Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh: Jammu: Travel, Trekking, Culture, History, Wildlife, almost Everything

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Parvez Dewan can send you to sleep about Jammu. If anyone has the Ultimate Dossier on this region, it is he, after years of running about Indiaâ€™s northernmost state, administering and adventuring his way around its valleys, peaks and rivers. Along the way he discovered sculpted stone tables (and stunning bathing beauties) at enclosed mountain springs, met shamans who drank the blood of slaughtered goats and mystics who walked on live coals, changed from a cynic to a staunch votary of Himalayan mysticism, revived Basohliâ€™s famous miniature paintings, worked with nomadic Gujjar tribes (and tried to promote the embroidered shoes and jewellery that they wear), earned a reputation for trekking to every village in his jurisdiction once every year and survived three bomb blasts (during the first of which he won the love of the people and the Front Page of local newspapers for trying to save two children trapped amidst flames). This was in the course of work. (More or less.) between whiles, he managed to watch exciting, fast-paced folk dances, translated dozens of folksongs, took copious notes on almost everything and, in particular, tried to take forward Jammuâ€™s legendary Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity. In this first-of-its-kind encyclopaedic three-volume set on Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, one on each region, Parvez dewan shares in detail, his interest and excitement in the fabled land that has been the arena of his adult life: an up-to-date yet timeless guide to the magical trinity o Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh that crowns the sub-continent of India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Parvez Dewan

Parvez Dewan was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and the University of Cambridge, and was elected a Visiting Research Fellow of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University. He hitchhiked through Nicaragua to study its total literacy miracle and trawled Cambodia and Central Asia for their architectural links to Kashmir's temples and shrines. An officer of the Indian Administrative Service, he is currently the Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir. Two of his libretti were recorded as rock operas in Denmark, a third was telecast on Britain's Channel Four (and none of the three was ever heard of again). At St. Stephen's he was elected President of the College Union society and was awarded the L. Raghubir singh History Prize for ranking first in his B.A. (Hons.) class. At Cambridge, he was awarded the Jennings Prize in 1987 for obtaining the highest marks, and a distinction, in the Development Studies class. He was the Senior Treasurer of the Cambridge University (C.U.) Friends of the Earth and was also with the C.U. Green Party. Most of the publications that Parvez has written for had to fold up (Youth Times, JS, The Hindustan times Evening News, The Metropolitan on Saturday, Shama (Urdu) and such sections of The Times of India as he regularly contributed to). However, some survived (notably the Times of India, India Today, The Hindustan Times, The Statesman and Stardust).