Nineteen-year-old Tanvir Ahmed Sheikh sits slumped in his shikara wooden taxi boat on the banks of Indian Kashmir’s Dal Lake, exhausted by deadly floods that have ravaged this normally tranquil tourist haven.
Sheikh and a small army of fellow shikara owners, who normally ferry holidaymakers around the lake using only a wooden pole, have spent the last five days rescuing those stranded on sinking houseboats and bringing them to safety.
Dal Lake, dubbed Kashmir’s “Jewel in the Crown,” is home to hundreds of ornate houseboats which date back to the colonial era when the British sought a Himalayan refuge from Delhi’s stifling summer temperatures.
Photo: AFP
While the numbers of Western tourists have fallen off in recent decades as result of the unrest in Kashmir, it has become increasingly popular with Indian holidaymakers — many of whom were caught unawares on the lake when the flooding began at the weekend.
Triggered by heavy monsoon rains, the floods have claimed hundreds of lives in both the Indian and Pakistan-controlled sectors of Kashmir, which has been divided and claimed by both sides since independence.
Thousands of soldiers and other emergency workers, using boats and helicopters, have been racing around the clock to rescue those still marooned and to provide water, blankets and other relief
However, on the banks of Dal Lake, Srinagar residents singled out the shikara owners for praise, saying they had been the ones to step up when rescue officials failed to appear.
“There has been no help here. Nobody has managed to reach here,” Nasir Ali Khan said angrily, adding that he saw at least five houseboats break up and sink in the rushing waters. “All of the rescues have been done by these young men rowing shikaras.”
Hundreds of people have been camping in the open on the edges of the expanded lake, waiting for help to arrive.
Ghulam Hassan, who has lived on the lake’s banks all of his 79 years, said he feared the floods would prove more devastating than the last major ones in the 1950s.
“This is the most ferocious flood ever,” he said. “I don’t understand what happened this time. But I really fear many people have drowned.”
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