Kashmir - Beauty amid the guns

We headed to kashmire rag tired and ravaged by the heat and exhaustion after our Vaishno Devi trip. Its amazing, Jammu was sweltering at 45 degrees and there was news trickling of srinagar being a cool 20 degrees and this when Srinagar is just a 30 minute plane ride away.

There are two ways to get to Srinagar - By plane or through the mountains on the National Highway. The highlight of the journey by road is the Jawaharlal Tunnel apparently the longest tunnel in India. But we went to Srinagar by Plane and I think its the best way to reach Srinagar. And if you get the Window seat on that plane ride, you have a magnificent siht to behold. Tiers and tiers of Snowclad mountains. Its amazing and heady and then you see a land of great beauty green and rustic nestled like precious jewel hidden among treacherous mountains. It reminded me of Shangri-la.

Srinagar probabbly the most awe inspiring, when you alight from the plane, what you see is the himalayas towering over you. Tis a great pity you can take pictures at an Indian airport. One immediately comes to terms with Srinagar's uneasy situation. There's army everywhere. The streets are lined with Jawans with Battle tanks at ever interval and no they don't take kindly to phot-ops so don't even try to take a photo with them

In kashmir we visited the Shamilar Gardens, Dal Lake, Pehalgam & Gulmarg. Kashmr is undoubtedly beautiful. There's no expression to describe the green scenary beside the flowing river amid the mountains. Its picture perfect if you can remove the snipers and Jawans and army trucks from this picture. On our way from Pehalgam we were following an Army convoy and it stopped suddenly, when we asked around we were told that further ahead the convoy, a bus was blown up by a terrorist organisation. We even went past the charred remains of the bus in which 18 soldiers died, but life returned to eerie normal in 45 minutes and nobody batted an eye lid at the incident. These people have been deeply traumatised.

After the bomb blast we were all a little freaked and more so considering the blast blew out the powerlines and we had to sleep through the night in darkness and ofcourse gun shots (Encounter was supposedly underway) and flares (to look for terrorists). Gulmarg cheered us up a whole lot. We freaked out in the snow and threw snowballs and it was great fun. We were quite relieved when it was time to head back home and it was our last day in Srinagar. Oneshould reach the Srinagar airport 3 hours prior departure and you have 7 security checks and frisked 3 times and please, no iPods, they'll not believe you till you play music.