Unravelling Para Para Paradise-Kashmir! ( Act 1: Scene 1: Srinagar)

On arrival at Jammu tawi , you can see a little hustle and bustle of the city life.Pretty guarded though. Instead of loitering around in the city of Jammu, we decided to head straight to valley. So we hired a car and took up the Jammu-Srinagar Highway. With picturesque mountains on one side and trenches on the other, the route surely gives you an adrenaline rush. Yes, there was a jam too. Loads of private cars, corporate SUVs and army trucks, all lined up on a National Highway. On our way to Srinagar, we did have the fortune of eating the famous rajma chawal with a generous portion of ghee and we stopped a cup of tea in the lush greens of Patnitop.

We finally reached Srinagar around 1 am and what made it better was a full moon night. Honestly speaking, it felt pretty scary at first. After hearing all those stories about Kashmir, landing there after midnight, when there is pin drop silence around you , you tend to feel a little chicken-hearted. With no prior reservations made, my dad went outside to get us a houseboat for the night. While we sat in the car next to Dal Lake, suddenly two kashmiri men dressed in pheraan came to us and called us outside the car. We were scared to death at first, but then seeing my father with them was quite a relief. We stepped into their small boats called shikara , sailed across the Dal Lake, with chilling water, risen up to the level of the boat. On finally reaching our houseboat, we just crashed. Next morning, on waking up we realised that our houseboat was a luxurious dream. With beautiful wood carved dining tables to sparkling chandeliers, it outran the lavish hotel ambience. Moreover, it was floating on the Dal with a scintillating view of the Pir Panjal Range. Nothing in the world could have matched that.