Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir

The cleanliness of the water was the first thing I noticed – maybe because we came from Delhi which, at least in the parts we walked through, managed to win over Cairo in the competition for the filthiest place I’ve visited (don’t get me wrong, I still loved Delhi – the filth is just a part of the character). The water of the Dal Lake is dark and it’s hard to judge its depth but the thick underwater grass and the small fish which make it it’s habitat were clearly visible under our Shikara, the small wooden boat used for transport between the mainland and more than a thousand houseboats located on the lake.

Dal was the first part of the Kashmir Valley we’ve seen and if the rest of it is even close in beauty then this place truly is a paradise. The lake and its surroundings we’re astonishing even on a hazy and hot day that we arrived on. The calm surface reflected hundreds of houseboats lined up around its coast and around many small islands. Spread out between the boats are the water lilies, with bright yellow flowers reaching up from the green spherical carpet and small drops of water shining like diamonds on the wide leafs. Up in the air, scanning the space below the surface are several species of birds including eagles and kingfishers and surrounding it all to the East and to the North – rising up like the giant barrier hiding this beautiful valley from the rest of the world - the mighty Himalayas.

The lake is also famous for it’s floating vegetable gardens; cucumbers, pumpkins and other vegetables are grown on the floating vegetable patches and farmed with the use of small boats. One morning we woke up before sunrise to experience the famous vegetable market. It happens every morning at sunrise when growers, wholesalers and villagers meet up in the middle of the lake and the frenzied transactions go on for about an hour. The goods and money change hands (and boats) and the crowd disperse again through little canals between houseboats and lily and lotus patches.

Dal Lake seems to be the world on its own – separate from the polluted, noisy and explosive (read previous post) Srinagar.