Check-point

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.