It is very difficult to explain or describe just how uncomfortable these buses are. Although the seats are upholstered with some kind of foam backed vinyl leatherette the covering is extremely thin and quite frequently the seat isn't secured to its frame. I can't remember where I sat in the bus. It was probably somewhere near the front. there is a science to traveling on buses. It pays to know which side of the bus the sun will be shining on and one should always choose the other side. It's a bit like traveling by ship too. On a ship the best berths are in the middle away from the afternoon sun. That way the rolling motion is minimised and the cabin is not too stuffy. On an Indian bus definitely the worst seat to get is at the back. I'm sure I never got it right but it is best to avoid sitting over the axles. The buses may once have had rudimentary suspension and shock absorbers but the roads were so very bad and potholed that every time the bus went over a bump or into a pothole the full force of the shock traveled up through the seats and (when insecure) the seat would leave the frame. It is quite an experience and this was my first experience.
The 293km journey was basically up hill practically all the way and up into the mountains. the bus went for about 2 hours and at around 8.15am we stopped for breakfast. A very polite young man called Ashraf attached himself to me and cadged a cigarette. There's no note of what breakfast may have consisted of but it wasn't a long stop and we were soon on the road again. I have noticed in a quick google that a four lane superhighway between Jammu and Srinagar was due to opened this year. Was it? I doubt it. In 1990 it certainly wasn't four lanes. It was often barely two.
At about 9.30am our progress was stopped by an overturned truck. The truck you will see was a Tata truck as is the one on the other side of it, as indeed every other truck on the road was. We were held up for about 30 minutes. This may not seem very long but given we had to be in Srinagar and indoors by 6.00pm it was a bit worrying. Once more Ashraf attached himself to me and we chatted about this and that and he cadged another fag or two. Ashraf and many of the others smoked cigarettes rather like some people smoke chillum pipes. They put the filter of the cigarette in between their little finger and their next finger and formed their smoking hand into a fist and smoked through the fist. I'm not sure that I have described that properly and hope you know what I mean. There was an enormous amount of milling around and I just can't remember how the truck was moved sufficiently out of the way to make the road passable. If you look at the picture you can see just how treacherous the road was and it got a great deal worse as our journey continued.
The journey was, as I mentioned, 293km. That's about 180 miles. It is about 180 miles from my home to my mate Stephen's house in Wimbledon. I have managed the trip in 2 and half hours admittedly driving at night and well in excess of the speed limit. The speed of travel on this road was often not much more than walking pace. In fact I often thought the bus might be able to go a bit faster if we all got off and walked on ahead.
We have all experienced the frustration on a dual carriageway of being trapped in the overtaking lane behind one lorry overtaking another. Both of the lorries have speed limiters and therefore the faster of the two lorries may be doing 60mph while the slower is doing 59mph. The manoeuvre takes ages and sometimes, if the road starts to incline slightly is abandoned. Why do they do it? One reason could be that they simply can't afford to slow down because it might take ages to build up to the top speed again.
That theory certainly seemed applicable to the way in which all the vehicles heading up National Highway 1-A towards Srinagar were driven. All the way there were signs on the road encouraging drivers to use their horns and most vehicles had signs facing traffic following them bearing the (amusing) legend "HORN PLEASE". The use of the horn was to warn of your approach whether to oncoming traffic or traffic in front of you. Given the state of the roads there was a good chance that the rear view mirror in cars (and there weren't many of them, as I said before) would have fallen off and lorries were so impossibly overloaded that the wing mirrors couldn't have been much use. Drivers relied on other drivers to comply with the "HORN PLEASE" injunction.
