The jewel in India's crown lies at latitude 33° 25' 30"N and longitude 76° 23' 15"E.

The glory days of Kashmir sapphire subsided 100 years ago, shortly after the mines' discovery.  Original accounts by Edward Streeter and Albert Ramsey are revered to this day as some of the greatest reports ever published.

Since the early 1900's the economic policies of the central government and political conflict have prevented further exploration.  Today the central governments policy has become more relaxed. The Jammu & Kashmir government understands the sapphire deposits potential revenue and would like to see the people benefit. A global tender has been publicized since 2002. However, few organizations are willing to take the risk so the opportunity awaits.

In 1998, the Jammu & Kashmir Minerals Ltd. exploration team and a few experts from the Department of Geology, lead by General Manager A.M.B., ventured into the famous mining region for the first time since 1989.  To their surprise, the team discovered vandals and smugglers had used crude detonation devices to break and burn all locks and gates on the mines. The vandals damaged the original mining tunnel in their illegal quest for the blue treasures.  This network of smugglers appeared to have informants on the "inside," although no culprits were singled out for prosecution.  The public will never know the success of this illegal mining operation.

Subsequently, the Government's team of miners and geologist cleaned debris and began exploring.  The 1998 season, mid July to early September, was used to sample and survey the surrounding vicinity.

The government used the following years more efficiently. Police towers were placed in key access points with soldiers ordered to "shoot to kill" any suspicious people.  A fair weather vehicular road was built smoothing the way to the town of Atholi.  This road shortened the distance along sheer precipice and treacherous mule tracks, to less than 6 days walk.  Lastly, they purchased IKONOS satellite imagery of the ridge. The final step will be to mechanize the operation and begin digging the vein.

The future looks promising. The weather permitted 70 days of mining activity in the year 2000 and the quantity of rough extracted increased from carats to kilograms.  The State Treasury claims a deposit of two kilograms between 1998 and 2002.  However, less than 1% is said to be facet quality.

Each deposit, sometimes referred to as 'Old & New' are located within 50 meter of each other. The single difference between 'Old' and 'New' deposits are the percentage yield of gem quality rough. They continue to find velvety blue stones at both locations, however the new deposits yield smaller high quality stones. The finest material from both deposits overlap in appearance and characteristics. We would expect this result considering the short distance of separation. Nonetheless, we have plenty of research to complete. We are finding several unusual inclusions in the newer material which need to be documented.