Nick’s world tour

So I left you all at the start of my escape from the city to the mountains..

Well Kashmir was wonderful. After two weeks- I suddenly had this funny thought I’ve been in India for 2 and a half weeks alredy, I only have less than 50 left!! The houseboat I stayed on is called New Majestic (though two have the same name), and it’s on Nageen or Nagin lake, away from where most of them are crowded on Dal Lake nearer to Srinigar.

Apart from one day early on the weather was good to fantastic.

I went for two 1 day mountain trips to Gul Marg – (a ski resort too, but not quite what the rest of the world would call one!) where we started up in the snow at 10000ft and walked down to the valley where the spring flowers were coming out.

Sona Marg is the typical Himalaya picture: where it was clear blue skies and knee high snow.

Both these places are quite touristy, and I featured in lots of Indian families photo albums! For three days we went to a place called Aru in the Pahalgam Valley and stayed with my ‘fixers’ friends.


One day I took a pony out- thugh the snow was so deep my feet were dragging in it.

We stopped off in some of the guides friends’ gypsy huts (like peasant hovels from the middle ages I think, one room, 10 children plus animals!) The family we stayed with was huge, even though it snowed at night and was cold, so many people crammed into the kitchen/lounge it was really warm.

I’ve also been sight seeing around the Old City here in Srinigar, on a shikara (part covered canoe/rowing boat) for a day round the lakes and floating gardens and one morning we left at 4.30am to see the floating vegetable market.

It looks like I visited at the right time, as coinciding with the two bombings in Delhi yesterday evening, there were several grenade attacks in Srinigar yesterday. There weren’t any noticeable problems when I was there, just a big army presence on the streets, but then it’s nearest city to the Pakistan border… everyone is really friendly as European tourists are still a rareity! I have had to promise to stay again some day.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 2:39 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.