The Gurez Valley is a fertile, fifty-mile cleft carved through the Himalayas by the mighty Kishenganga River. It sits directly below the high-altitude Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani sectors of Kashmir and is one of the most tensely guarded frontiers in the world. Thanks to its topography, Gurez, which is on the Indian side, has long been a popular gateway for Pakistani militants attempting to sneak into Indian territory. Hence, for security purposes, Gurez had been closed...
more »The Gurez Valley is a fertile, fifty-mile cleft carved through the Himalayas by the mighty Kishenganga River. It sits directly below the high-altitude Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani sectors of Kashmir and is one of the most tensely guarded frontiers in the world. Thanks to its topography, Gurez, which is on the Indian side, has long been a popular gateway for Pakistani militants attempting to sneak into Indian territory. Hence, for security purposes, Gurez had been closed off to the outside world by the Indian army from 1947 until August, 2007, when it was deemed safe enough to open it up to visitors. These are the first images taken by a Western photographer to emerge from the area in over sixty years.
The people who live in Gurez belong to the Dard Shin tribe. Apart from the main town of Dawar, most of the crooked wooden villages that dot the floodplain have no electricity, plumbing, or telephone. For half the year, the tribespeople are completely sealed off from the rest of the world, as the one road in and out of the valley is buried deep beneath snow. In the highlands surrounding Gurez, nomadic Gujjar shepherds arrive every summer from other parts of Kashmir, and from Punjab, to graze their goats.
This is a deeply isolated place that's beautiful and weird, idyllic and surreal, at once an alpine Shanrgi-La and a militarized zone: dazzling fields of wildflowers are cut by coils of razor wire that unroll to the horizon; shepherds climb one slope as soldiers patrol another. The 19th century British historian, Sir Walter Lawrence, who investigated this old tributary of the Silk Road, called Gurez a "valley of unexplored treasures" framed by mountains of "indescribable grandeur." It still is.
Some of these images were first published in the Fall 2009 issue of Wend Magazine.
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