Srinagar
- 29th of August
- Madhopur - Samba - Udhampur - Batote - Jawahar Tunnel - Srinagar
- 348km
Another long day of hard riding. Our original plan was to ride to Jammu, 100km from Madhopur. From Jammu, it was another 300km to Srinagar. Hours were spent discussing how we should do it, and whether we could do it at all… we just concluded simply: "Let’s go as the road takes us."
A few km beyond Madhopur is the Punjab - JK border. The nice wide 6-lane continues, and we kept good speeds till a police check-post at Samba, from where the mountain roads start. The cops there pointed out a much shorter route to Srinagar, bypassing Jammu entirely, and shaving 50km off the route.
We stopped to re-fuel in Udhampur. From Udhampur onwards, EVERY 100m, is a soldier with an automatic rifle. Not lounging around with the the gun slung over his shoulder. They’re literally on full alert, guns in hands, eyes following you till the next soldier starts his glare. I’m talking a good 250km here, from Udhampur to Srinagar. We could measure our distance by counting the soldiers. Every 100m.
We frequently passed moving patrols too. These are Gypsies or Stallions with a mounted machine gun. Every convoy is flanked by a few of these patrol vehicles. We weren’t allowed to stop anywhere, or take photographs. Pull out a camera, and within a few seconds, we have three guns trained on us. From what we could see, the highest population here are not Kashmiri pundits, or Kashmiri muslims. It’s soldiers, they are the majority population. It’s a complete war zone there.
We kept weaving around convoys and soldiers, till we reached Srinagar in the afternoon. Though the road was very good, the constant military presence dampened our riding vigour. It was so surreal, we no longer felt like we’re in our motherland. All our lives, we always knew soldiers exist. We all had a cousin in the navy, or an uncle in the army. But it was always distant, somewhere else. Here it’s right in our faces, not numbers in a magazine article.
Prashi and Chaithra in the Shikara.
Srinagar! We rode straight to Dal lake and checked into a houseboat. The boat was phenomenal. It’s like a exquisite 5-star suite. Living room, dining room, kitchen, huge bedroom, running hot & cold water, all at the price of Rs. 700 a night for the three of us. That’s how hard people have been hit by the lack of tourism. I couldn’t have imagined paying less that Rs. 10,000 a night elsewhere for that kind of luxury.
Late afternoon, on Dal lake.
That evening, we did the usual Shikara tour around the lake, and visited an wood fretwork shop in a back-alley waterway. The old gentleman, who looked like he’d been carving wood since the dawn of time, gave us the grand tour. We bought quite a few of his creations. That night, we had a nice long sleep after a heavy dinner.
Ranga, on the Shikara.