Kashmir Valley

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Ishmael made me an offer I couldn´t refuse!
Kashmiri business shrewdness and German stinginess, a match made in heaven.

He told me that Eve and Yanick, the French couple also staying on the houseboat, had enlisted his services as a guide and organizer for a trekking tour through the Kashmir mountains to the highway to Ladakh, a two weeks tour-de-force through very remote terrain. He asked me if I wanted to join them, “I make you good price!“

I don´t remember the price anymore, what I remember is that it was more than what I would spend on average per day, but I also saw the opportunity and that I would never get to do this trek for this price on my own. They were going anyway, so taking me on too was no real extra work, but extra money, so his price was reasonable.
And if I had one regret from my time in Pakistan, it was that I didn´t go on some real serious trekking over a couple of days there. Pakistan did not have the infrastructure for trekking, like for example the pancake treks of Nepal. Trekking in Pakistan usually meant using a trekking agency and paying quite some money for it, especially if you were on your own and not with a group, compared to my normal living expenses as a frugal traveller, so I never used one of those agencies.

I did one overnight tour on my own in Pakistan, just going up some valley in Chitral, carrying all my food, crashing somewhere beside a mountain stream in the middle of nowhere, happy to be totally alone, but that was it. Out of three months in Pakistan I just managed to spend one night alone out there in them beautiful mountains.
What a loser!
So I wasn´t going to let that opportunity get away.

The secret of successful longtime travelling is living as close to a local as possible in terms of daily expenses, and speaking local languages certainly helps with that, to make your money last as long as possible and also get a taste of the real country and the life of the locals, not some commercialised, tourist brochure version of it, while sometimes spending money on extraordinary adventures and experiences.
And boy, would that be money well spent!
In hindsight I can say, one of the best “investments“ of all my travels.

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"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before"
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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So a few days after I accepted Ishmael´s offer, we left the houseboat in search of fame and glory.
Us, that were Ishmael as the guide, his elder brother as the cook, Eve and Yannick, and me. We went south first, to some village to pick up two horsemen with their four horses, more supplies and stuff, like sacks of onions, potatoes, atta (Chapati flour), vegetables, biscuits, cooking oil, whatever necessary to keep seven people and for horses happy and alive for two weeks.

We loaded the horses, even our big backpacks were strapped onto them, we would only need to carry our daypacks with some raincloth, additional warm clothes, water bottles, some snacks. What a luxury!
We were quite the show in that little Kashmiri village we had chosen as our starting point. Lots of people were around us, watching every move, especially blonde beautiful Eve got quite some stares.
Since the curfew was in effect in Srinagar, not many tourists came to Kashmir any longer and the Indian government had banned all Israeli passport holders from entering Kashmir, probably to prevent kidnapping and international complications.

When the American and me came from Delhi by bus, the main access by road to Kashmir was through some tunnel, and there, before that tunnel, right on the border to Kashmir, the Indian army stopped all buses and checked the passports, any Israelis would be denied to continue to Kashmir.

While there were no Israelis at all in Pakistan, unless they went all Jason Bourne and produced another passport to apply for a visa, they were all over India, just not in Kashmir.
And of the few tourists who made it to Srinagar, not many would come for a trekking tour and none had come to that village this year, until now. We were the first ones, the trek ahead of us was pristine.

We would be out there in the mountains for two weeks, traverse some passes higher than the highest mountains in Germany and generally have an awesome time with the usual potentially lifethreatening stuff, I just don´t seem to be able to do without, thrown in.

I have now combined all my Pakistan travel stories into one chapter, which can be found here.

For more adventurous stories check out my blog @likedeeler

For more inspiring stories and a group of inspiring and supportive people check out @ecotrain.