Prayer Time

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.

Explosive welcome to Kashmir

It took me a few moments to realize that the sound which disrupted our peaceful and tranquil Shikara ride on the Dal Lake was a loud blast. We turned around and saw a thick cloud rising in the air somewhere beyond the west shore of the lake, just over a mile away from us. The smoke flew up quickly and dispersed into the late evening air in the short time in which I managed to release the shutter of my camera only several times. The two locals in our company, boatman and a guide, reacted to it like it was a only a minor disturbance, like when you here somebody shouting and you turn to see what is happening or when you hear screeching of the car brakes on the busy intersection and it catches your attention, but only for a moment. Nothing too unusual in this Eden.

As I’m writing this few hours later, on a beautiful and fresh Kashmir night, sitting on the back of a wooden houseboat straight from the colonial days, I am still not sure if the blast really was another bomb attack by militants or was it (improbable) random explosion in the heart of the old city. Last attack in the area was only two weeks ago. Kashmir has been a disputed region between Pakistan and India since The Partition in 1947 and thousands of people have died since on both sides of the conflict.

The relations between two groups were getting tenser recently and the increase in security was apparent from the moment we arrived at the Srinagar International Airport. The heavily armed soldiers were visible from the moment we walked through the aircraft door. Even though it was a domestic flight there were several additional forms to fill out and security checks on the way out of the airport but none of them too efficient since in all the frenzy with several flights arriving at the same time on this quite small airport I managed walk right out without anybody checking my forms. I did eventually realized my mistake and went back into the airport building to find a person who was supposed to check who is coming into the province.

On the road from the airport to the lake we witnessed the significance that Indian government puts on this conflict and the acclimatization of local people to the military presence in their hometown. The number of military vehicles was equal to that of civilian cars, mopeds and taxis and at least through the window of our cab the Hindu soldiers and the Muslim citizens seemed to have found a way to coexist together. Little did any of us know that only moments after the afternoon call to prayer in the mosques an ugly plot will culminate in a detonation we observed.



We continued our tour of the Dal lake, it’s beautiful patches of Water Lilies, floating gardens and Lotus flowers. The life in Srinagar continues as normal and relishing in the beauty of its surroundings cannot be disrupted by a bomb blast.

Update:
Still didn’t have a chance to post this but in the meantime we found out that the blast was a car bomb – first one in two years – aimed at the police bus coming out of the jail building. It managed to kill four people and injure more than a dozen.
I wonder how do Pakistani’s think (they figured it was a Pakistani national who was behind it) that this would help their cause – do they really think that India will pull 600,000 troops they keep in the region because of an act like this?

Why travel to Kashmir and Himalayas

OK, I’m aware that Kashmir is not the most recommended destination due to the political instability in the region but there is just something about it that attracted us. Here are some of the reasons:

It has the coolest name - Kashmir – it just sounds sexy

Most of the travelers who have been there loved it – especially the photographers

It won’t be crowded – there is a travel warning for the Kashmir region.

It’s cheaper than the Swiss Alps.

And final reason is that since when I was a child, browsing through my older brother’s World Atlas, the Himalayas were always a spot on the page where my eyes would stop and I would envision the snow covered peaks and Yeti (I was 5 or 6 at the time) strolling around in front of his cave.

Also, in all my travels, 6 continents and 50+ countries, the most beautiful destinations were Alaska (in the photo), Norway, Canadian Rockies and the Lake District in the UK. I can’t help it – I like the mountains, so Himalayas was a must.

I do take warnings about the region seriously but like with everything else, a bit of research and a lot of common sense go a long way. To start with we won’t be hanging around in front of the police station or a military post - that should cover most of the risk.

I remember when we were headed to South Africa few years back and people warning us to be extra careful – one warning, repeated by several South Africans, was not to rent a good car because we gonna get carjacked for sure. We ended up with a tiny Toyota and I got on the road to Capetown to find myself in a river of brand new Mercedes, BWM and Audi luxury sedans and I didn’t see a line-up of carjackers anywhere.

Now I do now that these things happen but crime happens everywhere – even in the gorgeous, squeaky clean Copenhagen, on our way from Tivoli gardens we got onto the train station to see a guy smoking a crack pipe right there on the platform – and there are parts of many big cities in the US where I wouldn’t dare walk even in the middle of the day. Anyway, we spent amazing 5 weeks in South Africa without an incident.

So with that in mind – and with plan to spend the sunsets and evenings on the terrace of our houseboat on the Dal Lake and not doing solo treks towards the Pakistani border I think we’ll be pretty safe in Srinagar. It’s the driving across the mountain passes that scares me more. You should be able to see some pictures from those roads in just over a week.

Semi adventure on the almost top of the world

From this point on, DarkoRoom will take a slight turn from Travel Photography blog to Travel & Photography blog which depicts a journey of discovery, both inner one and that of a place wherever we might end up. The journey, this time around, leads to India and Nepal and the inner part of the voyage began weeks ago with me calming myself down in the office of the Indian Bureaucratic Irritation Machine but more on that later.

So here is the brief breakdown of the “travel plan”: we’re heading out of London on September 10 and flying into Srinagar via Delhi on September 11. For those of you not familiar with the region: Srinagar is Kashmir, which is northern part of India, which is on the border with Pakistan. There is a bit of a political situation in the region but I won’t go into that. If you have a favorite news website you can look it up and if I figure out what is really happening there I’ll make sure I announce it here on the blog.

From Srinagar we’re heading into Himalayas and some cool (feel free to use either fashionable or temperature meaning of the word) places to visit on Indian side of the mountains; Ladakh and Darjeeling being some of them. In Nepal we’re headed up the famous and apparently very busy trek towards the Everest Base Camp. When winter arrives (I was surprised to hear that winter ever leaves these places) we’ll be heading south to relax on the beach. More detailed plot will appear eventually on these pages.

Today’s photo was taken on the warm-up hike in the Lake District. This was taken about a week or so ago since it’s been raining every single day this week and we didn’t go out much. I know what you’re thinking – we should have been hiking in the rain to prepare ourselves for months of trekking which await and what if it rains on the Everest trek. Well then I won’t have the option of staying in a warm home so I’ll have to deal with it. Anyways, the view is of Crinkle Crags from our hike to the Pike of Blisco.

The adventure begins in one week and in the next few post I’ll go through the details of preparations for the trip so if you are planning to go to Kashmir, Himalayas, Nepal or India or wherever – come into the DarkoRoom