Thursday, the 4th of June, 2009
11:30 pm
Dear Diary,
Today we went to a hill station called Gulmarg, just outside Srinagar. We have rented a hut to stay for the night with Areeba’s maternal cousins (Aunt Asfia’s sister’s children), Hannah (my age), Heba (6), and Zaid (5). I probably should have told you, Areeba has an uncounted number of cousins and Aunts and Uncles. We met up with another Uncle and his son Amaan (that makes him a cousin too. He is 15 years old) and Amaan’s friend, Ashka Bhaiya. We took a cable car ride up to a small plateau and from there Areeba, Amaan, Ashka Bhaiya, Hannah and I went trekking up to a glacier on a nearby mountain. Amaan and Ashka Bhaiya had to wait for me all the time because I am such a pathetic climber and partly because I stopped and took a million pictures and collected every variety of flowers that could be found on the mountain. Sadly, they all fell out somehow.
When we finally reached our base camp, everybody else was waiting for us at a restaurant. They had ordered pakoras and Kashmiri fries and chilled Coke™. I mostly stuck to the Coke™. I had plopped down on a chair and could eat nothing else because I was so tired. We caught the cable car just in time to reach the place from where we had taken our first cable car trip. I still took a lot of photographs. The battery died. I wept for it…
In the evening we made a bonfire outside our little hut. (It is illegal, but who cares? Apart from the police, that is… do not tell them!). We huddled around it and told lame jokes that still make lame people laugh. Have you heard the one about Rabri Devi and Yamraj…?
