Kashmir Day - 2

 

Day 2 of the Kashmir trip started with a dawn shikara ride, trust a photographer to actually wake up at 0530 am, n wake others too, n head out, the shikara guy was late by 30 minutes, but then being a cloudy morning I am not complaining while waiting we did have a few visitors with flowers and tea, and some others, its kind of cute to have all these facility come up to you, yes 90 % of Kashmir economy is based on tourists and people are nice mostly, not too pushy and while we did have to bargain over inflated prices of certain items, and I would say we can almost bring the prices down to 50 % of what is quoted, We had a travel organizer( Farha- she was one of the 2 girls I came across in the work force in kashmir)  and they had informed us about most prices and ball park figure that we could expect to pay. 

 

 

Day 2 we moved to a hotel in Srinagar, while it is lovely on a houseboat, and we sure were comfortable on the boat, the rooms were very nice and dint feel like we were on a boat,

 

 

 

 

But you would have to pay quiet a steep amount to get to shore while living on a houseboat, so we were checked into a hotel, Hotel Royal Milad, while it had OK interiors as we had seen in a brochure, the view from the room was disappointing and the location was 3 km from Dal lake, so as a tourist if you are not mobile (have a car) you are kind of stuck in the hotel, While we agreed to stay put there on that day, it was almost 12 00 hrs. , But we insisted on our 5^th day, when we were scheduled to come back to Srinagar and stay the night to catch our return flight, we must have a hotel within walking distance of Dal lake, ideally on the Dal lake itself with view of the lake, and our tour operator, Farhah, was in a pickle but did manage to get us such a room for the return journey day it was interesting to have a mature conversation and agree to how we could work things out, (another example of Kashmiri’s being nice, n adding to our positive experience there)

 

Interestingly we came across a few birds too, circling and waiting for fishes, to show up for a meal, did I mention Kashmiris like to eat fish too

 

We spend the day at

1. Mughal garden (The garden of delight)

 

 

 

2. Shalimar  (The garden of love)

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Chasme sahi (The Royal Spring)

 

The view from Chasme sahi approach road gives a detailed look of the dal lake and how the houseboats are organized and how the lake slows to connect the main land to the boat,

A shannkrachary (1782- 1857 AD) temple on a mountain with 240 steps approx. is a interesting climb and brought to a close our excursion for the 2^nd day, 

 

 

There are public washrooms at these places and charges approx. RS 10 per person, a little steep and touristy rate I thought.

 

As tourists we mostly see the area around the dal lake only and there is quiet a bot of Srinagar that exists away from the lake that we did not explore, a Gurudwara and mosques in the surrounding area and the fort, that is under the army control currently

 

Finally yes  we did take some time to indulge in some shopping.

 

 

 

© Rajat Ghosh, available as stock image

 

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