I want to start this post by answering the most frequently asked question by my friends and family – “Why Kashmir again?”. Every time, I had an immediate answer with me, which is that it is a “different season” to see Kashmir. This time I cannot repeat that answer, as we visited Kashmir in April three years ago and we still chose this place again, over other Himalayan destinations. I think it is more of an emotional reason than a logical one this time. Somehow we are attached to the Himalayas and the people there, which made us plan this trip. Also, it has been a while since we saw snow too. It was the first Kashmir trip for our cousins and third one for us, but we felt equally excited for the trip.

Day 1: Srinagar

We took the morning flight (GoAir) from Delhi to Srinagar and booked E,F and A,B seats during web check-in, covering both the window seats, as we didn’t want to take a chance of missing the Himalayas view from the flight. As I guessed correctly, the view is good from E,F (D-F) seats. We spent the last 30 mins of our flight just watching the Himalayas from the window and they looked absolutely stunning.

We were received at Srinagar airport by our driver friend Abdul ji, who had accompanied us for our previous April trip. We were warmly welcomed to the Srinagar hotel (JH Bazaz) with a cup of Kahwa, the traditional Kashmiri tea made from Saffron. Our hotel owner felt more than happy to see us again.

After checking in, we went on to watch local Srinagar attractions. The first one being the  famous Tulip Garden, which is open only for three weeks a year (March 25th-April 15th). It is Asia’s largest Tulip garden with great views surrounded by mountains on all three sides. At the entrance of the garden, bloom percentage of Tulips was displayed as 75%. We weren’t sure on what the ideal percentage is, but the Tulips looked just perfect.

 

 

Tulip garden has different varieties and colors of Tulips spread over around 75 acres, on the foothills of Zabarwan mountain range. The garden is built on a sloping ground in a terraced fashion consisting of seven terraces. It was an absolute feast for our eyes and cameras. Since it was a Sunday, we could see a lot of local residents also in the garden.

We spent around an hour and a half there clicking lots of photos when it started to rain. We hadn’t come prepared for rain, so we got drenched completely and were forced to leave Tulip garden. We took a lunch break and waited for the rain to subside. After lunch, we visited Shalimar garden, built in 1619 by Jahangir for his wife Noor Jahan. The garden is well maintained, but the real beauty of this garden can be seen only in summer (May-July), when all flowers in the garden blossom. There weren’t many flowers there in April.

After Shalimar garden, we visited Pari Mahal (Abode of Angels), a seven-terraced garden (looks like the Mughals loved the number 7), located on the top of Zabarwan mountain, providing great views of Dal lake, Tulip garden and Srinagar city. The cloudy climate added more beauty to the place.

We wanted to visit few other places too, but due to rain, we skipped those and reached our hotel by evening and took rest for the day.

Day 2: Gulmarg

We started our trip from Srinagar to Gulmarg early in the morning in the cloudy weather. We prayed for the rain to subside so that we can enjoy our visit to Gulmarg well. We stopped at Tangmarg to rent coats and snow boots and continued our journey amidst the tall Deodar and pine trees. I always enjoyed the ride to Gulmarg, it makes me feel as if I am in the middle of a giant forest. We stopped by a view point on the way which was slowly covered by a huge cloud.

Slowly, we moved on to our Gulmarg hotel, Kolahoi Green Heights, where we planned to stay for that night. Gulmarg is famous for its cable car, also called as Gondola, the world’s second highest operating cable car. Gulmarg is also a famous skiing destination in winters. By the time we reached the hotel, Gondola’s phase1 was open and we spoke to a guide there to get us tickets from the queue. In around ten minutes, we got to hear a bad news from our guide that the gondola was completely closed for the day due to heavy winds. We felt very disappointed and just hoped for some luck the next day.

Though it didn’t rain heavily, the sky was covered by clouds all over and we couldn’t even get a glimpse of mountains surrounding us. We just stayed in our room for sometime and waited for the rain to subside, with a hope to at least get a view of the mountains. We felt like watching the moon in lunar eclipse.

After around two hours, the mountains came out of the complete eclipse by the clouds with the help of sun and it was a visual treat for us to watch its progress from our hotel window.

