Blog Marathon Feb 2016 (Post 2)

  KaShMir 2014- A trip to heaven and back...

 Unlike our other trips, this trip to Kashmir was planned quite at the last moment!It was the month of April 2015 when we (Mom and I) were chalking out various possibilities of a week long trip: 

• South India - DONE
• Konkan- DONE
• Rajasthan - STRIKE OUT- Definitely not a place to visit in the hot month of May 
• North East; Himachal- STRIKE OUT- considering the motion sickness problem I have with zigzag roads
• Abroad: Singapore: Done; Dubai: again a bad idea considering we were planning a summer vacation!
• What remains? Some snow clad but still a pleasant place which won't be unpleasant for me as well!!!

And that is how we decided on Kashmir- amazing weather, not too zig zag roads, gives us the pleasure of being in a hilly region and to top it all it gives us the contentment of experiencing snow for the first time ever!

Without wasting a minute more we booked our tour (a 7 day package) with Veena World, one of the finest travel agency with amazing service, which presents us with amazing bunch of memories and few new precious ties which go on for years to come!

Finally the day had come when we took a morning flight to Delhi and from there to Srinagar! It took a little longer than it would usually have taken at the other airports to get out of the airport (of course for the security reasons!) But the moment we came out, I knew that all that we are going to do for the next 7 days is relax and breathe in real fresh air! 

The route through Kashmir was planned: Srinagar- Gulmarg- Sonmarg- Pehelgam- Srinagar!

YUHU!!!ICE COLD WATER RIDE :)

We met our fellow tour mates formally that evening in the houseboat in Srinagar! Amazing group that it was! The houseboat stay followed by a river ride and Kashmiri Kawa tea welcomed us to this heavenly place!

THE ROAD AND THE VIEW!!!

 The next day we headed to our first destination- Gulmarg! The road which led there was beautiful and the temperature kept on dropping as we travelled more and more in the mountains! It took us 4 hours to reach there with a break of 90 minutes for lunch. The restaurant where we had lunch offered us with not only delicious warm food but also a breathtaking view of a valley I would never forget! After reaching the hotel we had the entire day for ourselves. We decided to take a stroll to get to know that beautiful place better. But it did not go that way, as the temperature dropped more. That was the first time when I was actually exposed to cold. But I found it damn awesome to open my mouth and  to see the vapours coming out every time i uttered a word. That was something new for me and indeed super funny :P
 
Gulmarg (meadow of flowers) is a known place in India for its winter sports and I could see how much famous that place was from the amount of tourists flooding in that tiny place. The next morning we were all given huge furry jackets, gloves, caps and all possible stuff to cover ourselves from the biting cold and that's how we started for the very famous Gandola ride (cable car) which took us to its first phase at the height of  3,747 m (12,293 ft). As the height increased, the oxygen level dropped distinctly, but we were already given instructions by our able tourist guides for how to tackle the situation. Each one of us was asked to carry a camphor with us and inhale it whenever necessary. 

WITH THE PILLARS OF THE TOUR!

Here I would indeed like to appreciate all the efforts taken by all our tour guides and not only did their job at par but also went out of the way to reach out to every single person especially elderly people and small kids. Kashmir being a place crucial to tackle in all aspects (may it be geographic or political) these tour guides exhibited their expertise and presence of mind at every single point, right from changing a route or taking a halt predicting the weather conditions to staying back at the hotel or going ahead when a curfew gets declared at a place we needed to en-route. They nailed it at their job without making their tourist group of 52 people realize the gravity of the situation! Thank you all of you, as had it not been for you all, we would not have been able to enjoy that place to the extend to which we did!

NOT JUST A POSE!

Gulmarg was super fun as for the first time I experienced snow, played in it, learnt how to ski,
had a bike ride in snow mountains when it started snowing heavily and had garma garam Maggie (pahadiyo mein Maggie khane ka maza hi kuch aur hai ;) )


The next destination we headed to was Sonmarg (meadow of gold). The journey from Gulmarg to Sonmarg is till date the best journey I have ever had. The view that road presented us with is beyond description. Snow clad mountains with river flowing on one side... totally

OUR SONMARG HOTEL!

picturesque... totally surreal! To top it all we landed in the hotel which was covered with snow from all its sides. The view from the room was spine-tingling!!! The ledge ride on and from the snow clad mountain right in front of the hotel was marvelous. 


With these brilliant snowy memories of snow we continued to Pehalgam- a village in the heart of Lidder Valley and quite known for the famous Betaab Valley which of course gets its name from that Bollywood movie!

BETAAB VALLEY!

 Lush green that it was, we had one of the best walks of our lives in that beautiful place. With every breath I felt as though the freshness in that air is increasing our life span by years! Lucky people who have been staying in such an enraptured place for years!

PEHALGAM VIEW!

With these bag full of memories we approached our last halt for the tour: Srinagar! And a thought suddenly pinched me that with this we are again slowly heading back to the city life. The last 5 days all for ourselves, cut from the world seemed to have flown away and what struck was the reality that 'I can't stay here forever!'
Srinagar though was not like just another city! It had its own charm- Moughal gardans and Dal lake! But the best part was the boat ride in Dal lake. Because it was not just another ride! As we sat in the boat: Mom me and my new friend with the same name Shreya, we had this princess feeling, especially when we wore the kashmiri costumes and clicked some amazing pictures and I kept muttering my very favourite song: kashmir ki kali hu mein...

With these unforgettable memories of our trip to heaven...we were back...on earth...

A wish for peace in this heaven!!!

A big thanks to our tour guide dadas!

A wish to visit this heaven again with my new friend with the same name ;) 

Cheers!

Love

Shreya!