Extreme Ironing on Kashmir’s Line of Control

As part of Erik 'The Ironman' Fearn's continuing effort to bring good ironing habits to the world, here is a record of his recent bid to iron out the creases between Pakistan and India along Kashmir's Line of Control.

Some people knit to relax. Others meditate. I like to iron. The whole exercise of warmly smoothing out wrinkles, restoring order to something messy, has a certain therapeutic quality to it.

Conservative ironing enthusiasts will tell you that good ironing habits are the hallmark of an advanced civilisation. I will simply say that since it brings peace to me personally, it's not too zany an extrapolation to suggest that it might bring World Peace if practiced on a mass scale.

A quick glance at the geo-political map will show that the nuclear stand-off between arch-enemies Pakistan and India is one of the most pressing international issues of our time. Peace and stability in this region would have far-reaching political and economic benefits for the whole of Asia, including us.

One day last January, I was watching Oprah reruns while ironing. Oprah was having a heart-warming moment with someone about something – I forget – but as the end-credits started to roll, I remember her saying to the tearful, smiling audience that “we all have a date with destiny. Be open to this, and you will be able to make a difference in the world”.

That message hit me like a tonne of freshly laundered shirts. My world slowed down like a Matrix dodge-fest. Oprah had spoken, and I had heard. I looked down at my shimmering iron, steam coming from its nostrils. This was a call to action.

So off I went, trusty ironing board under my arm, into the high-strung Himalayas, to do my bit to iron out the differences between these nuclear neighbours. My plan was to fly into Srinagar, the lovely lakeside capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, hire a car and driver, and weave 85km westward along narrow mountain trails toward the dangerously militarised Line of Control, arguably the most hostile real estate on the planet.

Swarming along this inhospitable stretch of the Himalayas are some 270,000 heavily armed Pakistani and Indian soldiers who spend all day, every day, staring unblinkingly at each other through their gun sights. (These days, more soldiers are dying from altitude sickness, avalanches and hypothermia than actual combat).

And I was going into these hostile mountains in the middle of winter - the coldest winter in 40 years. While still holed up in a lovely houseboat in Srinagar, I was getting reports of mountain temperatures dropping to unheard of minus 37C at night. Daytime highs were a relatively balmy minus 12C.

My goal was to bring my warm intentions, and warm iron, as high up into the mountains and as close to the soldiers as I could get, to share with them satisfying, new techniques in ironing around buttons, or the Zen-like delights of pressing that perfect crease - all tricky stuff.

Surprisingly, we didn't need a special permit to travel this close to the Line of Control (LoC). Our destination was the tiny mountain hamlet of Gulmarg, India's first winter ski resort - a place that still attracts some hardy skiers who don't seem to mind the lack of facilities and constant threat of avalanches.

Iqbal, my driver, was a slight man and ex-army. He knew just what to say at the dozen or so military checkposts we had to pass through. When gruff soldiers poked their Kalashnikovs at the ironing board in the back of the jeep, he told them it was a new kind of snowboard - the legs were some newfangled steering mechanism.

Gulmarg, as an experience, flirts with the surreal. The high altitude village (alt. 10,000ft or 3,300m) lies just 18km from Pakistan's claim to Kashmir. Somewhere in between - along the mountain ridge above the village to be exact, lies the LoC - the most intense and volatile military stand-off of our time. But strangely, you're welcome to snowboard as far as halfway up the mountain...

Occasionally in the past, when things flared up between the two sides, they would often lob artillery shells, sometimes missing each other. Pakistani missiles would overshoot their mountain targets and end up landing in the village square. These incidences were euphemistically called OM, or ‘Ordnance Misplacement’.

In the days that I wandered the steep snowdrifts with my ironing board, I met dozens of bored, miserable, often homesick Indian soldiers. Many of them were from far away tropical corners of India many hundreds of kilometres away. They had volunteered to be posted to the war zone because they received a hardship and danger allowance. And there were families to feed back home…

Huddling around me and my ironing board provided them a welcome distraction, and brought smiles and laughs all round. Bringing madness to a mad situation was something they could identify with.

Early on, I thought about what Iqbal had passed my board off as - a new kind of snowboard. Why not give it a try? Amazingly, it really does work, and just how Iqbal had described it! You have to stand well back on the flipped over ironing board. This way, the nose end doesn't sink into the uneven snow and come to a sudden stop, sending you cart-wheeling down the mountain. Easy does it. Hold onto the legs, push off, pull the nose up a little, and steer by pulling the legs left and right.

Every day, after trudging through waist-deep snow up to a couple of seemingly randomly placed military outposts where I was always welcomed by soldiers eager for a chat, I would flip the board over and gently glide back down to Gulmarg village, carving giant S-curves in the pristine, deep powder snow. Natural beauty in the face of human misery - everything about this forgotten little corner of the Kashmir conflict is as perverse as it sounds.

I returned to the relative comfort of Srinagar to learn that peace talks had gone well and that they are planning to start a bus service between the two Kashmirs very soon.

Now, I won't claim that the warming relations between these two nuclear giants were entirely my doing. But next time you're standing in the living room, watching Oprah reruns and ironing, think of the power you hold in your hand. Aggression, you see, is really just a case of iron deficiency...

How to get there: Kashmir is enjoying a seasonal as well as geo-political spring. I’ve traveled to hundreds of destinations around the world, but Kashmir is among the most enchanting. See it before tour groups stampede through it. Malaysian Airlines (through their slick new website www.malaysiaairlines.com) offers direct MAS flights to Delhi for just RM1,500. Delhi to Srinagar is a short domestic flight by Indian Airlines for RM800.

How to become an Extreme Ironist: Do you want to join the fearless fraternity of Extreme Ironing? Check out this global phenomenon at www.extremeironing.com. Contact the founders Mr. Steam and Mr. D. Crease for further info.

Erik welcomes comments at erikfearn@excite.com