When the rain subsided, we went out for a walk in the evening and it felt so refreshing in the cool breeze. Our hotel is ideally situated between the trees, offering good view of the mountains. The hotel has a centralized heater, which made us feel very comfortable in the chilling weather.

We had dinner in the night in the hotel, watched TV and slept early, hoping for a sunny weather the next day.

Day 3: Gulmarg

We woke up in the morning with some sounds and observed snow fall outside. We were very happy to witness our first snowfall ever 🙂 We quickly went down with our umbrellas and enjoyed it. Though it wasn’t a huge fall, we had great fun catching snow. The grass in front of our hotel turned white and slowly watery. For the first time in the last three days, we felt happy that it rained 😛

We quickly got ready and prayed for the gondola to be open today. After an hour of wait, we got to know that it was closed due to rain. We were completely disappointed to miss the gondola and wondered what we should do. Suddenly one of us got an idea that we should go to Pahalgam immediately from Gulmarg and cut one day from the Pahalgam trip in order to make one day for Gulmarg at the end. As per the weather prediction also, the last day looked sunny. So, that sounded like a perfect plan, which was at least worth a shot. In order to accommodate that, we had to convince our hotel owner, and he was so kind to help us with the changes in the last minute.

We headed from Gulmarg to Pahalgam. That was a long journey, which took us around 4 hours. The ride to Pahalgam felt so different with plain road, with kesar and mustard fields on both the sides of the road, a complete contrast of the ride to Gulmarg.

There were a lot of apple gardens on the way to Pahalgam. All the apple trees have only white flowers now, fruits will come out around September.

We reached Pahalgam by evening. Pahalgam was a pleasant surprise, completely surrounded by snow mountains, which were also playing hide and seek with us for a while amidst clouds. With the Lidder river flowing in between these mountains, Pahalgam looked very scenic. It it rightly called as Pahalgam valley with mountains on all sides.

We went to our hotel, dropped luggage there and came out for a walk. We spent a lot of time arguing about the highest peak there. Everyone of us had our own favorite peak. Some of the mountains’ peaks shined in golden yellow color during sunset time, which was a treat to watch.

We didn’t plan about activities to do in Pahalgam the next day, so we spent some time looking at the map to decide what will be the best choice for a day trip.  There are lot of places to cover,  few being Aru Valley, Betab Valley, Chandanwari, Baisaran and Tuliyan Lake. Only few places can be reached by taxi and rest of them needs pony and few places are purely for trekking purposes. Amarnath (Holy cave) is also near Pahalgam and the road to that is closed in this season due to snow and it will be opened in June. We decided not to take pony which ruled out few places for us.

We played Uno for sometime, had dinner and took rest for the day with a hope to see clear mountain peaks in the morning.

Day4: Pahalgam

When we woke up in the morning, it was raining and we feared that it will be yet another rainy day, but luckily it subsided by 9am. And as I wished, we could see most of the mountain peaks from Pahalgam in the morning :). We had our breakfast and took a local taxi for 1600 Rs to cover Aru Valley, Betaab Valley and Chandanwari. The roads to these places are less wider, but the driver didn’t make us feel that we are on ghat roads.

We first reached Aru Valley located at a height of 7900ft and its again truly a valley, very small compared to Pahalgam valley, but completely surrounded by mountains.

The village is a base camp for trekkers to the Kolahoi Glacier, the largest glacier in the Kashmir Valley, located near Mt. Kolahoi (17798 ft), the highest peak in the Valley. We spent around an hour there, enjoying the scenic meadows and then moved on to Chandanwari.

As we slowly reached Chandanwari (9000ft), our excitement increased as we were much closer to the snow capped mountains which were spotted from Pahalgam. The same road goes till Amaranth holy cave(13500ft) in July. We reached a point where the road was closed ahead due to snow and the view was just awesome.

We spotted the first snow of the season and our excitement was just unimaginable. Also, none of us had expectations of playing with snow in Pahalgam and the place with least expectations happened to provide us with the best experience so far. We rented our snow boots and a stick to help us walk in snow.

With the stick in hand, we felt like proper trekkers and we wanted to climb further. It was not that easy to walk in snow, couple of us slipped while walking, but we slowly got used to walking in snow and enjoyed the climb.

