`JO ayega Nadaun, kon jaeyga Nadaun?` T his 19th-century aphorism described the allure of the hill station of Nadaun, now in India`s Himachal Pradesh. In 1947, India got the Punjab Hill states. Pakistan received the equally irresistible scenery of Gilgit-Baltistan.

Any disappointment at leaving Hunza is compensated by a cloudless view of Rakaposhi on the way to Shigar Fort. The spectacular scenery mocks modernity.

The Shigar Fort hotel is more intimate than others in the Serena group. The common amenities an open-air restaurant with vines yet to sprout, the secluded garden with apple blossoms, and the babbling stream remain unchanged, despite the tourist traffic that uses it as a stopover between Skardu and Khaplu.

One night in Shigr is a necessity; two is self-indulgence. The attraction of Khaplu (another fort sensitively reconstructed) is irresistible. In its day, the ruler`s 150-yearold hideaway must have inspired awe in everyone (friend or foe) approaching it.

Low gateways lead to a tiered tower, crowned with a semicircular wooden balcony. It commands admiration.

The antique rooms have been refurbished and maintained with fierce diligence. To suggest adding a few shelves to a cupboard is, to the staff, akin to heresy.

The custodians of an old mosque in Khaplu have no such inhibitions. The façade, with its roof supported by soaring freshly seasoned beams, is new. So is the cavernous interior, except for six original pillars.

Someone suggested a trip to Crystal Lake in Saling. Avoid such misleading distractions. The lake is a man-made reservoir which feeds the nearby trout farm.

The village of Machlu has more scenic vistas per square inch than the Vatican has churches. The greenery of tended terraced fields, the spiked ridge of mountain tops, the descent into Hushe valley, and the Mashabrum viewpoint are enough to overload any scrapbook.

Most people wait until late spring to enjoy the apple and walnut blossoms. At higher altitudes, nature rewards early birds. A queue of inquisitive goats in search of pasture completes an idyllic composition.

The village huts are assembled from boulders, with narrow, low entrances and a roofless amenity outhouse.

Our next destination was Partuk, a military outpost 40 kilometres from Khaplu.

The road leads to Leh in Indian-held territory. That was as close as one could get to the frontier. This seemed hardly the right time though to test fraying Indo-Pak nerves.

The tradition in the mountains is to assist anyone who needs a lift. We picked up six young labourers who had left their site to have a quick lunch at a local madressah. Ithonours M. al Marouf Badua, a modern majzoub, or hermit, who died in July 1973.

Returning to Khaplu gave one the chance (missed on a previous visit) of seeing the ancient Chaqchan mosque. Said to date from 1370, it marks the period of conversion of the local residents from Tibetan Buddhism to Islam. The mosque spiritually and architecturally shares an affinity with the shrine of Sheikh Hamdan in Srinagar.

A final detour took one to the waterfall at Manthokha. It is not a spectacular sight by alpine standards, but honeymooners and weekenders (it was a Sunday), worked their selfies overtime. On the way back to Khaplu, lines of women washed their clothes in the drying Indus. The potential for tourism of the northern areas is enormous. In Nadaun, for example, the local government is spending IRs 300 crores to attract visitors. In our northern areas, such promotion is left to the initiative of private entrepreneurs.

The PIA flight over the GB mountains and then the Punjab plains thrust one back into an oven of urban congestion and an on-going political inferno.

I visited Pahalgam some years ago. Even then, the presence of Indian troops was ubiquitous, an outpost every half a kilometre. Onewonders, therefore, why the stringent security there, rather like at Mumbai in 2008, could be as porous as a string shopping bag.

It makes a mockery of the trillions of Indian rupees spent on leaving the disputed territory so penetrable and insecure.

PM Modi`s policy, rather like President Trump`s, is to antagonise his neighbours. He has abjured the Gujral and Vajpayee doctrines of a `friendly neighbourhood`. Now, he wants to scrap unilaterally the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. One should remember its concluding clause: `The provisions of this Treaty... shall continue in force until terminated by a duly ratified treaty concluded for that purpose between the two Governments.

Can Modi`s unilateral abrogation lead to a war between two nuclear powers, without polluting the disputed rivers? It might be simpler to subdue an enemy with a targeted power outage, like the one that disabled the entire Iberian Peninsula (Spain plus Portugal).

Perhaps we should revert to Trojan traditions and field a single champion to combat at the Wagah-Attari border? • The wnter is an author.

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