Srinagar, July 11 -- Four years after my first visit, there is little that has changed about the hamlet. Nestled among the hills, it looks straight from those story books, read years ago at school

IT WAS around two in the afternoon when Hussain, our sturdy little stole weaver friend from Pahalgam, dropped us in his rickety Maruti Zen at Aru - a pretty village set amidst tall Himalayan mountains, boundaring Lidderwatt valley on one side and Aram Pathri on the other. It had been four years since I was last here; not that much had changed, except, perhaps for odd tourists - one's riding the cross-bed, malnourished horses (or mules should I say). The horsemen in their own innocence treated callow and credulous tourists with their self made t...