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| Cenotaphs of the martyred soldiers at the Drass War Memorial |
On the way to Sonamarg (previous post), Tanveer had stopped at a shack by the roadside and bought a small gas cylinder. I had not paid it much attention, thinking it was for their personal use. It was, but I was also allowed to enjoy some of its benefits.
Now, please don’t start thinking about the safety aspects of carrying a gas cylinder in the car!
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| The most extraordinary 'hotel' I have seen. Bhat Tea Stall, Hotel Matayen! |
Shortly after entering Ladakh, Tanveer stopped the car by the roadside, brought out the cylinder, placed it in the shade of some rocks to protect the flame from the wind, and started brewing some tea. He was carrying tea, milk powder, and sugar. Adil got some water in an empty plastic container from a thin stream that was flowing nearby, and the tea was set to boil as I inspected my surroundings.
I could see a long way from where we were; there was not a single vehicle in sight. The road was barely metalled, and as dry and lustreless as its background. It wound its way through the austere terrain towards both ends—to Zoji La and Drass. The hills had the bare minimum cover of grass.
In this inhospitable terrain, as if it had cropped up totally by mistake, was a pale mauve-coloured wild dianthus. It nearly seemed like an illusion.
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| Tanveer and Adil brew our tea |
The thin stream Adil had gathered water from ended in a slushy puddle by the roadside—the only sign of moisture in a parched land. Yet, only about 150km away, Markha Valley had gone under waist-deep water in flash floods. Cloudbursts and resultant mudslides had hit Sonamarg only a few days back.
Nowhere in India is perhaps climate change more glaringly evident than in the Himalayas. Floods in Uttarakhand, Kashmir Valley and Ladakh have become routine now. The first two regions used to receive moderate rainfall, and the last one, the bare minimum.
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| A wild dianthus by the roadside |
Just as Mushtaq’s uncle had told me at their home on Dal Lake (clickhere to read that post), neither he nor his ancestors had ever seen floods like the one that hit Kashmir in September 2014. The climate of the Himalayas is changing, and disastrously so.
“Madam, your tea,” Tanveer handed me a paper cup. “This is the way we Kashmiris travel. We carry our gas cylinders and provisions, and we cook and brew tea as we go. So, you are travelling in true Kashmiri style now,” he smiled.
“This is only tea. Where is the food?” I joked. “We cooked a fantastic chicken last night in Sonamarg. We wanted you to join us, too, but we did not want to disturb you. Today we’ll cook it for lunch and you can have some,” he said, as we got back into the car and headed for Drass.
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| Road to Kargil following the Drass River |
The Gujjar tents were still with us. Sometimes I saw little kids running after the car, their arms outstretched, their little hands cupped upwards in a clear sign—begging for money. Tanveer looked apologetic: “You know madam, these kids’ fathers own livestock worth lakhs. And yet they don’t send their children to school but make them beg from tourists.”
I was appalled. Begging out of poverty is something; begging as a hobby is totally different. “Don’t give them money. What if they buy drugs or something?” I cried as Tanveer stopped the car and handed the kids some money. He and Adil laughed the idea off. All of it apparently went to family coffers all right.
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| One of the walls built at Drass during the 1999 war to protect it from shelling |
Why they were so benevolent to people who send their kids to beg as a pastime was beyond me.
Drass was barely half an hour away from where we had stopped for tea. Tanveer showed me the mud-brick walls that had been built to protect the town from the shelling during the Kargil war. Though broken in parts, much of it’s still there as a souvenir of the 1999 conflict between the neighbours, India and Pakistan.
The Drass war memorial is built on a magnificently maintained sprawling campus overlooked by the Tololing peak, one of the key theatres of the Kargil war. Like all war memorials, it was peaceful, tranquil—a sad irony.
Strangely, a State Bank of India ATM welcomes visitors to the campus. I desperately needed money, but it was out of order.
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| Drass |
An Army jawan asked me to sign on the visitor’s register. Scattered over the vast lawn are models of howitzers and a fighter jet (both Tanveer and Adil asked me to click their photographs in front of the latter). A metalled road divides the lawn into two and leads straight to the memorial of Operation Vijay—the name Indian forces gave to their strategy to clear the area of Pakistani intruders.
To the left is Vir Bhumi (literally ‘Land of the Brave’) which houses the cenotaphs of Kargil war martyrs and a model of Indian forces celebrating on Tiger Hill after recapturing it. The photograph of this incident had sort of become the symbol of the war in India, thanks to the media.
To the right is the (Captain) Manoj Pandey Gallery, named after the brave soldier of the Gorkha Rifles who was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest military honour, for the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice he showed during the war.
