Kashmir's severed link

As India and Pakistan agree on a bus service across the ceasefire line dividing Kashmir, Zulfiqar Ali of the BBC Urdu Service travels on the road that once connected Pakistan's garrison city of Rawalpindi with Srinagar - the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

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Kashmiris are hoping that the politicians find a solution to the impasse

The first thing one notices on what is still known as the Rawalpindi-Srinagar Road is a milestone a short distance out of Muzaffarabad - the capital town of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

"Srinagar 183 kilometres," it says in faded black lettering.

As the rickety bus spewing acrid black smoke rumbles past this sign, one can only wonder at what this distance means.

Few in the 57 years since the partition of the subcontinent have been able to make this journey.

The road has been around for much longer, built in the dying days of the Hindu Dogra regime that ruled Kashmir towards the end of the 18th century.

At that time, it was the main artery that connected the Himalayan valley to the rest of the subcontinent.

But the linkage was severed with the first war between India and Pakistan in 1948, giving an entirely new meaning to a distance that once had no significance.

And winding one's way along the serpentine banks of River Jhelum, it is not long before one comes across signs that shed some light on what this distance really means today.

Fading memories

Meet Haji Noor Ali, 80, resident of a small town called Chinari, who once served as a conductor on the bus that would ply every other day between Rawalpindi and Srinagar.

Noor Ali is one of the few people who still remember the bus service

"It would take us all day to get from Rawalpindi to Srinagar," he recalls. "We would stop at many places - Pattan, Baramula, Uri, Chikothi, Chinari, Muzaffarabad, Muree - before reaching Rawalpindi."

Haji Noor says that the journey was a slow and arduous one and people used to look forward to all these stops enroute. Today, these towns are split between the two neighbours.

He has little more to say. Clearly, the memories of those days have faded with time.

Some 60 kilometres down the road, one reaches the town of Chikothi. Correction: the border town of Chikothi. The road ends here but Srinagar is still over 120 kilometres away.

Mohammed Shabbir Abbasi, 37, is one of the few residents who have refused to move out of the border town.

The reason, perhaps, is another similar town called Gowalta where many of his relatives still live, only a few kilometres down the same road.

Divided families

Unlike Abbasi's father, who opted for Pakistan in 1947, they refused to leave their ancestral home and now live on the other side of what has come to be known as the Line of Control.

Kashmiri hopes now rest on the politicians

On a clear day, Shabbir can actually see the small town of Gowalta but he has not been able to go there for over half-a-century now.

One can see repair work being carried out on the road on both sides of the LoC, large portions of which were destroyed by hostile firing between the two sides in the turbulent period leading up to the current détente.

Shabbir says all traffic stops at Chikothi, although the LoC is still about two kilometres away from the town.

That portion is littered with anti-personal mines, which will probably be there even when the road is repaired.

As much as the look on Shabbir's face, it is these mines that betray the real distance between the two cities linked by what was once amongst the busiest routes in the subcontinent.

For the likes of Shabbir, the only hope is that perhaps there is some recognition on the two sides - after over half-a-century of hostilities - that these mines can only be removed by politicians.