Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Avoiding the Kashmiri Insurgency

After leaving Bhagsu, I took a 6 hour cab ride to Jammu. I didn't tell my folks to avoid worrying them, but this part of my itinerary took me right into the heart of Kashmir, the disputed region between India and Pakistan. (They were bombing tourist buses just two years ago, but things have since calmed.)

There was a huge Indian army presence in the streets (no pictures--the Lonely Planet urged against take them). I was a little nervous so took the unusual step of asking my cab driver Rishi:

to spend the night with me. I booked a night at the fanciest hotel in town, the KC Residency, which was spookily empty. I think Rishi and I were the only guests:

His job was to drive me to the airport the next day, but spirit me out of Kashmir if there was any trouble. The next morning, the headlines in the newspaper made me a little nervous:

but things were calm on the street.

There was tons of security at the airport. You had to go through metal detectors to get between any two rooms, and they confiscated my AAA batteries. The flight was fine though, and I landed in beautiful Leh:

I left the airport and was about to get in a cab, when a man came running after me, calling my name and waving something in the air.


It was my AAA batteries. They hadn't confiscated them, just carefully tagged and sent them separately.

1 comment:

Jess said...

What a funny little story.