In What Was 'Heaven on Earth,' 18 Holes and 13 Dead

Before the militancy, Kashmir was often featured in fairy-tale-like Hindi movies, with couples falling in love amid the saffron fields, trout streams and once-bustling ski slopes of Kashmir, often called the Switzerland (or, more cynically, the Northern Ireland) of South Asia.

The old city of Srinagar still has winding narrow passageways with fascinating architecture such as an all-wooden mosque and 400-year-old Sufi shrines, with green papier-mache interiors. Now-quiet showrooms are packed with Kashmiri carpets and the famous pashmina ring shawls.

Then there are the adorable canopied shikara boats, propelled around the lake with heart-shaped paddles. They offer dawn visits to the floating market, where visitors can buy lotus flowers and lilies along with cucumbers, watermelons, cherries and homemade chocolates sold by Kashmir's Delicious Man.

Kashmiri sense of humor and hospitality are exceptional even by South Asia's already high standards. Domestic tourists have started slowly coming back to visit public and well-guarded places like the garden of Shalimar Bagh, built by the Mughal emperor in 1616 and terraced with red roses and waterfalls.

"It's still very fishy here, very fishy," said Nayeem Shekh, one of the garden's photographers, and a former model for cigarette ads in New Delhi and clothes in the Netherlands. "The problem with Kashmir is you just don't know what will happen from day to day."

As he snapped photos of tourists -- chubby Indian housewives and 3-year olds he dressed up as Mughals in velvet robes and giant earrings -- he shouted, "Devastating, darling! Devastating."

Tourism is recovering slowly. But barbed wire isn't exactly a calming element, and it's looped around army posts that sit at nearly every turn, including waterfalls, pony ride stations and even the new golf course. Tourists are still vulnerable in open areas. Indian troops guard families taking pony rides up to glaciers in places like Sonamarg. In the evening, they are on patrol and ready to frisk young Kashmiri men whom they yank out of cars during ID checks.

Many Western countries, including the United States, advise against travel to Kashmir.

In 1995, six Western tourists were held hostage by suspected militants. The incident ended with a Norwegian hostage being beheaded, an American escaping and four others still missing and presumed dead.

That pretty much put a damper on the whole "Heaven on Earth" slogan for a while. Even the hearty Israelis and Japanese started keeping away.

As for me and my husband, we were journalists here to report on the slow peace process, and the interviews on all sides were often deeply disturbing and tinged with frustration and depression.

But we also found ourselves swept up in the natural beauty of the place and its people.

In between reporting stints, we met up with a group of warm Kashmiri journalists and a few Kashmiri Americans doing aid work here and were invited to a Kashmiri wedding.

We went carpet shopping. We jammed out at night to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" in our houseboat and took a shikara boat at dawn through the floating markets.

We headed back to New Delhi's burning heat with our luggage loaded with Kashmiri cherries, Mr. Delicious chocolates, good memories of new friends and the cool temperatures of our lakeside houseboat. I could see why it was called Heaven on Earth and why George Harrison stayed here.

But then again, the day after we were back I learned from the BBC that 13 people were killed in clashes between militants and security forces, not far from where we were.

I wondered if the high-dollar golf tourists in places like Dubai had seen those reports.