By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
SRINAGAR, India -- Everyone from Buddha to Led Zeppelin found inspiration in the stunningly beautiful Kashmir Valley, with its fields of wildflowers, stream-laced forests and glaciered Himalayan mountains.
The late Beatles guitarist George Harrison rented a houseboat on Dal Lake and learned to play the sitar, jamming with the 4:15 a.m. Sufi chants that echo through the valley just before sunrise.
The Buddha called Kashmir his favorite place to meditate. And after lounging on Kashmir's sleepy Nagin Lake, Led Zeppelin's lead singer, Robert Plant, was moved to pen "Kashmir," an epic rock anthem fused with Eastern riffs. Plant called it the band's best musical achievement.
"Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face / stars to fill my dream," Plant sang. "I am a traveler of both time and space / to be where I have been."
Backpackers looking to escape India's scorching 115-degree heat in favor of Kashmir's mild summers saw trekking through its rustic pine forests, apple orchards and hills with trout streams as the ultimate adventure-tourist destination. Worn billboards today still tout Kashmir as "Heaven on Earth."
But the signs seem like an ironic joke after an 18-year conflict in Indian-administered Kashmir has left tens of thousands dead and as many as 10,000 people, mostly young men, missing after being detained by Indian security forces.
"This place was oh so grand, before it became hell," said Gulam Butt, whose wood-carved Butt's Clermont Houseboats on the quiet western shores of Dal Lake were once a destination for rock stars and royalty.
The boat George Harrison rented from Butt is now flooded and sinking. "My dream is that the tourists will one day come back," said Butt, who is known to hug his remaining guests tightly and often.
Butt does not dream alone. With violence slowing and peace talks inching forward between Pakistan and India, Kashmir is hoping to reclaim its place as a top South Asian vacation spot.
It's a wonderful piece of real estate. But it's in a rough neighborhood, with two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, each claiming it.
There have been two wars fought over Kashmir, along with daily skirmishes between the half-million Indian security troops and the Pakistani-backed militants, along with home-grown separatists who want Kashmir to be its own country.
But with mainland India reaping the fruits of its "Incredible India" tourist campaign, local officials say Kashmir can be a golfing destination.
There are now three major golf courses in Kashmir, including a new one in Srinagar.
Yes, golf, in Kashmir. Why not? Just because a place isn't living in a state of constant peace doesn't mean you can't have any fun.
There's bowling in Ivory Coast, cricket in Congo, sand safaris in Sudan. And now there's a brand-new $5 million, 18-hole course called Royal Springs nestled in the hills overlooking Dal Lake. It may be the most militarized golf course on Earth.
The golf course is shaped like the map of India, itself a dangerous political statement in a place where borders have long been contested. The tree-shaded links are so manicured and pristine that they seem almost a journey into a fantasy world, especially compared with bombed-out areas and the sight of armed Indian security forces wearing flak jackets.
The golf course has a pro shop with polo shirts stitched with the Royal Springs logo, a beautiful copper fireplace to sip hot chocolate by in winter and an air-conditioned TV lounge for summers. The director hopes to attract high-dollar players both from India and from places like Dubai, those looking for an exotic holiday away from the crowds.
"This is one of the best golf courses in the world," boasted Farooq Shah, not only the director of the facility but also Kashmir's tourism director. "When a golfer comes to the state, he is a high-spending tourist. He hires a taxi, he stays in a good hotel, he goes shopping. So, indirectly, it really benefits the tourism industry."
But hand grenades and a holiday usually don't go together. And the ghosts of tourists past haunt this place as do the memories and confidence of what used to be.
On a recent night, Sarmad Hafeez, joint director of tourism in Kashmir, attended a discussion on a boat I was renting, one of Butt's remaining functioning houseboats. The meeting was on how to boost tourism in Kashmir.
As he sipped Kashmir's signature yellow tea with almond slices and cardamom, Hafeez talked about how the region has some of the world's best skiing in Gulmarg, just a few hours away from Srinagar. Because so few people come, it has one of the world's best skier-to-powder ratios, he said.
When the subject of violence came up, Hafeez told of a tourist injured in a bomb blast.
"It was the kindness of Kashmiris who pulled him out of the car and helped donate blood," he said without a touch of irony. "The tourist was so happy, he came limping back to my office, even with one leg in a cast, to tell me how much he loved Kashmir."
It's not exactly a good line to attract visitors. The odd thing was that I sort of understood what he meant.
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.
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