At the crack of dawn in Pahalgam, I can hear the wheels ascending the scenic K.P. Road (Khanabal-Pahalgam Road, cool zephyr carries the stench of diesel fumes.  These narrow roads bear the pressure of human endeavours, sustain the environmental pressure, I bear it too, silently. I am one among the six thousand ponies of Pahalgam and we share a similar fate!

This is my fate: the day begins with hasty foraging before my owner fits the saddle and bridle on me. The leather blinders crop my vision and limit my existence. All I see is two inches of box-vision, in front of my hooves and the boots of my handler move in tandem. This is my version of paradise on earth.

As my master coaxes the early tourists for a ride, I overhear words like  ‘rate card’ and ‘scam’ frequently. A restless clamour which ebbs and flows every time at the trailhead. 

My experience is that humans and their cargo get heavier, usually placed wildly off-center. It’s not easy to walk on the surface of sharp edge limestone, cracked shale. The slippery muck is undertaken by my silent body math. The wobbling load yelps at a stumble, as if it's my fault.

Sometimes, rarely, when I get to spend time in the meadows, I think of my master, I'm the breadwinner of his family. It’s a big responsibility. And my own existence rests, I must add precariously, on four mariachi legs, one slips off the wet trail, and the bone snaps, so does my master’s world.

I witnessed the cursed day from a distance, one April afternoon in 2025, when my olfactory senses were stirred up by an avalanche of terror in the Baisaran meadow. The metallic stench of innocent blood in the ‘Mini Switzerland’.  Traumic.  Even today, more than a year later, while hiking the same trail, I still snort of death and destruction hovering low over the green meadows.

The daily contract ends, the tourists dismount off my back, scribble hymns about their raw adventure, dusting off their leather jacket. My coat matted with grime.

The crowd changes, people come and go, I stay witness. The casual sightseers are replaced by the Amarnath pilgrims, the sharp alpine breeze overwhelmed by smoggy incense. The weight gets heavier. We are hidden cogs and wheels in the grand machinery,  plodding relentlessly, our huffing makes clouds of frost.

Winters are a cruel trial of survival for me. As the valley chokes on snow and equine; tourism dies out, so does my rations. I’m huddled with my kind in a small, tight, dark shed. My master cribs about the cost of feeding me after a bad season, my bones protrude against my skinny frame. I subsist waiting for the warmth of next summer.

When the stiffness in the joints is permanent and I cannot carry their weight of providing for my master. I’m abandoned, no shed in the winters,  a long one-way walk to forage for ghosts.