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| The first train emerging from the tunnel at Banihal |
Banihal was in the news recently.
Northern Railway commissioned a tunnel connecting Qazigund in Kashmir Valley with
Banihal in Jammu Region boring through the mighty Pir Panjal Range of the
Himalayas. Termed as Asia’s second longest tunnel it is a little more than 11
kilometres long at an average elevation of 5770 ft. Qazigund is already
connected with Barammulla in North Kashmir via Srinagar. It is part of the
ambitious and somewhat formidable railway project that will connect Kashmir to
the rest of India over a series of mountain ranges by rail. This is the third
tunnel that has pierced the Pir Panjals.
This is a very vital road as it
is the only one that links Kashmir with the country. Before partition the
approach to the Valley was via Muree, Muzaffarabad, now Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir. This road was of lesser importance, being known as the Banihal Cart
Road (BC Road). They say even tongas
(horse-drawn carriages) from Jammu occasionally would audaciously use it and
cross into the Valley through the Banihal Pass at around 11,000 ft. Now it is
the lifeline for the Valley; the old Mogul Road via Poonch and Shopian is yet
to be commissioned. The road via Rohtang Pass does connect the country with
Kashmir but via Ladakh requiring a difficult detour.
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| The train |
The news reports called Banihal a
town. May be it is so today. When I saw it first in 1957 it was no more than a
mere village. My parents and we siblings were on our way to Kashmir that summer
to visit a brother who was posted at Srinagar. The bus, having been delayed due
to landslides on the way, had to stop at Banihal village for the night. Depending
on the time of the day the buses would normally go across the Pir Panjal Range
to stop at Qasigund which was the first town in Kashmir Valley. Perhaps our bus
driver did not consider it safe to climb a few more thousand feet at night over
winding rough and bumpy roads to cross over to the Valley through the Jawahar
Tunnel that was at an elevation of around 9000 ft.
As it happens in villages, there
was scarcity of accommodation for so many people. With great difficulty we
could find two rooms that had their walls plastered with clay and cow dung. And
they smelt of hay and hookah smoke. With no available alternative we had to put
up in them. Right through the night we could hear a few enterprising truck
drivers negotiating the treacherous road, pushing their vehicles hard up the
mountain over the dangerous mountainous roads.
We got the measure of the height
we had to climb only in the morning when we looked up and saw as a tiny spec
the mouth of the tunnel way up the mountain, almost touching the turquoise blue
morning sky. As we recommenced our journey we came across another tunnel being
bored through the Pir Panjal a few kilometres ahead of Banihal at a higher
elevation. Those days the country was in its socialistic phase and, therefore,
the East Germans (who had a communist regime) had been engaged for the work.
They were working on two tunnels for up and down traffic in order to avoid jams
that used to occur for years at the Jawahar Tunnel during the tourist season. A
decade later I had the occasion to drive through this tunnel on my way down
from Srinagar.
The Jawahar Tunnel took some time
in arriving. The climb appeared to be steeper and the wretched road, at places
was too narrow, made it more difficult. Looking out of the windows with the
sight of drops of thousands of feet in case of a mishap was scary. Down below
the villages looked far too miniaturised – one of them must have been Banihal.
After an agonisingly slow climb we entered the little-more-than 2 km long
tunnel that took us through the Pir Panjals – avoiding the other road that led
to Banihal Pass, hardly used for motorised vehicles then, still higher, at
around 11,000 ft. As we emerged from the tunnel we got a fabulous and an
unforgettable view of the Valley, green and verdant sprawled a few thousand
feet down below in front of us. The visibility was so good that one could see
for miles with snow-covered mountains on both sides. As the sides of our bus
grazed the mountainside we got the scraped off lumps of snow right inside.
Another hour and we were in
Qazigund, elated at having arrived in Kashmir but tired and hungry. Its wayside
joints are known for their parathas and
omelettes, the aroma of which seemingly permeated the place. We too had our
fill of them fortifying ourselves before commencing our onward journey to
Srinagar another couple of hours away.
The photographs are from the Internet
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