Wednesday, May 10.—Beguiled by legends of many bears, detailed to me with apparently heartfelt sincerity by Ahmed Bot, I have been pursuing these phantoms industriously.
On Monday we quitted our boat, and started upon a trip into the Lolab Valley. The views, as the path wound up the green and flower-spangled slope, were very beautiful, and, when we had ascended about 1500 feet and were about opposite to the supposed haunt of Saturday’s bear, we determined to camp and enjoy the scenery, not omitting an evening expedition in search of our shy friend.
Jane joining me, we had a most charming ramble down a narrow track to the bed of the stream which rushes down from the snow-covered ridge guarding the Lolab. Here we crossed into a splendid belt of gaunt silver firs, the first I have seen here; whitish yellow marsh-marigolds and a most vivid “smalt” blue forget-me-not with large flowers were abundant, also an oxalis very like our own wood-sorrel.
Emerging from the pines, we crossed a grassy slope covered with tall primulas (P. denticulata) of varying shades of mauve and lilac, and sat down for a bit among the flowers while the shikaris looked for game. (I need hardly remark that the noble but elusive beast had appeared on the scene shortly after I left on Saturday; a Gujar told the shikari, and the shikari told me, so it must be true.) When we had gathered as many flowers as we could carry, we strolled back to the camp to watch the sunset transmute the snowy crest of Haramok to a golden rose.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I left the camp at dawn, and went all over the same ground, but with no better success, only seeing a couple of bara singh, hornless now, and therefore comparatively uninteresting from a “shikar” point of view. After a delightful but bearless ramble I returned to breakfast, and then we struck camp, and completed the ascent of the pass over into the Lolab. Arrived at the top, we turned off the path to the right, and, climbing a short way, came out upon the lower part of the Nagmarg, a pretty, open clearing among the pines where the grass, dotted thickly with yellow colchicum, was only showing here and there through the melting snow. Choosing a snug and dry place on some sun-warmed rocks at the foot of a tree, we prepared to lunch and laze, and soon spread abroad the contents of the tiffin basket.
There is something, nay much, of charm in the utter freedom and solitude of Kashmir camp life. There is no beaten track to be followed diligently by the tourist, German, American, or British, guide-book in hand and guide at elbow. No empty sardine-tins, nor untidy scraps of paper, mar the clean and lonely margs or village camping-grounds.
The happy wanderer, selecting a grassy dell or convenient shady tree with a clear spring or dancing rivulet near by, invokes the tiffin coolie, and if a duly watchful eye has been kept upon that incorrigible sluggard, in short space the contents of the basket deck the sward. What have we here? Yes, of course, cold chicken—
“For beef is rare within these oxless isles.”
Bread! (how lucky we sent that coolie into Srinagar the other day). Butter, nicely stowed in its little white jar, cheese-cakes (one of the Sabz Ali’s masterpieces), and a few unconsidered trifles in the form of “jam pups” and a stick of chocolate.
Whisky is there, if required, but really the cold spring water is “delicate to drink” without spirituous accompaniment.