In some time we are informed that the next convoy will leave in some time and lot of empty buses have arrived at night to take away the stranded passengers. We prepare our bikes and load the luggage and stand in the front for the convoy.
In a few minutes, there are three army trucks full of ammunition clad fierce looking overtired soldiers with their guns pointed outside in front of us. A few civil vehicles and then again a fully loaded truck of Army, this was to escort us safely through Srinagar....or not as we discover later!!!!
Riding slowly behind the army convoy we reach srinagar's border when we are stopped and vehicles seperated for jammu and for srinagar airport. This takes time and we finish our free lunch at a langar nearby in the meantime.
Post lunch, we are asked to follow the army trucks again and these will lead us through srinagar to jammu. The situation did seem extremly delicate with army present on both sides of the road. With the 'shoot at sight' words in mind it appeared even worse, good news was, the army was informed about the yatri movement and those roads which see yatri movement were guarded heavily but the sight of millions of soldiers with guns in their hands is scary.
We follow the convoy for some time and suddenly realize there is no army truck in front, shit!!! Where did they vanish!! Now, we didn't know which way to follow and we knew that only the highway To jammu is safe, but which is the highway, all roads look the same...other roads have strict orders. What followed was a mad rat race to cross srinagar, driving at no less that 80 and 100 we scurried through the streets and scared, tensed but sure thrilled, after 3 hours of riding came out of the 150 kms curfew affected area.....ohh man....what a relief it was to cross Jawahar tunnel, one that seperates kashmir and jammu.
We could not reach Jammu as we had planned due to heavy rains and landslides, we stayed at patnitop, 100 kms before Jammu.
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