Grenade provides unfitting end to Himalayan odyssey

IT WAS a courtesy call to the governor's residence. He fed them little egg sandwiches and reassured the two released British hostages that Kashmir was a safe place for tourists. Then on the road back, along the lake, a grenade was tossed at the motorcade carrying Kim Housego and Dave Mackie.

It was not intended for the two Britons, who were freed on Thursday by Kashmiri militants on amicable terms. The grenade was meant for a jeep full of police. It was too tempting a target to resist. But the grenade fell short, missing the jeep by a yard, and the convoy sped off carrying Kim, Mr Mackie and their relatives to a houseboat on Dal Lake.

The blast was a nasty reminder of the ever present violence in Indian-occupied Kashmir, even as the two Britons were forgetting the terror of their 17-day odyssey through the Himalayas and remembering instead the more comically surreal moments.

Even though armed with machine-guns, the kidnappers wasted precious time haggling over fares with rickshaw and taxi drivers. 'We were riding in three taxis and drove past a cricket green where the paramilitaries were playing. But 60 yards down the road from the police we stopped for petrol,' said Mr Mackie. Later on the road to Anantnag where they were freed yesterday, the captors and their victims had a flat tyre. Kim said he and Mr Mackie plotted escape.

They calculated that even with Mr Mackie's bad knee, the pair could gain a 30-minute lead over their abductors; one guerrilla had thoughtfully carved Mr Mackie a walking stick but 14 days of their ordeal were spent in high mountains, dodging avalanches and lightning bolts as well as the Indian army. There were opportunities for escape, such as the time when the kidnappers left the two alone in a room with weapons. 'They were just young kids posing with guns,' said Kim.

The chief of the kidnappers, around 26-years-old, was the ideologue and strategist, he kept in hourly radio contact with other commanders of the same extremist group, Harakat-al-Ansar. The others were Kashmiris and youths from the tribal region of Pakistan who had crossed over the border to wage a holy war against the 200,000 Indian troops trying to crush a Muslim secessionist uprising in Kashmir. For them, embattled Bosnia was the next stop. While Kim and Mr Mackie remained healthy, some of their captors had weak stomachs. 'You could tell when they were ill,' said Kim, 'they would only kneel to pray instead of bowing full on the ground.'

Kim and Mr Mackie awoke on their first morning of freedom floating on a houseboat with a view of mountains. Kim was with his parents Jenny and David, a former Financial Times journalist. Mr Mackie, 36, and his wife, Cathy, 33, bedded down in an elegant honeymooners' houseboat.

Then the press arrived. Television crews positioned them eating cherries at breakfast and then paddling on the lake in a wobbly canoe. After Kim was dragged away for his umpteenth interview, he joked: 'It was almost easier being a hostage'.