Srinagar

As the sun's last glances rested upon the tops of the mountains, our Tonga came gaily out from the zigzags which the eye could still trace far down the forest-clad slope, and halted at the little city of Muray, where the families of the English functionaries came to seek shade and refreshment.

Ordinarily one can go on a Tonga from Muray to Srinagar, but at the approach of the winter season, when all Europeans desert Kashmir, the Tonga service is suspended.

I undertook my journey precisely at the time when the summer life begins to wane, and the Englishmen whom I met upon the road returning to India were much astonished to see me, and made vain efforts to divine the purpose of my travel to Kashmir.

Abandoning the Tonga, I hired saddle horses, not without considerable difficulty, and evening had arrived when we started to descend from Muray, which is at an altitude of five thousand feet.

hardly however had i gone five hundred yards on it when i seriously regretted the horse i had forsaken so much fatigue had i to endure keeping my legs crossed and maintaining my equilibrium unfortunately it was already too late evening was falling when i approached the village of hori exhausted by fatigue racked by the incessant jolting my legs feeling as if invaded by millions of ants I had been completely incapable of enjoying the picturesque landscapes spread before us as we journeyed along the Jhelum, the banks of which are bordered on one side by steep rocks, and on the other by the heavily wooded slopes of the mountains.

In Hori I encountered a caravan of pilgrims returning from Mecca.

Thinking I was a physician, and learning my haste to reach Ladakh, they invited me to join them, which I promised I would at Srinagar.

I spent an ill night sitting up in my bed with a lighted torch in my hand without closing my eyes in constant fear of the stings and bites of the scorpions and centipedes which swarm in the bungalows.

Also, you have to realize that there was a bit of a distrust in terms of are they also going to sensationalize our land? You know, are they gonna fol- follow the tropes? So we had to build trust, which means we had to go again and again and again.

So my writers traveled with the team from, you know, when they were playing in Kolkata, in Goa, in Mumbai, uh, in Srinagar, in Kashmir, and we had to build that trust.

Interestingly, the coach of this team was David Robertson from Scotland.

And he, uh, funnily enough, was brought in by, you know, by, by...

Like, a couple of people promised him that Srinagar was the Scotland, uh, [laughs] you know? And he came in and said, "Wait a second, this place doesn't have half the things I imagined." [laughs] But it was, it was a bizarre journey for him as well.

So, um, yeah.

I mean, that, that's how it started, and I think they started believing us, they started having faith in us.

Which was a long way from Vizag on the east coast.

And to cut a long story short, he went there by train with his trunk, with his money in it, all strapped down, and when he got to Srinagar and got to his first overnight accommodation, which was a boat down at the harbor, opened his case, and all his money had gone.

Oh.

And he said he couldn't understand how that had happened.

Skillful.

Yeah.

So the next morning, he went into Srinagar and into the local branch, 'cause this was before Pakistan.

Yeah.