श्रीनगर, जम्मू और कश्मीर, भारत
16 (Thu) - 21 (Tue) May 2013
Lodging:
1st and 2nd nights - Royal Lodge HouseBoat, Gate no. 7, Boulevard Road, Srinagar
3rd to 6th nights - Noor Guest House, Abi Buchwara, Dalgate, Srinagar
1 of 3, 6 days Kashmir trip
5 of 5, 14 days India trip
Kochi ✈ Delhi ✈ Agra ✈ Amritsar ✈ Kashmir
Srinagar, located in the Kashmir region which belongs to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, is the summer capital of the state, while Jammu is the winter capital - first time in my life encountering somewhere which has two capitals depending on the season.
The reason I named my photo album and the travel timeline above as "Kashmir" instead of "Srinagar" is, we traveled to another two places which are also in Kashmir but out of Srinagar and our lodging was in Srinagar for the entire 6 days, although Srinagar was the lead cast of the show.
Why was there Day 0? Well, in my previous blog post about Amritsar, I mentioned that we took a morning squeezy bus from Amritsar to Jammu for a half day stopover before moving forward to Srinagar. That was Day 0.
We expected to get a bus to Srinagar in that afternoon itself, too bad when we approached a transportation service agent in Jammu and he told us that all buses to Srinagar are only available at night. Bloody hell~~ and we had to stay in Jammu doing nothing till night.
Tired and weary, we checked in to a hotel nearby after lunch, not to stay overnight but to unload our huge backpacks, settle down and take a refreshing bath.
We boarded the sleeper bus at night, which fetched us to Srinagar and reached the next morning.
Apparently Srinagar is located at a higher altitude, it's getting colder and colder as the bus journeyed up.
Some terrifying scene (don't feel like describing here) traumatized Susan on the bus, that we had to switch to mixing two genders in a compartment from the initial guy-guy girl-girl arrangement.
Wilsen puked on the way up.
Lying on the bus drifting along the barrier-less mountainside, we felt that we're almost halfway to heaven, and having no way out, we prayed...
We alighted at some wilderness in Srinagar, took an auto rickshaw to Dalgate, where the south narrow end of the beautiful Dal Lake is located. Despite knowing the fact that Srinagar is famous for its houseboats, somehow we're not really keen on staying there, and instead we're walking along the Boulevard Road and trying to look for a hotel where we could stay.