The honking of the vehicles woke us up. The sun was not
yet out, it was dark all around, but the vehicles were moving. Wiping the sleep
from our eyes, we drove on towards Zoji La and the checkpost, the last one on
the road. Soon enough we came down from the mountains into the Sonamarg valley.
The drive continued to be spectacular, but what was immediately apparent after
hitting the valley was the sheer number of security personnel on the road.
Every few yards there were armed soldiers, reminding everyone of the tense
situation that persists in the region.
We bypassed Srinagar and sat down for brunch just before
the Jawahar tunnel, at Qazi Gund. Soon, we would be in Jammu and by nightfall
expected to be in Delhi. Far cry as it turned out. After crossing the tunnel we
hit the most horribly humungous traffic jam ever. The next 15 kilometres took
us almost ten hours. And when we had been through it, we could not fathom the
reason for the jam. It just was. By nightfall I had expected to be close to
Delhi, and here we were not even close to Jammu. The last few hours had been
tiring, and we decided to hunker in for the night. We found a Guest House near
Batote, short of Patnitop, and got ourselves a couple of rooms and promptly
went to sleep.
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