• Home
• /
• Its My Life

To school in high Tangdhar

In the mountain villages of north-western Kashmir, schools are happily busy between maize fields and walnut trees. Reconstruction after the calamitous 2005 earthquake has been slow in these remote valleys, but helping hands have put communities back on their feet

Two kilometres into the main stretch of highway that runs from Srinagar to Baramulla, you see the fields of rice paddy. They give the Valley of Kashmir a richly-textured yellow glow that contrasts with the apple orchards, the sturdy chinars with their heavy canopies, the tall poplars and the groves of willow. It may be the altitude, perhaps it is the northern latitude or even the water of the Valley — fed by mountain springs—but the sparkling yellow tint of the rice tillers as they near harvest time is unlike the colour of ripening paddy anywhere else.

Riyaz, who had met 
me at Srinagar airport and was competently driving me towards Baramulla, smiled at my appreciation of the rice fields and asked, yet again: “Do you not find the Valley beautiful?” Of course Riyaz, how can one not?

Baramulla lay some 60 kilometres to the north-west, and that was to be our first stop. I was in Jammu and Kashmir to visit the community rehabilitation work that has been done, with admirable perseverance and commitment, by the Welthungerhilfe and the Centre for Environment Education Himalaya, an Indo-German non-governmental partnership that has worked tirelessly in this region ever since the 2005 earthquake.

There, in Baramulla, 
we would stop at their state field office, drink a cup 
of tea, collect two team members and proceed into the mountains. Not the high Himalaya, for those are to the north and east, but even along its flanks and to the north-west, the Valley of Kashmir is bounded by some of the most rugged mountain ranges in Asia. Between these ranges lie valleys — at around 5,000 to 7,000 feet — many of which have been continuously inhabited for centuries.

Every now and then we passed a local bus, its windows and grille-work festooned with the most extraordinary collection of lights, reflectors, tassels and decorations. They take their vehicular cosmetics seriously in these parts, and during the winter months, when snowdrifts routinely block the roads, the sight of a cheery bus must do wonders for the villagers’ morale. “At times during winter, we’ve driven in the mountains on roads cleared of 20 feet of snow! There’s a lot of snow here, but not at this time, don’t worry,” Riyaz reassured me. It’s a skill that takes much patient learning and a good deal of confidence in both chassis and the internal combustion engine, to drive in a Himalayan winter.

And yet, despite Riyaz’s road tales, they have 
been seeing the impacts of climate change here, 
in far north-western Kashmir. The earliest impacts of climate change are invariably experienced in mountain areas. The melting of snow and glaciers have a spiralling impact on water, food and livelihood security. This is so important here, in this land of the chinar and pastoral communities, for the enormous run-off from the Himalayan watershed supports millions downstream, providing for their drinking water, irrigation and agriculture.

And presently we entered the town of Baramulla, whose neighbourhoods ornament both banks of the Jhelum. Low hills surround the town and the poplars seem even taller in this part of the Valley than near Srinagar. This is an old settlement, and from here the roads branch off towards Sopore (Kashmir’s ‘apple town’), Uri and Kupwara. Refreshed by a pair of small, sweet apples and a cup of tea, our party now doubled, we climbed back into the jeep for the next leg — into the mountains.

Already, the lie of 
the land was changing. No longer so numerous were the mighty chinars and stately poplars. Here and there I could discern still village houses built of deodar-wood — the framework of the houses is altogether of wood, 
only between the double plank-walls the spaces are filled in with stones, sometimes laid loose and sometimes cemented (in eras gone by, they used mud) and such old houses, where they do exist, have low gabled roofs with the corrugated sheets so typical of Indian hill-stations having long since replaced the original shingle.

My companion for the journey upwards and further west was Abdhesh Gangwar, an ethno-botanist whose extensive knowledge of Himalayan biospheres and their peoples is of excellent service to the Centre for Environment Education (CEE). “We’re seeing the effects of climate change quite clearly here,” he explained to me, as the jeep trundled past laden tongas, labouring lorries and more phlegmatic goatherds. “Water, farm livelihoods, education, health — we need to keep all these factors in mind when working in these parts.” The Welthungerhilfe-CEE Himalaya partnership has made good its promise to rebuild schools, so essential in the upper reaches of districts that are snowbound four months of the year. “How did they manage before the structures were rebuilt?” I asked. “Outdoor school,” was the reply. “But in winter?” “With no school-houses, there were just no classes.”

At Kupwara, a town dominated by a sprawling and noisy bus-stand and a single broad avenue therefrom lined with 
small traders, we halted 
for an early meal. My 
companions recommended a dish of rishtey and roti. These resemble kebabs, but are finer, the meat being carefully minced to a fineness rivalling that found in sausages. The rishtey was splendid and soon we were on our way again.

The ranges of the Pir Panjal, which form the southern boundary of the wide Valley of Kashmir, were now dim in the evening haze. To the north and in the direction of our travel, lay the west-to-east spine of the Great Himalayan Range and although their monumental peaks were still many tens of kilometres distant, the road disappeared up past the clefts and gullies of their lesser bulwarks. We had 
till now passed through a few army traffic control posts, for north-western Kashmir is a militarily sensitive zone. From here on, as we ascended, the checkpoints were more stringent, the questioning polite but probing.

Our destination, Riyaz 
informed me, was the 
tehsil of Karnah and to reach it this old highway to Muzaffarabad was the best route. That fine city now lies beyond the ‘line of control’ in Kashmir, monitored by India and Pakistan. My companions then debated at some length the relative merits of the famed kebabs of Muzaffarabad (all based on second-hand testimonials) and the superior rishtey we had just consumed.

We came to the top 
of Sadhna Pass, also known as Nastachun. In another era, we would have here been entering the domain of the Bomba Rajas, who had long ruled Karnah. 
At 3,500 metres in the 
Himalayan evening, the stars glittered with a freshness and clarity utterly 
bewitching to plainspeople, and Aijaz led us 
to take a small celebratory drink — in our cupped hands — of cold, mineral-rich water from a chashma (spring) that emerges 
from the top of the pass. Now we had entered Karnah, and cautiously descended the switchbacks and negotiated the gradient down to Tangdhar, the name for both the little settlement and the stream that runs through this sublime valley.

Early the next morning I could look out from our humble lodgings at the rural mountainscape. The high Kashmiri village is rich in natural beauties, the patches of paddy and maize look like a tessellated pattern, with colours running from russet green to deep bronze. Below us, a clanking and scraping indicated that rough wooden shutters that protect modest little shops were being pulled open, ready to begin the day’s trade.

A clattering from a nearby roof signalled that walnuts by the dozen were being shaken off the tree, and sure enough in the yard below, a gaggle of children supervised by a young woman scrambled after the green-encased nuts and stuffed them into sacks for the long journey into the plains.

Much further away, I could see slow moving knots of girls and boys, their white uniforms standing out against the natural colours of the Tangdhar valley. They were going to their classes, the best sign possible that the schools I had travelled so far to visit were serving these mountain communities well.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com

Photos and text By Rahul Goswami