J&K: Last tonga in Srinagar rolls again, 70-year-old keeps past alive

SRINAGAR: Clip-clop. Hooves strike rhythm on asphalt. Engines hush as a horse cart slips into traffic that long forgot it.

Ghulam Rasool Kumar reins in his tonga through Srinagar’s old city, a lone throwback in a rush of honks and headlights. At 70, he is back on roads he once left behind when horse carts stopped paying.

“I had a licence from 1968. I was 12,” he said, holding on to a paper from another era — “Sadiq sahab’s time… what else you need.” [late Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, CM from 1965 to 1971]

Kumar quit in 1986. Returned last year. Became a curiosity overnight. Tourists climbed aboard, influencers filmed reels, photojournalists trailed him through narrow lanes. CM Omar Abdullah posted about him on X. For many young riders, it is not transport. It is memory on wheels.

Then came April’s Pahalgam terrorist attack. Tourists vanished. Earnings dried up. Kumar stopped again.

Earlier this month, he returned — a horse with a fine black coat brought from Sopore in north Kashmir, cart with a bright canopy from south Kashmir’s Anantnag — piecing together a trade that refuses to die quietly.




He charges no fixed fare. “Pay what you wish,” he tells riders.

Tall, lean, black spectacles, he looks younger than his years. He talks — about streets, traffic, loss. “This road was not a road, it was a stream called Nallah Mar,” he said, guiding reins along Bohri Kadal-Sekidafar stretch.

Near Nawa Kadal bridge, words slow. Silence takes over. “My two sons drowned in this river. The river has taken both my sons.”

He moves on. Voice steadies. “There were vehicles then, but not like today. Few people owned cars.”

Drivers now slow, not out of irritation but curiosity. A tonga in modern Srinagar is spectacle. Kumar asks for one thing — patience. “No brakes,” he said. “People should be considerate.” They are. Honks soften around him.

His favourite stories belong to another time — when tongas lined stands across the city, when the tourist reception centre bustled with horse carts, when ministers preferred rides that he still calls a “luxury”.

In a city that moved on, Kumar stayed. “Last of the Tongas”, people call out as bells jingle and hooves drum a slow, certain beat — a sound from 1930s to 1960s when such carriages ruled Srinagar’s roads. Traffic swallows the echo now, but for a few fleeting minutes, the city listens to its own past roll by.