Kashmir travel blog

 

On 1 January 2021, I landed back to Delhi from my trip to Kashmir. I reached home, talked to my family. My mother was a bit unwell and my brother was hopping around the house like a squirrel. The moment I lay on my bed, I instantly missed Kashmir. Delhi is a modern, jazzed up song that makes you move and laugh but Kashmir was an old song that you heard someone, whispering in metro and searched all over the internet to listen to it. And when you finally listen to it, you forget who you are and where are you going. It makes you fall in love. Yes, Kashmir was known to me only by whispers and news but when I myself got there it was completely different. There was one agathokakological statement that kept coming in my mind, “If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.”

Jannat-e-Kashmir was indeed heaven by all the looks of it. There are snow capped mountains and cool breeze, dry leaves and tall trees. The first time I walked on snow, my boots went straight inside. I smiled. This is how nature hugs you and makes you aware of her presence. The Kashmiri’s there often said this like quoting a renowned poet, “The snow here is a thief.” They meant it for cell phones and keys which the tourist’s never saw again once it landed on snow. Till the distance human vision permitted me to see, I could see only snow and dry trees. My eyes didn’t want to blink, it was so beautiful. I could grasp why Kashmir was called heaven, I felt like I was on clouds and I was walking on it away from my home in Delhi, away from everything that made me cry in Delhi.

In Pahalgam when we reached the mountain top on my horse Mastana(Gosh! I am missing her), it was almost time for sunset. The ground was white and the orange. The sun was peeping at me like a shy girl behind curtains (mountains). I smiled at her and she made the sky grow red. There were a few birds that were scaling the sky as if they had been put in motion by a young boy playing with gulel. I couldn’t see their wings flapping. The clouds were floating in sky with a yellow-orange shade. Maybe some lover had tossed snow in the sky to reach his beloved who lives in other town. This cloud will rain on her when he reaches her home. I hope, she will know that the rain had come a long way down to give her lover’s message.

The deodar trees were at the end of my sight. They stood up like soldiers protecting the Kashmir ahead. How do I tell them that I have come for good? The valley had a queue of mountains on opposite sides, separated by a narrow lane full of houses. I looked at the shy bride, the sun. I realized that the mountains were her guards, she had nurtured herself. I moved a step forward and she grew red from anger. How do I tell her that I have come for good?