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| On the Drass War Memorial campus |
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| Drass Memorial |
The gallery possesses a fine collection of terrain models of the various battle zones, models of arms and ammunition used in the war, replicas of awards, extracts from letters and diaries, photographs, with brief descriptions and anecdotes pinned on boards. Photographs along with brief introductions of all the (Indian military awards by rank) Param Vir Chakra, Maha Vir Chakra and Vir Chakra awardees adorn a wall in an inside gallery.
A particularly poignant article on display is the replica of a letter from Maj. Padmapani Acharya written to his father from the battleground. “…Please don’t worry about the casualties. It’s a professional hazard which is beyond our control, so why worry; at least it’s for a good cause…” he writes matter-of-factly.
“…tell manam (probably mother) that combat is an honour of a lifetime and I would not think of anything less. What better way to serve the nation…” the letter goes on. He ends it with “...Don’t worry and lose sleep. Tell a story a day of the (the epic) Mahabharata to Charu so that your grandchild imbibes good values.”
Maj. Acharya received the Maha Vir Chakra posthumously.
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| Manoj Pandey Gallery. We had to take off our shoes to enter the gallery, just like we do at temples |
What made the Kargil war very special was the terrain—cold, inhospitable, dizzying altitudes—which the Indian forces overcame. Initially Pakistan had denied having sent its forces into Indian territories, and had blamed Kashmiri militants for the deed. But the Indian forces found I-cards and pay books of Pakistani Army regulars on the dead or the captives. Photographs of some are on display.
There is an excerpt from a diary seized in Batalik sector. The writer names several captains and majors (evidently of the Pakistani Army) and a brief account of the activities on that side.
It’s difficult to not feel your blood boil in a place like that, however cool you intend to be. An Army jawan was showing us around (there was already a big group of visitors when I went in) and explaining the various incidents related to the war. He had a very stimulating style of speaking, probably the reason he has been given the job of showing visitors around.
At the end of the tour, he bellowed, “Jai Hind!”
We all roared in unison, “JAI HIND!”
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In Drass, Tanveer had met a friend of his who was driving a group of youths to Leh. On the way to Kargil, we saw their car in front of us. Some locals were selling something to the youths in what looked like old fuel cans.
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| The memorial |
“It’s apricot,” Tanveer told me. “Buy it madam, it’s very good.”
I had wanted to taste the fresh apricot anyway. In cities like Kolkata, we only get the dry, packed ones. “How much is it?” I asked. It was Rs 120 per can. “And how much apricot is there in the can?” No one knew. The price is ‘per can’! You can’t buy any less.
“But what will I do with an entire can full of apricots?” I wailed. “Eat it slowly. It won’t go bad,” my ‘guides’ assured me. It actually did. For the next few days, I had apricots for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, and also as afternoon snack—and even managed to carry some all the way to Kolkata. There was 3–4 kg of the fruit in the can, at the least.
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| Kargil town |
We got delayed for some time on the way as the debris of a landslide was being cleared by backhoe loaders. I did not mind. Nothing can be better than getting held up on a road in Ladakh—or anywhere in the Himalayas for that matter!
The Drass River was still with us. A little before Kargil, to its north, the Drass loses itself in the Shingo River. The Suru comes up from south, joins the two and together they drain into the Indus further north. It’s the Suru that waters Kargil.
Kargil looked like an oasis in a desert. Surrounded by dry, soft-earth mountains, the quiet town was surrounded by green poplars. There aren’t too many houses in Kargil that are more than two storeys high. The only vehicles around were tourist cars.
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| Kargil town by the Suru River |
Though Ladakh is primarily inhabited by Buddhists, the population of Drass and Kargil is Muslim. The facial features of some, however, did not match those of the Kashmiris. They had more Tibetan features than the softer Kashmiri ones.
It was so very difficult to imagine that this sleepy hamlet in one extreme end of India could have been at the heart of one of the deadliest battles fought in these parts of the world merely 16 years ago. But human greed is something that spares no corner of the Earth.
As we drove out of Kargil, I could still see the words etched in red on a cream-coloured gate leading out of the Drass memorial: “When you go home, tell them of us, and say that for you tomorrow we gave our today.”
I have just tried to do my bit.
Read more of my posts on Kashmir and Ladakh:
1. Srinagar to Leh via NH1D (I): Sonamarg and Zoji La
2. Life on Dal Lake
3. All about Srinagar
4. Things to see in Srinagar I
5. Things to see in Srinagar II
6. The Mughal Gardens of Srinagar
7. The Paradise trek (Tarsar-Marsar trek)
8. Journey to Pangong Lake
9. Ladakh photos I
10. Ladakh photos II