SIX DAYS IN SRINAGAR or HOW I LOST TWENTY POUNDS PISSING OUT MY ASS

Within 24 hours of arrival a terrific flu seized my body and confined me to bed in a cold, dark hotel room. Above the mattress I was hallucinating, looking down at a shaking wrack swinging wildly from the chills to burning fever. And from somewhere inside my thighs demons were breaking my bones into agonizing little pieces. (See Man Flu).

Do you starve a cold or a fever? Couldn’t remember, didn’t matter. My hunger was stopped dead in its tracks facing off against unfamiliar foods, bugs, human hair, and congealy blobs of mystery at the bottom of soup bowls. A pizza sauce made of sweet ketchup ruined my exploration of “known” foods. Ignorance of Indian cuisine and my fragile state curbed exploration of the unknown. So, butter cookies and bottled water, my lifeline, kept me a step ahead of starvation.

Four full days of television, fever, antibiotics. I was lucky to have explored town well that first day in Srinagar. After that, I was on self-imposed house arrest, except for a daily trip to the airlines office tracking lost luggage.

The most immediate and lasting impression of Srinagar is the overwhelming presence of troops from the JKP and CDIF that are placed every 20 yards on all the main roads in the city. Estimates are that 700,000 troops are stationed in the region of Kashmir. Concertina wire and barbed wire gun nests are regular features of the sidewalk scene, along with the cobblers, blanket salesmen, and cart-wallahs.

Streets feature calf-deep trenches of open sewage and choking clots of air-borne auto emissions. Sheep and goats graze the polo ground in town, and leave their raisiny droppings on the sidewalks. Traffic horns fill the air by day, barking dogs shatter the night.
Photo credit: MHIP