The “Circular Road” is always fine, whether seen after rain, when, far below in the Ferozepore Nullah, the
“Swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,”
or when in the evening sunlight the whole broad Valley of Kashmir lies glowing at our feet, ringed afar by the ethereal mountains whose pale snows stand faint in the golden light, until beneath the yellowing sky the clouds turn rosy, and from their midst Haramok and Kolahoi raise their proud heads towards the earliest star.
The expedition to the top of Apharwat is, in my opinion, hardly worth making, but then I was not very lucky in the weather. Major Cardew, R.F.A., and I arranged to do the climb together, and duly started one excessively damp and foggy morning towards the middle of July.
Taking our ponies, we scrambled up a rough path through the forest to Killanmarg, a boulder-strewn slope, some half a mile wide, which lies between the upper edge of the forest and the final slopes of the mountain.
Sending our ponies home, we set about the ascent of the 3500 feet that remained between us and our goal. The whole hillside was a perfect wild garden. Columbines, potentillas—yellow, bronze, and crimson—primulas, anemones, gentian, arnica, and quantities of unknown blossoms gave us ample excuse for lingering panting in the rarefied air, as we struggled through brushwood first, and then over loose rocks and finally slopes of shelving snow, before we found ourselves on the crest of the mountain, shivering slightly in the raw, foggy air.
Our view was narrowed down to the bleak slopes of rock and snow that immediately surrounded us, for our hope that we should get above the cloud belt was not fulfilled, and beyond a dismal tarn, lying just below us, in whose black waters forlorn little bergs of rotten snow floated, and a very much circumscribed view of dull tops swathed in flying mist, we saw nothing.
Had the sky been clear, I am told that the view would have been magnificent, but I should think probably no better than that from Killanmarg, as it is a mistake to suppose that a high, or at least too high, elevation “lends enchantment.” As a rule the view is finer when seen half-way up a lofty mountain than that obtained from the summit.
We did not stay long upon the top of Apharwat discussing the best point of view, because Cardew sagaciously remarked that if it grew much thicker he wouldn’t be answerable for finding the way down, and as I have a holy horror of rambling about strange (and possibly precipitous) mountains in a fog, we set about retracing our own footsteps in the snow until we regained the ridge we had come up by.
A remarkably wet couple we were when we presented ourselves at our respective front doors, just in time for a “rub down” before lunch!