Instead of walking down, we took a sledge down just to experience it. We came down in just 2 minutes on the sledge. It felt like a roller coaster ride with the sledge jumping up in the air in the middle, it was good fun.

By the time we came down to the parking point, it started raining and we experienced snowfall once again here. We were outside for just couple of minutes and started our journey to Betaab Valley, which is on the way to Pahalgam.

Betaab Valley was a beautiful place with Lidder stream, it became famous after a hit Bollywood movie “Betaab”. It looked very different from Aru and Chandanwari, it felt like a perfect place for relaxing.

We had maggi in between the beautiful trees and later started our journey back to Pahalgam.

I couldn’t have asked for a better day and it was the best day so far. We absolutely loved the trip and we started back to Srinagar from Pahalgam in the evening with lot of great memories.

We reached Srinagar in the night. We went for an early dinner and happened to meet a 62 year old surgeon from Nagpur, at the dinner table in our hotel. We couldn’t believe that it was his 20th visit to Kashmir and he was there for trekking. What was more inspiring was his story. He started trekking at the age of 40, when he got his Treadmill Test (TMT) positive. He refused to get any treatment for heart and found a perfect ailment for it in the form of trekking. Ever since then, he started trekking twice a year and he had trekked most of the Himalayas, including the most challenging Mount Kailash near Manas Sarovar and Gangotri. He told us that Gangotri was one of the best treks, a must-do and that the sound that comes from the majestic Ganga river when it falls down from the mountain, is earth shattering.

Also he told us about an interesting story of Vasudhara falls, located near Badrinath. There was a story behind this waterfall, that the water of Vasudhara fall diverts away from an individual who is not pure at heart. Though it appears like a myth, he actually saw that happen. It seems the falls drifted away from many people when they stood below it and the waters fell on only two people so far till date. Even he couldn’t understand how that happened, but it looked like a mystery.

When we told him about our wish to visit Leh, he suggested us to go to Hanle Astronomical observation place near Leh, the best place for star gazing in India. He suggested us to start trekking to witness the actual untouched Himalayan beauty. He planned to come back to Srinagar again in July, to visit Amarnath cave.

At the end of the day, we got loads of inspiration from him and wanted to start trekking like him.

Day 5: Sonamarg

We were advised to start early by 8am to Sonamarg in the morning due to a bandh in Srinagar. So, we got ready quickly and left the hotel with a plan to have breakfast on the way.

The road to Sonamarg is NH-1 (Srinagar-Leh Highway) and its very smooth. The drive to Sonamarg is again completely different from the drive to Pahalgam and Gulmarg, and it is my favourite Himalayan drive. We drive in between huge mountains with Sindh river in between.

We reached Sonamarg (Meadow of Gold) and we had two options to reach Thajiwas  Glacier(7kms) – take a pony or trek till the Glacier. We decided to trek till the glacier after our yesterday’s experience. Though it will take a lot of time to reach the Glacier, we were ready to go for it, as we can slowly walk looking at the beautiful views around.

A lot of people came behind us asking to take pony, but we didn’t want to take. After climbing a couple of hills, we reached a good road, which made our life easy.

Slowly, we walked up to the Glacier which was completely filled with snow.

Though I visited Thajiwas Glacier in May and October earlier, I never really understood the meaning of the glacier. I was amazed to know the meaning of Glacier from a local person there, which I didn’t know till now. The snow on top of this mountain here didn’t melt for centuries and that is the reason it is called Glacier. The wikipedia definition of Glacier goes like this “A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries”. Though I kept hearing that we were losing many Himalayan glaciers due to global warming, it never made much sense to me. But after watching the glacier today and knowing its true meaning, I could understand its essence. I felt really amazed to know that and be there to witness that. I really hope that glaciers last long, not only this one, but all those existing.

We made a snow man in the snow and played with snow.

After sometime, it suddenly started to rain, which turned out to be a snowfall, the best snowfall which we have experienced till date.

 

Since we were well prepared for snow, it was real fun and we spent over two hours  playing there, before we started our trek back to Sonamarg.

I fell in love with the glacier and particularly this shot which looked like a perfect canvas painting with blue sky, white snow and green meadow.

