Srinagar, Kashmir

We arrived late in the afternoon in Srinagar, the largest city in Kashmir, and our guest house owner was waiting for us on the shore of Dal Lake. We took a shikara, a sort of gondola, across the lake to our houseboat. The house boats in Srinagar are rather large (3 or 4 bedrooms) with living rooms and dining rooms and are moored on the lake. Ours was from the 1970s but the the decor was more 1940s. It was very comfortable and from the terrace we had great views out across the lake.

Dal Lake is the second largest in the Kashmir and it has around 16km/10m of shoreline so it is the dominating feature of the city. Shikaras are the main mode of transport and business on the lake. From our vantage point, we constantly saw sellers of flowers, produce, photography supplies, fast food, general supplies, and animals to name just a few.

Around the lake numerous Moghul Gardens remain with the surrounding mountains as a backdrop. Needless to say, they are beautiful and are certainly well maintained for being centuries old:

During our tour of the town we also checked out a few of the local mosques. We saw the oldest mosque in Kashmir, built around 1400 AD, the oldest Hindu shrine in Kashmir, built ca. 2600 BC, and an ancient fort now used by the Indian Army. Unfortunately, cameras weren't really allowed so we only have a few photos to share:

The view down to the lake from Hindu shrine provides some nice perspective:

There are also some old buildings in the traditional Kashmiri style in the winding lanes of downtown Srinigar:

While we were in Srinagar we casually commented to our house boat owner that the Kashmiri pherans were great to keep you warm in the cold weather and that we would love to purchase one. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes later a tailor arrived in his shikara to conduct a fitting. He had a wide selection of fabric swatches for us to choose from. He could deliver a man's pheran in 24 hours. Unfortunately, an embroidered woman's coat would take much longer. Since we only had one day left in Kashmir, Nick decided to give it a try. He got measured right there on the boat and the next evening the tailor dutifully arrived with his brand new custom tailored pheran.  It looked great and meant Nick was much warmer than Jo on our last days in Kashmir...

Our last morning in Srinigar we got up before sunset to take a shikara ride to Srinigar's infamous floating vegetable market. The market itself deserves its own blog post (next!), but we got to see some of interesting , more "local," parts of the shoreline on the way there and back:

We returned back to our houseboat in time for sunrise over the mountains: