Mujahideen

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I don´t remember exactly on which day of our trekking tour, but it was in the first few days, when we were still in the forest area, rather low, not at high altitude, when we put up camp close to some lovely river in the afternoon.
The law of trekking demanded to start early in the morning and reach a suitable camp site well before it gets dark to set up camp and cook dinner while it´s still light, and we always followed that law religiously.

The British had stocked that river with trout during the time when Kashmir was one of their favorite summer hangouts, so the area was famous for excellent trout fishing.
Those houseboats on Dal Lake, where all the tourists stay now, had actually been British homes in those days. I think Kashmir was kind of more independent for whatever reason than other parts of India, a princely state under paramountcy of the British crown, where the Maharaja did not allow the British to build houses, so they lived on those houseboats instead.

Ishmael had brought fishing lines and metal lures, so we went trout fishing. You threw the line with the lure into the river as far as you could and then pulled in the line, no rod no reel. After a while I caught the biggest trout of the day, Ishmael had caught some smaller ones before and happily we returned to the camp. The camp was in some dry river bed with some nice sandy patches for the tents, right beside the forest. We were just about to prepare the trouts for cooking when two men stepped out of the forest and came to our camp. They looked like the local Kashmiri we had seen so far in this area, with one big difference, they were armed with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades.
They were Kashmiri Mujahideen fighting against the Indian army.

But they were friendly!
Ishmael immediately started a conversation with them to break the ice. They admired the big trout and when Ishmael told them that I was the one who had caught it, they nodded approvingly. They asked how we had caught them trouts and Ishmael showed them the metal lures. He gave each of them one metal lure as a gift, so they could also try their luck with fishing. That made them very happy, so happy in fact that they decided to put on a little show for us tourists.

“Come, they want to show us something“ Ismael told us.
So we followed them to the edge of the forest where they hid behind some trees and gave us a mock demonstration of how to ambush an Indian army patrol, jumping around between the trees, doing as if they were shooting their guns and throwing their grenades. Long before powerpoint presentations they definitely got their message across.
They reminded me of my childhood games of Cowboys and Indians (the Native American kind), only their hardware was the real deal and I guess if we would have been Indian soldiers we would have been dead by now.
Their enthusiastic show lasted for a few minutes, they did not have too many variations in their script of how to ambush an army patrol, so after we thanked them for their lovely performance they disappeared into the forest again.

Back at the camp Ishmael´s brother cooked the trouts, they were so delicious. It doesn´t get much better than Kashmiri trout out of a clean whitewater river, freshly caught and immediately being turned into trout curry be an expert Kashmiri cook.
Life was good!
But something kept bugging me.
So after we were all full and happy I asked Ishmael:

“Why did you give them those metal lures? We need them ourselves for fishing!“

He looked at me as if I was crazy, and in retrospect I have to admit I was a bit crazy in my younger years, the “Rather dead than slave“ thing sometimes clouding my judgement when it came to potentially lifethreatening situations, like armed Mujahideen.

“Did you see their guns?“
“Yes! So?“
“Well, they could have taken everything from us if they wanted. So I wanted to become friends with them and gave them a small gift. Never mind those lures, at least nothing bad happened to us!“

Oh Ishmael, you were wise beyond your years!
He had that kind of street smarts, or should I say mountain smarts?, which let him survive interrogation, or should I say torture?, by the Indian army, encounters with Mujahideen and even win an argument with a crazy German.

Now this is another great adventure story I survived to tell the tale, but three years after my Kashmir adventure, I was reminded by the news of just how lucky we had been then.
The mood and tactics had changed in Kashmir in the summer of 1995, Mujahideen were actively kidnapping foreigners on trekking tours then and when their demands for the release of some of their fighters from Indian prison were not met, one hostage, a Norwegian guy, lost his head.

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.