as they come down to
fetch water or to bathe their babies in the muddy and in-
credibly dirty stream which the Jhelum is at Srinagar.
Behind this foreground of gay humanity are the gable-
roofed, many-windowed houses, projecting balconies, and
delicately carved lattices of the city, with here and there,
rising above the general irregularity of outline, the cone-
shaped dome of a Hindu temple, or the square, pagoda-
like top of a Mahomedan ziarat (shrine of a saint), covered
with turf and gay with the flowers of iris or red lilies,
TO SRINAGAR 251
while in places fruit trees or groups of poplars mark
where gardens are.
Going up the river one passes first under the seventh
bridge, the Saif Kadal, the bridge of Saif Khan, who
built the original one here in 1664 in the days of the
great Moghuls. Since then all the bridges have been
destroyed more than once by floods or fires, but the new
ones seem always to have been built at the same places.
We reached the Saif Kadal about 3 p.m., and sat
on the deck absorbed in watching the spectacle of the
banks and the passing boats, as our doonga made its
leisurely way up the river. Our skipper was evidently
well known, and hailed with many greetings from the
banks and the bridges covered with loungers. We felt
we were being examined with great interest, while no
doubt our tempers, manners, and customs, and above
all our finances, were discussed and commented upon.
Below the fifth bridge we passed the Bulbul Lankar,
a mosque which was built early in the fourteenth century
for a saint named Bulbul Shah, by the first of the
Mahomedan kings of Kashmir. This prince, Rynchan
Shah, was an adventurer, whose father had been king
of Tibet, and his history is the sort of thing which in
one's childhood one always expected of princes who went
out to seek their fortunes. Kashmir was then in great
252 KASHMIR
disorder from weak kings, ambitious subjects, and changes
of faith, for Hinduism and Buddhism were being under-
mined by the preaching of Mahomedans from Central
and Western Asia. Rynchan Shah saw his chance, came
to Kashmir, and won a kingdom, a princess, and a re-
ligion, the religion he selected being that of Bulbul Shah,
whom he admired to the pitch of imitating.
The fourth bridge is named the Zaina Kadal, after
Zain-ul-ab-din, one of the greatest of the kings of Kash-
mir. He was a wise and tolerant monarch, who perse-
cuted no religion, who made great conquests — among
others Tibet — was a patron of art and letters, and built
many magnificent palaces and useful public works.
Near the first bridge, the Amira Kadal, we saw the
great pile of the Maharaja's palace, with its spacious carved
verandas overhanging the river, and the gold-roofed
Sikh temple beside it. Here the banks are lined with
the state barges, most of them at present covered up in
their winter matting.
Near the palace we turned off to the left, up a side
canal, which presently became shaded by enormous over-
hanging chinar trees with, beyond them, stretches of
green turf. Here were moored many doongas and
house-boats, most of them unmistakably occupied. It
looked a delightful spot to spend a few days in, and
TO SRINAGAR 253
a good centre for sight-seeing, so we suggested that
we should tie up here. But our skipper told us that
this attractive spot was reserved for bachelors and
sahibs alone ; and we had to move further on. So we
kept on our way, tying up at last just outside the Dal
Darwaza, the huge lock gates leading into the Dal Lake,
and next day moved to a beautiful camping-ground in the
lake itself.
One can take life in Srinagar in many different ways.
People who go there for "the season" usually live in
a large, well-appointed house-boat, make and return
calls, spend their afternoons on the polo-ground, tennis-
courts, or golf-links, ending up with tea at the club over-
looking the river, or have picnics at one of the delightful
resorts on the Dal Lake. Dinner parties and dances are
also of frequent occurrence, and towards the end of June,
when Srinagar grows too hot to be agreeable, they transfer
themselves to Gulmarg in the mountains, where the same
life goes on in the midst of beautiful scenery and a cool
climate, whose delights are only dashed by the somewhat
frequent rain.
For those who go to Kashmir to shoot, Srinagar is
regarded merely as a base of supplies in which to waste
as little time as possible. They lay in camp equipment
and stores with the utmost dispatch and vanish into the
254 KASHMIR
unknown, to reappear when their leave is up, sun-burned
exceedingly, their baggage unwieldy and protruding with
skins and horns, and a look of utter beatitude on their
faces.
A long stay in Srinagar has a way of reducing you, by
imperceptible degrees, to bankruptcy if you do not put on
the curb early in your career ; there are so many things,
undreamed of before, which suddenly become indispen-
sable to your happiness. You are driven to find safety in
flight and to go on up the river to Islamabad, or to take
to tents and a life of wandering so delightful that one
almost forgets the charm of the valley.
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A MOGHUL GARDEN
THE Emperor Akbar had little time to spare
from his work of making his empire in India
for the fairest of all his conquests, the Valley of
Kashmir. Still, in the course of his three brief visits he
left a lasting impression on it. The revenue settlement of
the province, made by his great finance minister, Raja
Todar Mull, and the fort on the hill of Hart Parbat,
looking down on Srinagar, are emblems of his strong
administration, both military and civil.
