Long trek to remote quake survivors

By Soutik Biswas BBC News, Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir

The terrain makes it near impossible to evacuate the wounded by land

A trek to the upper reaches of the earthquake-devastated mountains in Indian-administered Kashmir is an instructive lesson in the immense difficulties in delivering relief to survivors.

I had reached Chamankot, a picturesque village in Tangdar in northern Kashmir hemmed in by snow-capped ridges close to the de facto border that divides the disputed region of Kashmir.

I reached there after a back-breaking eight-hour drive through fog, rain, land-slipped roads and a snowed mountain pass.

The 8 October quake killed 272 people, including 22 soldiers, and made several thousands homeless in Tangdar.

The day I arrived in Chamankot, I saw hordes of shocked and shivering survivors who had walked hours from their far-flung villages to scour for some crumbs of relief.

Numbed by grief and cold, they waited endlessly for tents and plastic sheets to take up home so that their families have a chance of surviving the fast-approaching winter.

Mournful chorus

I had spent a freezing night tucked inside a sleeping bag on the ground out in the open listening to the staccato rumble of a landslide and a mournful chorus of jackals in the mountains.

Next day, I trekked up to Bahadurkoth, one of the worst affected villages of Tangdar, in the upper reaches of the mountain.

The quake killed 24 people and wounded another 100 in this village. Most of the houses have been flattened, and some 900 people are homeless.

The terrain makes it near impossible to evacuate the wounded by land and army officials say it would take 14 men to bring just one single wounded person from the village.

So the army helicopters did nearly 40 sorties in the early days after the quake to bring down the injured to hospitals in Tangdar and Srinagar, some 200km away.

When I began 'walking' up, I realised how difficult it was to bring relief and take out the wounded from such an area.

It was not a mountain road, not even a dirt track.

Affluent home

The way to the village is a meandering, treacherous 'trek' up and down through mildewed rock, rubble and thorny bushes and over mountain streams. There was an overwhelming stench of dead animals.

I met 26-year-old Jahangir Khan, a road and building contractor, on reaching the village. He took me to his flattened home through bushes and corn farms.

It used to be an impressive two-storey home for his 10-member joint family complete with electric heaters and a direct-to-home television satellite dish.

Mr Khan took us over the rubble of his house and begins to describe his home, which he says was designed by his retired engineer father.

Jahangir Khan's family has scavenged utensils for their makeshift shelter

"It had a lobby, three bedrooms, a drawing room, a kitchen, three bathrooms, two verandas, and it was very modern, it had everything. Everything went down in 15 seconds flat," he says.

The rubble points to an affluent home in the mountains with lanterns, heaters, flasks, silk clothes, a colour television manual, medicine stocks for the winter. Mr Khans says there's even $12,000 worth of family jewellery in the debris.

The family has scavenged some old utensils, four trunks, seven blankets and a few other things they had thrown away and now set up home in a 150-sqft shelter out of plastic and wood they could retrieve from the debris.

"The government will need to react very, very fast to save us, it is a race against time. In a month or two, we will have heavy snow, even our houses sometimes get half-buried in the snow. What hope do our shelters have when it begins snowing?" says Mr Khan.

"They should do something for us fast or they should kill us."

Fight for relief

Seven children who were living in the open after the quake have already died of cold in the upper reaches of Tangdar.

Some villagers like Ghulam Hussain say that it would be better if "we are shifted somewhere else" for survival when it begins snowing in the mountains.

Others like Shaki Shah, a 55-year-old former paramilitary soldier, says most of the "private relief" from NGOs and civilian groups is made up of food and "torn, old clothes".

Several children living in the open have died of cold

More than a week after the quake, he has received three blankets and 5kg of rice as relief.

"That will not be enough for us to survive through winter. I come down from the mountain and search and scrounge every day without getting any shelter," Mr Shah says.

Iftikar Ahmed, a law student, who lost his 12-year-old brother in the quake says he is finding it difficult to travel long distances and "fight for relief" when he is still grieving.

"It is not easy for people who have lost family members to look and fight for relief every day. There should be systematic way of reaching supplies to us," he says.

It is not going to be easy to do that in this hostile terrain, but some beginning has to be made.

And very soon too to avoid another tragedy in the fast approaching winter.