By the time we wanted to start back from Sonamarg, our driver observed that our car’s tyre was punctured and we had to wait sometime to get that fixed. Somehow I didn’t feel like going back, so that news made me happier, which gave me time for more photos 🙂

Wow, what an amazing day !! The last two days made us forget about the first two days completely and I felt that our trip was perfect and if Gulmarg works out tomorrow, it would be like cherry on the top.

We reached Srinagar a little late, after walking 14000 steps today, it was very tiring and slept early.

Day 6: Gulmarg

We started to Gulmarg early as we didn’t want to miss our last chance of Gondola, had breakfast in the middle and headed to Gulmarg directly. Luckily, it was a very sunny today and we hoped that the Gondola would be open. All the mountains looked so clear and it looked like a different place today. Here comes our peekaboo mountain :).

We hired a guide to get us tickets for both the phases of Gondola and we finally, finally and finally got our gondola tickets to Phase1 (8,530 ft) to Kongdoori Station and Phase2 (13,780 ft) to Afarwat Peak. We felt very lucky to change our plan and land up there on that day to take the most awaited gondola. We wanted to go directly to Phase2, as we weren’t sure on when that will be closed.

In order to go to Phase2, we had to change to a different cable car at Phase1.

The views from the Gondola are simply breath-taking.

 

Finally we reached Apaharwat Peak, the highest place we have been so far. It takes time for some people to get used to that high altitude due to altitude sickness. But luckily I didn’t face anything. This is how we all felt being on top of the mountain, amidst the clouds.

After sometime, we found that there is skiing option there and they take us to the LOC. We wanted to understand skiing experience and took the ride with the experienced instructors.

The Line of Control (LOC) is the mountain just behind us.

It was too much sunny that we couldn’t take our goggles away even for a minute. Snow looked too bright in the sun.

We didn’t want to spend time in Phase1 as the snow was very less there and came back directly to the ground.

We had our lunch and started back to Srinagar. We reached Srinagar little early by around 5pm and we had been waiting to do Shikara ride in Dal lake for so many days and we finally went for it. Though it was very sunny when we started the ride, it became very pleasant later. It felt very relaxing to spend over two hours in the Dal lake Shikara.

We realized by the end of the day that our faces started to burn due to the effect of sun in Gulmarg. It looked like we all strongly prayed for sunny weather since start of the week and to make our wishes true, the weather turned out too sunny to show us how a sunny day can look like ;).

We did some shopping for our family in the local market. Slowly, we started feeling bad that we will have to leave this place tomorrow. Wishing to spend most of the time outside tomorrow and experience Kashmiri culture..

Day 7: Srinagar

We have our flight in the afternoon around 4:30pm. We packed all our luggage in the morning, said goodbye to our hotel friends and started to Shankaracharya temple with luggage in our taxi.

Shankaracharya (Lord Shiva) temple is located on top of Zabarwan mountain. Mobile phones and wallets are not allowed to the temple and there are lot of steps to reach the temple. The temple was very old one built out of a single rock and one could make out from its construction. The Shiva Linga inside the temple is so huge and I haven’t seen such a huge Linga from that close anytime. There was also a small cave where Shankaracharya meditated and it felt so peaceful.

From Shankaracharya temple, we headed to Tulip Garden to take a look at Tulips, for one last time, before we leave Srinagar today. The blossom percentage was 50% today and we could see a lot of Tulips losing their petals. But still, it looked so beautiful 🙂

We had our last cup of Kashmiri Kahwa there and started our journey back to airport. Our driver started missing us and we too felt very sad to leave the place. We promised him that we would come back to Srinagar again and plan Leh trip from Srinagar with him as driver. We really love the place and people there. It is rightly called as “Paradise on earth”.

Bye Bye Kashmir and Himalayas for now 😦 Will miss you, hoping to see you again. We really had great memories to remember for life and cherished every moment of being there.

Even after I came back from Kashmir, my heart was still there. When we were driving to a place in Delhi the next day, I found a white sheet somewhere far and felt that it was snow for a moment. I got used to spotting snow for the whole week and it took me some time to come back to reality. And of-course not to mention about mountain dreams for a week after the visit.

Love you Kashmir :)))