257
258 KASHMIR
But the great Akbar had his gentler side, a touch of
the poetic nature so strong in his grandfather Baber, and
it is to him that Srinagar owes the Garden of the Morning
Wind, the Nasim Bagh, that stately pleasaunce, planted
with chinar trees, on the shores of the Dal, a lake whose
loveliness can scarcely have an equal. Whether, in the
sunshine of an afternoon of early spring, it mirrors in
dreamy beauty the snow-crowned peaks that guard it, the
willow and poplar groves of the gardens fringing its
banks, and the clouds that march in white procession
along the hill-tops ; or when the hills are dark with
storm it lies in their midst, a still sheet of grey and
silver ; whether serene in sunset, or sparkling in the
morning light — it has always some new beauty to
enchant one.
The lake lies north of the city of Srinagar, and, to
visit it, one goes up the Dal Canal which connects it
with the river. This canal is entered by massive lock
gates on the right bank of the Jhelum, a little above
the Residency. After the gate the canal goes through
the open green spaces of the English quarter, the high
bund (embankment) on the left lined with tall poplars,
while, on the right, rise the steep, bare slopes of the
Takht-i-Sulaiman, the Throne of Solomon, a rocky
hill rising about a thousand feet above the level of
A MOGHUL GARDEN
259
the city. As one "nears the lake the canal, which is
a narrow one, becomes more and more crowded ; in
one place, where the banks are low and marshy, there
are numbers of grain barges drawn up on^both sides,
closely packed, and often almost entirely blocking the
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GRAIN BARGES
narrow channel. Through these one's little boat picks a
careful way, cleverly evading the advancing bulk of a timber
or grain barge on the move, which it would be suicidal to
collide with. The boatmen of Kashmir are as clever in
managing their craft as the gondoliers of Venice in their
narrow canals, and one usually emerges safely from the
riskiest of situations.
2 6o KASHMIR
Below a rocky spur of the Takht-i-Sulaiman there is
another ponderous gateway, through which one passes
into the lake. When the river is low the water rushes
through this with great force ; there are iron chains which
the boatmen hold on by to pull the boat through, and,
with any luck, you may escape being swamped and emerge
safely on the other side, but it is perhaps wiser to get out
and walk over the bridge, taking your best cushions and
other belongings with you, as even if you escape being
capsized you are apt to get rather wet.
After the exciting passage of the gate all is peace — the
translucent clearness, the still beauty, of the reed-fringed
waterways of the Dal. To visit the Nasim Bagh your
boatman will probably turn to the left, up one of the
many narrow channels among the floating gardens for
which the lake is famous. They are, however, far less
romantic than they sound, their products being limited to
vegetable marrows, melons, cucumbers, and other emi-
nently sensible articles of food. The gardeners of the Dal
are more strictly utilitarian than the Japanese, whose
floating gardens are less for use than beauty, and of whom
it is told that in the time of a great famine an imperial
edict forbade the cultivation of anything that was not
good for food. This caused the greatest dismay, and a
petition was sent to the Mikado asking that the ban
A MOGHUL GARDEN 261
might at least be removed from the iris of their floating
gardens, for the complexion powder used by the women
was made from it. " We must die any way," they said.
" Let us at least die looking our best." And it is said
that the petition was granted.
But these floating gardens of Kashmir, islands of
vivid green in the clear, still water, with their background
— A^S &£
A GARDENER OF THE DAL
of young poplars and softly shadowed hillsides, have a
beauty of their own. The little willows that border them
are amusingly decorative, pollarded till they look like a
fluffy ball of greyish-green on a short, stout handle. They
are very absurd, these little willows, which, in spite of all
their efforts, can never live up to their reputation and be
the weeping willows their name demands. How could it
be possible under the circumstances ? The dancing ripples
262 KASHMIR
on the water, the radiant sky, the light spring breezes are
all against it, and make any attempt at a melancholy pose
utterly ridiculous, so they seem to have given it up, their
branches stick out at all sorts of retroussd angles, or
boldly take a skyward instead of a downward curve, while
their leaves flutter gaily to the tune of the ripples.
The devious course your boat follows will take you
through a little village with the usual ziarat — a Ma-
homedan shrine — its architecture a cross between a
mosque, a log-hut, and a pagoda. On the turf-covered
roof the iris is in flower, a field of white with one tall
scarlet tulip swaying on its stem, distinct against the
sapphire sky. Then you go under an arched stone bridge,
past a flight of steps, where a group of red-robed Pundit-
anis (Hindoo women) are washing their clothes and their
babies ; then more floating gardens, till you emerge on a
clear sheet of blue water beyond which lies the Nasim
Bagh.
The great Akbar chose well the site of his garden,
for, from here, the view over the lake is unsurpassed.
In the garden itself, whatever there may originally have
been in the way of stone-paved tanks and masonry balus-
trades, of hewn terraces and arranged flower-beds, has
been destroyed by the jealousy of later Pathan rulers,
or smoothed away by Time. Stately aisles of magnifi-
A MOGHUL GARDEN 263
cent chinar trees, fit monument to the greatest of the
Moghuls, are all that remain of Akbar's garden. But
the kindly hand of Nature has been at work, and one
cannot help feeling glad that there is no petty ornament
made by man to distract one's attention, or to spoil the
lovely slopes of rich, velvety turf, from which the clumps
of purple and white iris — the fleur-de-lis of France —
lift their beautiful heads while the air is faintly sweet
with their scent.
On Friday mornings in early spring the devout
Mahomedans of the city of Srinagar visit the lake in
great numbers, for the most famous Moslem shrine
in Kashmir is the ziarat and mosque of Hazrat Bal,
on the shore of the lake, about half a mile from the
Nasim Bagh. Here the faithful go to pray, and, on
great occasions, the sacred relics of the Prophet which
are supposed to be kept here are shown to them. Their
devotions finished, the rest of the day is spent in visiting
the famous gardens — there are two others besides the
Nasim Bagh, called the Shalimar and the Nishat Bagh
— and admiring the scenery of the lake.
The Kashmiris, with their strong artistic instincts,
seem to be keenly alive to the beauties of Nature. The
pilgrimage to Hazrat Bal is most popular in spring, for it
is then that the orchards near it and their hedges of lilac
264
KASHMIR
are in flower. You will see quiet groups of people of
all ages silently gazing at the lovely aisles of delicate
blossom, making white archways faintly flushed with rose
between the beauty of the earth touched with the hand of
spring and the changing April sky.
One wonders if it is in this way that the grace and
„.»«/< ii
IN A KASHMIR MEADOW
charm of the thousand patterns they trace, in embroidery
and carving, in copper and silver, are evolved ; from the
study of the lines of branch and flower against the
sky, from the grace of stately iris or of curving lotus
stem.
There is a feeling of festival in the air on a radiant
April morning, and the picturesque boat-loads one passes,
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A MOGHUL GARDEN 267
all evidently thoroughly awake to the joy of life, add a
vivid human interest to the scene.
The different boat-loads one sees on Friday mornings
are very interesting. Some seem to contain a family
party out for the day. Fore and aft are bunches of iris
or lilac, and in front of the boat is hung a cage of singing
birds — poor captives who, after being cooped up so long
in the crowded alleys of the city, are to share the plea-
sures of a day in the country. The boat is open from
end to end, the sides are cushioned, and floor and
cushions are covered with thick white Yarkandi numdahs
(felt rugs). The meals are cooked in the stern of the
boat, while in the centre is the large polished samovar, in
which tea will presently be brewed and served in little
green or blue china bowls ; with it will be served small
round biscuits — sweet ones to-day, for is it not a holiday?
These will no doubt be bought at one of the bun-
shops near the shrine, which do a great trade on these
days.
After their prayers have been said in the mosque they
will go on round the lake, through the one-arched bridge
that, from the top of the Takht-i-Sulaiman, looks like a
gipsy ring set with a single diamond. Then they will land
at the Nishat Bagh, with its sloping terraces and flower
beds, to admire the view of the lake. But, first of all,
268 KASHMIR
they will go to the Shalimar Garden, built for the most
beautiful of Eastern queens by the Moghul, who loved
Kashmir almost better than he loved her. Here the
children will wonder at the funny little round fountains,
and wish that the Maharaja had ordered them to play
to-day, so that they might see the water rise out of the
masonry cones, and make a silvery mist in the air under
the flowering apple and pear trees.
Then there will be the long way home — all too short
it will seem! — in the afternoon sunlight, under the frown-
ing spur where stands the strange, wild Peri Mahal, the
"Fairies' Palace"; through a gap in the nearer hills
they will have a glimpse of exquisite snowy peaks, and
pass on to the vineyards of Gupkar and the rocky pro-
montory of Gagribal, where the water is so clear and soft
that it is said the softness of the famous shawls of
Kashmir was due to their being washed in this water.
After this will come the quiet canals bordered with float-
ing gardens, the clear water reflecting the lovely sunset
colouring of the surrounding hills ; then, through the
picturesque but miry Nalla Mar, to their homes.
A great many parties are arranged for the day by
the more wealthy Mahomedans, who hire large boats
to entertain their guests in, and hundreds of these visit
the shrine in the course of the day.
A MOGHUL GARDEN
269
But at evening all is peace again at the Nasim Bagh,
when the sound of the paddles of the holiday-makers has
died away in the distance. It is dark in the shadow of
the great chinar trees — a fragrant darkness, sweet with
the breath of the white iris which stars the gloom. Far
in'the west, against the pale saffron of the sunset sky, the
hill crowned with Akbar's fort stands out faintly violet, and
over its peaked summit glimmers the evening star.
- lp
)
My best thanks are due to Mr. G. M. Chesney, the
Editor of the Pioneer, Allahabad, for his kindness in
allowing me to publish a number of these articles which
I contributed to the Pioneer in 1904, 1905, and 1906.
P. PIRIE.
Badshah Bagh,
Luck now,
India.
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