Winter Wife

When we first got off the plan in Srinigar, Kashmir, we were a little apprehensive about what we might have gotten ourselves into. Almost immediately after purchasing the package deal to Kashmir in Dehli we read about how dodgy those deals can be. Never the less, we landed, filled out all the required tourist paperwork and found the man carrying a placard with our names on it. It has always been one of my secret dreams to de-board a plane with someone waiting for me with my name on a card. We hopped into his jeep, the nicest car we had seen in India yet, drove past an obscene number of men with guns (The conflict in Kashmir is almost entirely settled, yet the Indian army refuses to leave. The people here are not happy about it) and stopped on the side of the road. Promising to be right back, he hopped out of the car and left us there to watch the people around us.

It took us very little time to notice a trend in fashion. Kashmir's climate is a lot like Colorado, so right now it is cold. Very Cold. All of the men (we saw no women until much later) were wearing gigantic ponchos. Almost all of them had one arm out and about, doing whatever task they had taken to, and the other arm was no where to be seen. We looked at each to other, wondering, "is this a country of armless men?"

After meeting many of these men (from Rashid who tended to our houseboat, to Khursheed who promptly stole us from that houseboat into another, sparking a small war in the houseboat mafia) we figured out where all of their arms were. During the winter the men wear ferhans, a poncho made of wool, which is shockingly warm. My friend Mudasir has lent me his, and while it is way too big, it is the warmest thing I've ever worn. To make things even toastier, they carry around the Kandari, a woven basket with a clay pot inside, which they fill with lit coals. They walk around, carrying the Kandari under their ferhan, creating genius insulation. When we're lucky some of the boys we've met here will lend them to us, although mostly they don't share. They call their Kandari their "winter wife" because they rarely leave their sides, except when Leigh and I manage to steal them.

Kashmir has been a wonderful and strange adventure and I defiantly think I could stay here much longer, if there wasn't the rest of India to see. Either way, I could love to return, but maybe in the summer when it is warmer.