As the bus headed up into the mountains there were hairpin bends at frequent intervals. As we approached a bend there would be the sign telling the driver (as if he didn't know) to use his horn and without slowing the driver would cause the bus to veer over to to the wrong side of the road with one hand on the wheel and other on the horn. There was no way he was going to take his foot off the accelerator and lose momentum. Look again at the sheer drop alongside the road in the picture above. That was nothing to some of the cliffs as we got higher into the mountains. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The driver would be heading towards the precipice in order to take the 180 degree bend without being able to see what was coming down the road from the other direction. At every such bend all our lives could easily have been lost and occasionally you would catch glimpses of wrecks where someone's luck had run out. The Insh'Allah approach to risk taking tempered only by the use of the horn was the prevailing rule of the road. All I can say is Hamdullah we didn't end up at the bottom of a ravine.
The work these buses have to do climbing steadily up into and through the mountains is really terrific. The strain on the engines must be enormous and after just over two hours the bus stopped again for lunch. Once again Ashraf kept me company and I ended up giving him the rest of my packet of cigarettes (duty free B&H).
After the lunch stop which gave the bus a bit a bit of breather too we continued on our way. We had picked up a little of the time we had lost when the road had been blocked by the overturned truck. The bus climbed and climbed and then started to sweep down towards the Vale of Kashmir. What with all the hopping on and off the bus I had taken the precaution of actually padlocking my backpack to the seat in front of me. That way I could be certain no-one could make off with it. As a matter of fact, of course, there was really nowhere to make off with it to and the people on the bus were all very nice indeed but I just didn't want to take any risks.
At 4.00ish the bus was stopped by an army roadblock and soldiers boarded the bus and walked up and down it being scary and looking closely at all the passengers. This was my first real confirmation that all was not as it should be in the paradise of Kashmir. The fact that my backpack was actually padlocked to the bus caused some consternation and having the fact drawn to everyone's attention was a tad embarrassing. The soldiers clearly thought it was a bit suspicious. Somehow their suspicions were assuaged and they got off the bus and we carried on our way.
I can remember the last few minutes of the bus trip quite clearly. At least I think I can. The bus was sweeping down hill through a plain. The road was tree-lined like an avenue and on one side at least, my right hand side, I remember huge fields where I believe crocuses were grown for their stamens which are harvested as one of the most expensive crops in terms of cost to weight, saffron.
I never got as far as the bus terminal. The bus came to a halt at about 5.15pm because a man was flagging it down. This was Bashir who had been contacted by his brother and who had come to collect me off the bus. Cynically, when I think about it now, it was probably not excellent service but a simple expediency. After all his brother had hijacked me from my original accommodation and if i had reached the terminus I might have been hijacked again before he could find me.
The sun was setting. The 12 hour bus journey had been extremely exhilarating and the Vale of Kashmir at the end was one of the most beautiful places on earth. The sun was setting as we arrived at Dal lake and boarded a Shikara over to the houseboat. We had made it before the 6.00pm curfew but only just.
The notes I wrote just say "HB, dinner nvg, cricket ball". I can't remember what dinner was but I will never forget the lump of Kashmiri hashish that Bashir produced - it was the size of a cricket ball. It wasn't very nice though. A bit bitter/acrid very hard and a little too powerful for a lightweight like me who had not partaken of anything stronger than a total of three beers in the last 2 months. Still ... I wasn't exactly forced to, but then again I was, wasn't I?. I mean you can't really go all that way and say no thanks. It would have been rude. Anyway, I was on holiday - sort of.
I talked to my host Bashir and discovered what a small world we live in. I had left my job in Sutton and had traveled all the way to the foothills of the Himalayas, almost literally to Shangri-La, and my houseboat adorned with ornate wood carving is run by a chap who used to live in Wallington and went out with a policewoman there.
Bashir told me about the troubles that had just begun. It had killed the tourist trade stone dead. Apparently there were only about 30 tourists on the whole lake. I had this houseboat to myself. My room was very nice indeed. I could pick up the World Service and for £5.00 per night including breakfast and dinner I was in about the most luxurious accommodation of the trip so far. I remember going to sleep and also remember hearing what I thought was distant thunder during the night.
