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| Hunder- near the confluence of Shyok and Nubra |
Hunder is one of the
prettiest places I have been to. Having
travelled for hours on some of the harshest roads in the country, dodging and
overtaking, countless other tourist vehicles and trucks hired by the army to
supply oil further north, one finds oneself in an extremely wide and
reassuringly green (especially after the rocky twists and icy turns of Khardung
La) valley. Hunder is where Nubra, flowing south-southeastwards from Siachen,
meets Shyok which flows towards the north-west into Gilgit-Baltistan. The valley is so wide that I could not tell
exactly where the confluence lay, when we visited the place in July 2012. The
sand-dunes, the giant Buddha statue and just the surrounding mountains are a
photography enthusiast’s (note that I am not using the word ‘photographer’)
paradise.
Having invested a significant portion of our memory
storage devices in Hunder, the next day, we left for Turtuk, a hundred miles
down the river (Shyok), quite close to the LOC. The drive along the river is
fun. The road is excellent and the traffic sparse. We stopped only to let the
occasional army truck pass and to store
the magnificence on display in our memory cards, lest our memory failed us a
few years down the line. The journey would have been etched on my brain as the
loveliest of my life had it not been for that incident.
We were nearly
half-way through, having just crossed THOISE, a military airstrip, when we were
stopped at a check-point manned by an Indian Army soldier. As our vehicle came
to a halt, the soldier carefully looked at all of us and asked our driver (who
hailed from Choglamasar near Leh), “Andar koi J&K se to nahin hai na?” (“Is
there anybody inside from J&K?”) Apparently, citizens of Jammu and Kashmir
(an integral part of the Republic of India!) were not allowed any further, in
their own state! (Imagine a BSF jawan at the Wagah Border, telling
tourists that only non-Punjabi Indians were allowed to go right up to the
border. It would be preposterous.) Our driver dutifully replied in the negative
and we were let through. Quite clearly,
the word “J&K” was not used by the soldier to refer to the state of Jammu
and Kashmir. Our driver, himself a citizen of Jammu and Kashmir was let through
without any trouble. It left no doubt in
my mind that the “J&K wallahs” wanted by the soldier were people from the
Kashmir valley.
I do not know if it is the government’s official
policy not to let Kahmiris visit Turtuk or it was a single person taking
matters into his own hands, but the incident certainly doesn’t bode well for
India’s claim that Kashmir is an integral part of India. 