I never bought a shawl but did eventually relent and buy some papier maché napkin rings. I thought they'd come in handy one day. To tell the truth they haven't but they still might. They say that the handicraft of making papier maché articles was introduced in the 15th Century by a Kashmiri prince who had spent years in prison in Samarkand in Central Asia. The manufacturing and decorating of the artifacts involves many different processes and given that I couldn't have paid more than a couple of quid for half a dozen (I can't remember how much I paid it could have been much less) it's hard think about how much everyone involved could get from each item
Say I paid 30p for each napkin ring. OK, the base product is waste paper paper which is cheap. It is soaked for a few days until it disintegrates. The excess water is drained off and mixed with cloth, rice straw and copper sulphate to form a pulp. The mixture is then placed in a mould and left to dry for two to three more days. When it is dry the shape is cut away from the mould in two halves and then glued together again. The surface is coated with the layer of glue and gypsum, rubbed smooth with a stone or baked piece of clay and pasted with layers of tissue paper. A base color is painted on and a design is added free hand. The colours for painting designs on the surface are obtained by grinding and soaking various vegetable mineral dyes in pigment or stone form. The object is then sandpapered or burnished and is finally painted with several coats of lacquer. All that for 30p per napkin ring! They are pretty tough too.
In the end the only way to make sure that these salespeople leave you alone is to buy something. But I digress..
After the usual excellent breakfast Rashid took me to the shore where an Hindustan Ambassador was waiting for me. This was my personal taxi. What a terrific car! Fifties style and roomy. Hindustan Motors own website says:
Hindustan Motors was the first Indian Car Company to start production in India in 1942. As old as the Pyramids, the Ambassador is essentially a 60 year old design manufactured by Morris of England as the Oxford [the car is, in fact, selling in the UK for its nostalgic value!] and it still sells in India despite its ancestry. What's glaring about this car is its antiquated design. The body is obsolete, but the engine is reasonably modern which is the Isuzu based four-cylinder 1800cc unit. And though the engine has satisfactory power, it is noisy and can be a strain over long periods. The gearbox is agrarian, the brakes not very good either. HM, thankfully, after all these years has finally managed to get the handbrake to work. The car is quite a handful at speeds -- it rolls excessively when cornered hard and the old-fashioned suspension does not inspire much confidence in the car's dynamics. Build quality is below par and fitments and fixtures are generally tacky. The body shell is also notorious for catching rust.
The one I was riding in was not as old as the pyramids and was not new enough to have the Isuzu engine that is mentioned. When that engine was dropped under the bonnet the Ambassador became the fastest car produced in India. Can you believe it? That was introduced in 1990 and my taxi was not a new car. The picture above is provided with the kind permission of Keith Adams and the original can be found on the Austin Rover Online site www.aronline.co.uk. Check it out!Frankly I don't know where the taxi driver took me. I have done some research on the web to see if I can match my slides to pictures on the net. I think that we first traveled along the vale of Kashmir and passed a field full of crocus flowers, the source of saffron.
So here's my picture of the field and one of the seven postcards I sent home as a letter home.
My notes say the driver wasn't very good and didn't seem to know the way. I think the next place we visited was a Hindu temple where there was also a Mosque. I have no idea where this was and the taxi driver didn't speak enough English to tell me anything that I could understand. I suspect that it might be Awantipur. If anyone recognises the pictures they could add a comment.
We then started to drive up towards Aru. I got the driver to stop a couple of times so that I could take photographs. What was annoying was that although I had paid 850 rupees for the taxi (to Bashir) the driver kept stopping to pick up fares as he was going along. He actually took money off the passengers, even though so far as I was concerned, he had already got a paying fare.
One of the passengers was the chap with the impressive beard pictured above. The driver also seemed to be doing everything he could to conserve fuel and would put the car into neutral and simply freewheeled whenever he could. As usual there was plenty of horn used to warn of our approach as we coasted into roadside settlements scattering chickens in our wake. Given what Hindustan Motors says about the way its own car handles, the way this guy "drove" the car was positively reckless. He knew what he was doing, I suppose, because we didn't have an accident.
From what I have been able to find out on the web about the geography we were heading towards the high meadowlands of Aru. The route took us through Pahalgam called the Valley of the Shepherds according to the jktourism.org "Kashmir Paradise on Earth" site. It says that Pahalgam is situated at the confluence of streams from Sheshnag lake and the Lidder River so I suppose the pictures below are of the aforesaid river.
The point of the trip was to get to Aru which is a starting point for treks to the Kolahor Glacier. As I mentioned before I think that the time of year was wrong for visiting Kashmir and as we got up towards Aru the weather started to close in. When we arrived it was getting quite gloomy. I went for a short walk but it started to rain.
So I headed back to my accommodation which was no more than a hovel. Dinner was cold . It had been brought up in tiffin boxes by the driver. I wasn't altogether impressed with what Bashir had arranged for me. One of the lowlights was a cup of less than refreshing Kashmiri Chai. It was honestly revolting. I have looked up recipes for it since and it looks like it ought to be delicious. I suppose if I had known that the floury sediment at the bottom of the drink was powdered almonds my taste buds might have reacted differently. I'm the white guy with a borrowed poncho-thing on. Note the lad on the left has a basket inside his poncho-thing. This is what I was talking about before. In the basket is a metal container with glowing charcoal embers in it. Hand held central heating. The others have got them too. In fact the only person who hasn't is me. The lad also sports the national shoe of India - the blue and white rubber flip flop.
