February 27, 2019 -
When Colleen woke me up this morning I was not happy. I had been enduring the local stray dogs all night playing at a canine version of ‘West Side Story’ so sleep had been fleeting. So many fights and doggy passion. There had to be at least 14,000 dogs out there forming a horrible church choir.
“I have found a way out of here”, she said looking at the glow of her cell phone. We were still in Jaisalmer and scheduled to be there one more day. We were scheduled to leave tomorrow evening to take a train that was going to take 16-20 hours to get to Delhi. Fodor’s Guide described it as grueling and we had First Class tickets. Neither one of us were looking forward to this leg of the trip. Furthermore, the tensions between Pakistan and India over Kashmir appeared to be heating up and Jaisalmer was uncomfortably close to the border.
“How, what?” I replied in my usual loving patient way (NOT)
“This place has an airport and I can get us a flight to Delhi on Spice Airways this morning, but we need to hurry.” She said ignoring me.
The flight would take one hour and the train takes 16-20 hours. What the hell happens on that train? So we decided to go for it.
I should take a few moments and try to explain the Kashmiri problem. I will likely get this wrong so bear with me. Kashmiri is a region in the far Northwest of India bordering Pakistan. The Kashmiri people have their own unique culture and identity and had been ruled for many years by a local Maharajah. The majority of the region is Muslim.
When partition happened in 1947, the British, in their infinite wisdom, drew a line through the country and said, “Hindu’s you are on this side of the gym and Muslims you are on the other side”. Then they left and went home for tea. What followed was the largest migration of humans in history to each other’s new “Borders” and spectacular sectarian violence left hundreds of thousands dead.
The Maharajah of Kashmiri hesitated to decide which side of the gym he wanted to go to. The indecision enraged partisans on both sides. Pashtuns , yes those same guys that generations later would become the Mujahedins and the Taliban, pored over the Kashmiri border and attacked. The local Maharajah appealed to India to help and they agreed only if he would agree to bring his Muslim majority country to India. He agreed.
The Indians were not able to completely defeat the Pashtuns and The United Nations
brokered a cease fire and set up the dividing line that exists today. The settlement was not a defining border and is still hotly disputed today. Furthermore India, as part of the settlement, agreed to hold a referendum with the Kashmiri people afterwards so they could decide “which side of the gym” they wanted to go to. After all these years, that referendum has still not been held. India and Pakistan have had several severe conflicts in the region.
As a result, today this border is one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world. India maintains a staggering 70,000 troops in the area and basically rules the Kashmiri by military occupation. Accusations of brutality are rampant on both sides.
And to make it more fun, the main river that provides the water supply to Pakistan first traverses through Indian held Kashmir.
A short time ago, a Pakistani supported bomber attacked Indian troops killing over 40. A short time prior to this incident, Indian military killed a popular Kashmiri separatist. So tensions were very high. And to make it a further mess, it’s an election year here and the Prime Minister Modi is an ardent nationalist so naturally he wants to show he is a strong leader.
At the time of this writing, India has attacked suspected separatists camps in Pakistan with jets. Pakistan has claimed to have shot down two jets has the pilots in custody, and has shut down it’s airspace to all travel including commercial. And that is the way we need to go home.
Good times. A fine mess.
So we had a flight on SpiceAir, a local regional carrier whose motto is, and I am not making this up, “Red Hot Spicy”. In the little terminal, there are posters for the airline showing a pretty stewardess saying, “Kindly wait in Line, I’ll make it worth your while”.
Again, that is a direct quote.
To find the small airport we hired a car. The driver was earnest and spoke some English. He told us, “You want take long way or short cut, be there quick, ten minutes”. We did not quite understand, so he rolled his eyes and said the exact same thing again, only slower like we had both been hit over the head with a bag of nickels.
We shrugged, “Shortcut”.
He seemed delighted with our choice and we raced off. We soon found ourselves on a rutted path bumping along in the desert. It felt like we were on the way to Pablo Escobar’s smuggling plane on a dirt runway.
He began to tell us about the problems of India and showed us a You Tube video of a politician he admired. We watched a little as we held on between bumps. We soon realized the man speaking was an ardent Muslim fundamentalist who has advocated violence in the past.
And we were sitting in a car, in the desert, with only cobras around with his devoted admirer.
We readily agreed he was a wonderful speaker and nodded enthusiastically to all our driver’s solutions for the problems.
Then he stopped the car suddenly and got out. We had no idea what was happening. He slowly walked around looking at the car, then got back in without explanation.
He looked into the rear view mirror and grinned , “It ok”. We were not reassured and grateful a few minutes later that we reached the airport. It was time for our ‘Red Hot Spicy’ flight.
To add to the spice, none of the metal detectors worked, so every single passenger was patted down twice.
Good times. We are in Delhi now in a nice hotel watching CNN.
*I am sure I messed up facts about the Kashmiri crisis - so to my Muslim and Hindu friends, I ask you to please forgive an ignorant Westerner.
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