I travelled to Kashmir in September 2009, the first time since the early 1990s. My flight landed in the small hours of the morning at the international terminal of the Indira Gandhi airport and I took a bus, guarded by armed policemen, to the domestic terminal of the same airport and waited a few hours to catch the connecting flight to Srinagar. A branch of a British coffee chain had already opened and it catered to local tastes while serving hot and cold beverages. There were continual announcements for flights to various destinations. The Indian skies had opened to private airlines on domestic routes and the airport in Delhi had become noisier since the last time I was there. Half-a-dozen different aircrafts taxiied on the runway, their liveries painted in garish colours and the ground staff guarding their pitches.