Before I got off the plane that day in Kashmir, it had never occurred to me that my microphone looks a lot like a gun.

I travel with my microphone and recorder all the time, collecting sounds the way other people collect photos. I’m used to getting strange looks when I’m out recording. It’s funny how people with video cameras blend into the landscape, but a microphone attracts attention.

The stares of passersby are usually stares of curiosity. But here, in this ancient city fortified with barbed wire and a soldier with a machine gun every few feet, I didn’t want to call any attention to myself. Discretion was the watchword in Indian-occupied Kashmir, I decided.

I still managed to get some wonderful sounds. I was staying on a tourist houseboat, the H.B. Silver Bell, owned by Saleem Dandoo and his family. In Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir, houseboats are the main form of accommodation. This dates back to the time of the British. Nestled in the Himalayas, the temperature in the summer is balmy and pleasant compared to the blistering heat of the rest of the sub-continent. The ruling Maharajah (Kashmir was not part of British territory) would not let the British own land, and so houseboats became the most convenient type of accommodation for Brits trying to escape the heat.

When India was partitioned in 1947, Kashmir became disputed territory between India and Pakistan. A homegrown independence movement also emerged. And in 1989, open conflict erupted and it has been a troubled zone ever since. The tourists stopped coming. Except for hardy souls like me. (When I was there, it was fairly uneventful except for a bombing of a local cable TV station. And protests in the centre of the city about the impending execution of a man who had been convicted of the aborted bomb attack on Indian Parliament five years previously.)

Recording your trip

Even though it was relatively peaceful during my visit, I learned a few security/survival tips about documenting vacations in volatile territory.

1. Keep your gear in your backpack until you need it. Then put it back in after you’re done getting that recording or picture (this also makes you less of a target for thieves .. not paranoid, but it does happen).
2. If you go into a public place, expect your body and backpack to be frisked by security. If they ask you what you’re using your gear for, be ready with an answer. I had to think fast once when a non-English speaking Kashmiri guard looked quizzically at my mike … Think quick … “it’s for singing” I said. She was satisfied without asking me to break out into song.
3. Avoid taking pictures or collecting sound where there are soldiers nearby. If you can see them, they can see you. I almost got my camera confiscated when I took a picture of a pretty river. I didn’t know there was a military base behind the trees. Oops.
4. Don’t take unnecessary risks.

   Don’t take unnecessary risks. Once I found myself sitting next to an Indian soldier. I would have loved to haul out my recorder and ask him for his perspective on the conflict. I didn’t do it, thinking that it would provoke a lot more questions of me in return. Military guys are well trained in the art of suspicion.

5. There are lots of places with great sounds and pictures that aren’t in the heart of the action. I spent most of my time recording the sounds of over twenty prayer places around the lake which I could hear from my houseboat veranda: it was Ramadan — exquisite sound. I collected sounds of birds, and fish jumping. And I did a whole series of interviews with members of the Dandoo family about how difficult it is for them to make a living from tourism in a conflict zone (which will be one of the upcoming episodes of my podcast, The Roaming Ear).

Keep it on you

One other thing — always carry your equipment with you. Don’t ever put it in cargo in planes, buses or trains. Keep it with you at all times. On the way back from Srinigar, I took a jeep to Jammu packed tight with eight other passengers. My backpack had to be strapped to the top of the jeep. My recorder and microphone came in the cab with me in my daypack.

This caused a few tense moments the thirteen times that soldiers stopped us on the road — but the momentary moments of panic were milder than constant worry about my gear flying off into a five-hundred-foot mountain gorge.