Symphony of a Fly-ball through Kashmir

by Asma Tiwana (Pakistan)

A leap into the unknown Pakistan

I was panting to a degree that my heart seemed like it was at the brink of coming out of my chest, hence I decided to stop and take sip of water I filled from a gushing river. My friends claimed it had deer piss in it, while chuckling over their own lousy joke. As I stopped, I realized that I had been trekking for three straight hours. It was in the heart of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, at a place called Taobatt. It lies in the North of my native country, Pakistan. The trick to not getting tired too early during a trek is to keep a midrange pace rather a quick one to maintain a certain momentum and when your throat gets too dry, try sipping on small quantities of water rather drinking a gallon of it in one sitting. On the contrary if you do so you'll taste bile in your throat as you resume the trek. As we resumed trek, through this 'not so steep' part of the mountain, we reached a hut where we were to have supper. This local lady cooked us beans with curry on woodfire which was to be eaten with corn tortillas and I should give credence to the fact that it felt like devouring ambrosia. You scooped up the beans drowning in curry with those crackling tortillas, cooked in butter, while literally being surrounded by those sky-scraping pine and nettle trees and the birds begging you not leave. I am from Lahore which lies about 700km due south of Taobatt. We travelled 18 hours (including the "taking a dump" stops) through bus to Kel. From Kel we took a jeep ride, through these narrow roads edging the mountain, towards Taobatt. Once we were off the jeep our organs were clearly misplaced as I could feel my kidney right between my heart and lung. We were to cross a bridge over this river that was to lead us to the guest house containing toilet papers and warm water which felt like a luxury after a dozen filth ridden sewers which were labelled as toilets. The bridge we were to cross looked quite similar to the one which broke according to some news channels in the prior week. Hence a friend of mine was all shaky over the dread. As we were in the middle of the bridge, the soldier who escorted us to the bridge exclaimed, "Mam teen teen kar k jaiye ga, pehlay bhi bridge toot gaya tha". My counterpart broke down sobbing since what the soldier meant to say was that, three people were to cross the bridge at a time otherwise the bridge might shatter. All in all it was a toilsome task for our constituent to cross that bridge. After a two days stay at Taobatt we returned back to Kel, from where we were to trek towards Arang Kel, which was supposed to be a two hour trek, but since it was much steeper and it started raining it took us about three and a half hours. As we reached the top after a rather thrilling hike, to my surprise, the clouds went through me. The idiosyncrasy of that moment goes beyond anything even as good as Tolstoy's elucidation. It was sunset by the time the rest of my 'herd' reached and I realized that at that altitude you can only watch the sunlight getting sharp and slowly the light vanishing behind the clouds. You can't exactly see the periphery of the sun dipping the horizon as we usually see. I was so fascinated that I decided to watch the sunrise as well even though I got two hours of sleep the following night. So I sneaked out at 5 in the morning from our cabin and went for a walk through cherry treas. When the sun rose the maroon color of the cherries turned dark red as the sun reflected onto them. I ate some and carried a few back so I could wake the rest of my lot, who were snoring like demented seals, by spitting some fresh cherry seeds on them. Now what could be a better way to wake someone up?