As the sky began to lighten we began to see canoes and skiffs joining us in the bay area. There were only a few shirakers, carrying tourists like us. All of the other boats were filled with men, with boats filled with vegetables – garlic, sag (spinach or some other leafy green vegetable), carrots, radishes, squash, turnips.
Here's a video that tries to capture some of the feeling that morning: hundreds of boats, passing each other in the early morning light, people calling out (in Kashmiri) their wares:
What was really amazing to Dave--the environmental anthropologist in the group--was how given the limited arable land, the local people had grown these vegetables in aqueous gardens they had built up by combining algae/sea-weed from the lake with what must have been in places naturally marshy land. Here's a video showing these floating gardens:
And a few more photos of the not-so-floating gardens (remember they're not all floating or all not floating; land, space, and place here are on a continuum...oh here we go with academic navel gazing)
The boatsmen were bargaining with a couple of buyers regarding how much they were to be paid for their wares. Most of the boats had a scale with weights, in which to measure the vegetables.
Nizar did a little interpretation for us. At one time, we were approached by a boatsman selling chocolate candy stored in a chest. When he opened it up, he had fudge, truffles, and other chocolate items. Since Jo says that finding real chocolate in India means it is imported, this was very unusual. We did not buy any, but were approached by a number of vendors in their boats:
Such as flower boats...
vegetable sellers....
Dave was amazed at how many people were also wearing "his" Kasmiri hat...
... and a spice man.
We called him back and he proceeded to show us his wares. I did buy some saffron (after receiving an in-depth lesson re how the six pistils (3 yellow/3 red) were harvested by hand, sorted, and used for different purposes. The red pistils are used to make the red dye used for bindis, the red marks worn by Indian women in the middle of their foreheads to indicate that they are married. I also bought a mixture of spices that go into Kashmiri tea –we will try it and see if it reproduces the lovely flavor – cardamom, cinnamon, honey, saffron, and a few leaves of tea. It was great to do this, and I loved meeting the man who grew these crocuses for the purpose of harvesting the pistils for making the saffron.
We watched the entire spectacle for some time, and then began the return to our houseboat at about 6 am. The sun was just coming up over the mountains; the sunrise was beautiful.
Off we went for our last shikara ride, and bid a fond farewell to Nazir Ahmad Sheikh who had made our trip so special.
Getting onto the plane was quite an experience. This is the state with the largest potential for conflict since the area is hotly contested by both India and Pakistan, and the people do not want to belong to either but be independent. After another harrowing ride to the airport, the car was stopped. We all had to get out of the car, get our bags, and have everything xrayed before we could continue. Then we were stuck in some alternate merge between three lanes of traffic – and we sat and sat. Then onto the airport proper. The bottom line is that Jo and I were frisked (behind special curtained areas reserved for women) five times, our carry-on luggage was xrayed five times, and our baggage went through a security check several times. Finally onto the plane and then back to Delhi.
We now noticed some things about Delhi traffic that we had not noticed before because we had had no experience with driving in India. There were divided roads and people did not drive the wrong-way (for the most part) down a street. There were traffic lights and the drivers actually stopped on red, and went on green. Amazing. Much less cutting in and out (less is the operative word). The roads were still crowded with autorickshaws and motorcycles.
We got back to the apartment and got settled in, and then David and Jim turned around and went back to the airport to get Jonathan. Quite exciting when he arrived! Great for us all to be together although it would have been much better if Gita could have been with us too.
To bed for all, although Jonathan had a hard time shifting his bedtime around.
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