DESTINATIONS: KASHMIR (1957): Banihal- the gateway

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In the summer of 1957 my father suddenly decided to take a trip to Kashmir. My (late) second brother was posted there and, more importantly, he had s spacious house. My mother was very excited and naturally so. She had not stirred out of Gwalior since father relocated there in 1935. For all of 22 years, she stayed cooped up in that small town.

My mother was duly warned by her Kashmiri friends about the road to Kashmir that was considered to be very treacherous. Landslides were common that sometimes took the buses down the precipitous slopes resulting in casualties. If it happened to rain, it would become even worse in the slushy and slippery roads. We took note of all the well meaning information and advice. We were, however, quite confident that we would be safe as the brother in Kashmir and my sister had had a trip earlier in a group of five in a new Studebaker in 1949 - only two years after the road became the sole link of the country with Jammu & Kashmir.

It was the first week of June when we caught a train for Delhi. Kashmir Mail, the only train then for Kashmir, used to leave from Delhi Junction for Pathankot, then the railhead for Kashmir. The tracks had not till then been extended to either Jammu Tawi or Udhampur. It was therefore a long bus ride of about 300 miles from Pathankot to Srinagar.

After an overnight journey to Pathankot we took a bus around mid morning for Srinagar. At Jammu, however, we were told that the road was blocked owing to a landslide near a place that was known as Khooni Nala (deadly stream). There was no alternative but to camp at Jammu in an accommodation provided by the Jammu & Kashmir Tourism. Numerous buses seemed to have got stuck and hundreds of tourists and locals stranded - some for two or three days. Means of communications being what they were, not an inkling was given to us about the road-block at Pathankot. Mercifully after a day's halt we were able to recommence our journey as the block had been cleared. The bus could start only around midday necessitating, as it appeared, another halt on the way.

That halt happened to be at Banihal village, earlier known as “Vishalta”, – the gateway to the Valley of Kashmir which was on the other side of Peer Panjals. Thankfully we had crossed all the dangerous and risky patches of Khooni Nala, Ramban, Ramsu, etc during the daylight hours driving through innumerable awe-inspiring hairpin bends, going across small fragile-looking bridges and culverts from one mountain to another. Banihal was then a village and as we reached late in the evening we could manage only a room offered by a villager with that typical rustic aroma about it. It was capacious enough to accommodate all of us and good enough to spend a night in. But, even at that dark and forbidding hour we could hear heavy vehicles - those that were much ahead of us - labouring up the mountain-side on their way to Srinagar.

The morning was bright and sunny revealing an incredibly beautiful sight. Banihal and its surroundings were green and sitting at the foot of the Peer Panjals, the mountain seemed to loom over it. But, at the same time, its situation offered an incredibly beautiful sight with bright colours of green of the land, the whites of the mountain tops and the gorgeous lapis lazuli of the early morning skies clashing with each other. Today Banihal is a town of a few thousand and last year a railway train pulled into its spanking new station from Qazigund in Kashmir through one of the longest mountain tunnels bored through the Peer Panjals.

The bus was ready to leave and we all climbed into it. Soon the grinding climb commenced up the Pir Panjaal. We could occasionally see the Banihal Tunnel high up, close to the top of the range more than 9000 ft. above the sea level. As we kept climbing up we came across East Germans (East Germany was a separate country then, under the sphere of influence of now-defunct Soviet Union)working on a two-way tunnel later to be named as Jawahar Tunnel that is even now in use and is at a height of around 7000 ft.

We laboured up the mountain with the bus straining and groaning in going up the steep slope over the rough, generally unmetalled road. Obviously, a heavy road-roller couldn’t have been taken up the slopes with numerous hairpin bends. Every bend brought us closer to the Banihal Tunnel that also seemed to gain in dimensions. And, then we were inside the tunnel of around the length of a couple of hundred metres - a remarkable feat of engineering at that elevation in those early years. Not used much before the partition, travellers used a more convenient road traversing what is now Pak-occupied Kashmir entering the Valley through Uri and then running along the banks of Jhelum. This road was then known as Banihal Cart Road and after independence became the only link of Kashmir with the country. After commissioning of the Jawahar Tunnel the Banihal Tunnel was reportedly closed for motor vehicles

As we came out of the dark tunnel, a beautiful day greeted us with bright sun falling over the green Kashmir Valley sprawling in front of us with splashes of white snow on the mountain-sides and what looked incredible, at levels below ours. As the bus started rolling down the slope its windows grazed against the mountain-sides and some of the accumulated snow fell into our laps. The progress downhill was pretty fast and soon we were down by around 4000 ft and were at more or less the same elevation as that of the Valley.

Soon the bus came to a halt at what seemed like a smallish town and an overwhelming aroma of frying eggs floated down to us. It was Qazigund, the first town in the Valley, known for its delicious parathas and omlettes and virtually every bus going up or down would stop by for them. We too did so. After a most satisfying breakfast we again got into the bus and were driven through some fascinating country to be in Srinagar in another couple of hours.

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Photo of Jawahar tunnel from the Internet

Destinations: BANIHAL

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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.  

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