The Man! 😍

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One day the American guy and me decided to go for a little hike up some hill close to Dal Lake to visit some temple and for a nice view of the lake and the vicinity.

I don´t remember the name of the temple, but looking at Google Maps, trying to refresh my memory, I think it could have been Shankaracharya Temple, since that one is on top of a hill at the South side of Dal Lake with a zig-zag road leading up through the forest.
Adi Shankaracharya created his famous “Wave of Beauty“, Saundariya Lahari in Sanskrit, there.
Though now more in the news because of the conflict between radical Muslims and the Indian Army, Kashmir once was the craddle of Kashmir Shaivism, a nondualist Tantric Shaiva tradition, revering Shiva as the Supreme Being or Brahman, and a center for higher learning and philosophy.

Anyway, the name of that temple is not important, important is that we miscalculated the time it would take us to make it back to the houseboat before dark.
So when we arrived at the road which lead around Dal Lake and which we had to follow back to our houseboat, Srinagar was already covered in darkness and nobody was on the road anymore since the curfew was already in effect.
Contrary to us, the locals knew that it was better to not roam around after the curfew had started, unless you wanted to be mistaken for a terrorist by the Indian army and get shot. Luckily there was some moon, so we could see a bit where we were going.

We walked in the middle of the road, talking loudly in English in order to signal that we were just stupid tourists, no stupid terrorists.
Then some crossroads came where we would have to turn right toward our houseboat, but, unfortunately in any kind of military training people learn to establish positions at crossroads and apparently the Indians had read those books too. 😎
They had the classic sandbagged machinegun position in place with a 360 degree free field of fire, so nobody could sneak up on them from some buildings.
Whatever food stalls had been there before, now had been flattened to guarantee that open field, their ruins bearing witness to the harsh realities of the occupation.

Since there was no other way to get to our houseboat, we kept approaching. We could not see the faces of the soldiers aiming at us, but we could see the barrels of their guns pointing at us in the moonlight. How utterly romantic!
It was all very quiet and very surreal, the empty road, the mirrorlike surface of the lake to our right, very serene, very peaceful, only that death was right in front of us. But I didn´t mind.

If you look at the header on my blog page, it says “Lever dood as slav“, Low German for “Rather dead than slave“, the old motto of the Likedeeler, the North German pirates of the 14th century, and, true to my motto, I was never really afraid of death, just of pain.

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We kept walking and talking,
fearless and upright,
because we were not stalking,
had nothing to hide.
Then we heard that dreadful sound,
piercing the silence of the night,
soldiers racking a round,
getting ready to fight.
Yo!
Some little rap interlude,
to lighten up the mood!
Yo! 😎

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After that dreadful, menacing, mechanical metal sound had shattered the silence of the night in front of us, the American guy raised both hands above his head and shouted
“American, American, don´t shoot, tourist, tourist!“
He cracked me up and I started laughing, thinking that was pretty funny, albeit a bit undignified.
I also thought it quite funny that he was only referring to himself in his plea to the soldiers, as if it was ok with him if they would shoot me only, but just not him.
Ah, American entitlement, nothing beats it!
“Laugh all you want“ he snapped at me “I don´t want to get shot here!“
“Sure!“ I grinned “neither do I“

So we kept walking toward the sandbags, then we suddenly saw a flash!
But it was only some lighters.
Cigarettes were being lit behind the barricades, started glimmering above the barrels, giving us the all-clear.

They never stopped us, never talked to us, just kept watching us from the sandbagged safety of their position, while we passed their little fortress in eery silence. We never got to know how close we really came to being turned into a bunch of bloody goo, our fate if one of those guys had started shooting.

Once we were around the corner we were safe, no more machineguns between us and home.
When we approached the dark row of houseboats were ours was situated, we could see that one of them had its verandah lit by a Petromax, it was ours, and the lantern was meant to show us the way.
Ishmael was sitting outside, waiting for us, obviously worried.
When we stepped onto the boat, he looked at us, shook his head and said
“You crazy? It´s curfew, those Dogra dogs shoot first, ask questions later!“
Then a smile bid farewell to his concern and he gave us a big hug!

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.