I have now typed twenty thousand words of my father's wartime tale of an adventure in northern Kashmir. His party has trekked beyond Lidderwat along stony tracks in the shadow of lofty mountains. They reach a high, treeless valley occupied only by Gujar shepherds and their families. This is his account.
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After
crossing the stream in the manner described, we found a cluster of Gujar huts.
When I write “found” I am choosing my words carefully for it would have been
quite easy to pass within close proximity of those huts and not notice them.
Each consisted of a thick roof of logs jutting out from the wall of the valley.
This was supported by uprights also made from logs of great girth and strength.
The roof logs were reinforced with grass, earth and dung so that the thickness
of the roof was two or three times bigger. The spaces between the upright logs
were interwoven with thick grasses and all apertures were sealed with soil and
dung. The huts were built in this manner so that the snow which must fall onto
the roof during winter or which might avalanche would not cause the hut to
collapse. The resultant disaster to Gujar inhabitants was therefore avoided. Looking at these huts
one could visualise the terrific weight of snow which they would be capable of
supporting. The construction of the
walls was such that they would be draught-proof how ever much the demon winds
of the valley howled around.
We entered one of these huts but the
darkness, the stench and the filth caused us to give the interior only a
cursory inspection. The floor was of hard stamped earth – thereby matching the
ceiling and the walls. Wherever one walked, the supporting pillars for the roof
impeded one’s movement. The nether wall of the hut was simply the sloping side
of the valley and against this was piled a large quantity of drying wood ready
for use during the ensuing winter. In the centre of the hut was an open circular
hearth constructed from blackened stones. There was no outlet for the smoke and
because of this there was a lingering smell of old pinewood smoke commingled with various other olfactory ingredients that together created a most powerful
odour. The stink of human bodies unwashed for many months, perhaps years, the
decaying flesh that clung to the sheepskins hanging over a beam, the droppings
of sheep and hens that evidently lived in the hut, the odour of spilt milk long
since soured, scraps of food rotting on the floor – all these combined to make
the stale air in the hut so offensive to our nostrils that
we quickly curtailed our curiosity.
The occupants of the hut seemed to be three
women , about ten men and an indeterminate
number of children. All were very dirty almost beyond belief. The women wore
voluminous blue smocks that covered them from the neck to the ankle. The smock
was stained and dirty with the accumulation of years of spillages. Their faces
were thin, hatchety and unlovely and at the time I thought of them as much like
the reincarnation of my childhood idea of witches. Underneath a dirty cloth
coal-scuttle hat, reminiscent of those worn
in England during the Cromwellian period, was a tangled mass of thin, tightly-plaited
hair. This hair was in such profusion that it did not take too long to notice
that the women’s natural hair was interwoven with strands of horsehair and it
was obvious that once plaited the hair was never unwound. Hanging from their
ears were huge earrings of both silver and wood, which pulled their lobes down
towards their shoulders. The men were tall in stature and they also wore smocks
but of a drab stone colour. Over their shoulders they draped a loosely rolled
blanket or shawl. Skull caps fitted over their closely tonsured skulls so that
they had a rather monkish appearance. Their faces were a walnut brown,
weathered colour with the texture of leather and they were all bearded. Apart
from their unwashed state they were quite an attractive and fine set of
fellows. The children would be difficult to describe for they were in a motley
array of clothes or stark naked. They were thin-faced, unwashed but laughing, vigorous
and with a bright, intelligent light shining in their eyes.