Day 1: Welcome to Kashmir
We landed in Srinagar to find our chariot for the trip: a 15-seater van, procured for exactly four passengers. This van does not so much execute a U-turn as announce one — all traffic within a two-block radius grinds to a respectful halt while it completes the maneuver. Parking is its own event: pull up alongside a one-lane road, and congratulations, you’ve now altered the two-lane road to a narrow one-lane road.
An hour along the edge of Dal Lake later, we rolled into our Apple Orchard Retreat, where we were greeted like minor royalty — shawls draped over shoulders, cakes produced from somewhere, and bouquets pressed into hands. Next came a steamboat which ferried us to an island for Kashmiri saffron tea. There, Mala and I decided the occasion called for dressing up as Rajasthani women, because nothing says “we are in Kashmir” quite like borrowing an entirely different state’s wardrobe. Our husbands watched from the sidelines with the patience of men who had already done this math: every extra minute we spent twirling in borrowed lehengas was a minute we weren’t spending in a shop.
Dal Lake itself, it must be said, earned its reputation without any help from us — serene, nearly upholstered with water lilies and lotuses, mountains standing around it as if they knew they were the backdrop for someone’s screensaver. A genuinely lovely way to start the trip, sandwiched between two acts of chaos.
Somewhere in all this, I also quietly solved a naming crisis of my own. Our driver had introduced himself, clearly and politely. I had understood approximately one syllable of it, after several attempts, each one more embarrassing than the last. So I did what any reasonable person facing linguistic defeat does: I gave up and gave him a name. The one syllable I could reliably make out, on repeat attempts, became his name for the rest of the trip. In my head — and occasionally out loud, I’m not proud — our driver was now simply “Mullah.” He never knew. He never will. I’m sorry, Mullah, whoever you actually are.
Mullah pivoted seamlessly into logistics mode, helping us track down toiletries, a bottle of wine (obviously), and a Jio SIM card to resurrect my husband’s Airtel connection, which had apparently given up the will to function somewhere over Kashmir’s mountains. After a properly sumptuous dinner, we called it a night — a long day of flights and an even longer drive had caught up with all of us.
Day 2: The Most Famous Garden(s)
The day began virtuously with the climb to Shankaracharya Temple — 150-plus steps up, the same number down, which felt less like sightseeing and more like a targeted attack on the previous night’s dinner. The views, admittedly, were fabulous enough to justify the betrayal our knees were feeling.
Next stop: the Princess Gardens, where Sridhar, Mala, and Kumar bounded off with tourist enthusiasm while I stayed behind to conduct international diplomacy via Google Translate. I typed “I want clean, very clean toilets” and handed my phone to the driver, and just like that, we had our first real conversation. He walked me to a lovely garden, escorted me inside, personally inspected the facilities, and declared them very clean. I want to be clear: his definition of very clean and my definition of very clean were not filed under the same dictionary.
Then came the Shalimar Gardens, most famous of all the gardens, allegedly — a claim I neither confirmed nor denied, having skipped this one also in favor of my newly refreshed crossword puzzles and a rare, precious patch of WiFi. Kumar sat this one out too, a decision that led to an excellent stretch of time spent debating politics and reflexively cranking the ignition for the AC every time our driver wandered off. A garden, when you think about it, is really just a place other people walk through while you solve seven-letter words for “flightless bird.”
Our driver then informed us that Green Park Harwan was, without question, the most famous garden in Srinagar. Which made it, by our count, the third garden today to hold that exact title. Srinagar, it turns out, is a city generous with its superlatives.
Sridhar’s official position was that all gardens are, fundamentally, the same garden wearing different outfits — but he enjoyed the walk regardless, mostly because it gave him more time to talk to Kumar. Kumar’s official position, delivered somewhere mid-garden, was more direct: “You should just give me the ticket price.” A man who has seen one Mughal garden has, apparently, seen them all.
Mala, undeterred by any of this cynicism, hugged a tree. Kumar’s read on the situation: it had clearly been a while since she’d hugged her husband, hence the intensity now being redirected at unsuspecting flora. Meanwhile, the van itself had developed a personality of its own — a door gasket that bowed gently every time we climbed aboard, like the vehicle itself was trying to apologize in advance for the U-turns to come.
Then, Nigeen Lake, where we achieved a genuinely impressive level of indecision. First we wanted a shikara. Then we wanted to just drive around the lake instead. Then someone suggested a lakeside restaurant for tea. By the third pivot, communication with our driver had fully broken down — we’re fairly sure he understood the word “lake,” and we spent a nervous few minutes hoping he wouldn’t take our string of contradictory requests as literal instructions to drive into it. Somewhere in the middle of this, Sridhar was locked in a spirited debate with our tour coordinator, a debate he’d periodically pause mid-sentence to lean over and ask me: “Is it Afoofa? Or Agua?” Her name, for the record — and for the fourth time that day — was Aafiya.
The hunt for a clean toilet (a recurring subplot, you’ll notice) eventually led us to what we’re fairly sure was someone else’s birthday party. A boy named Saad was, we believe, turning some age we never confirmed, and four strangers materialized briefly in his celebration purely in search of a working bathroom.
We closed out the day the only sensible way: Mala and I regressed to somewhere between ten and fifteen years old, commandeering a see-saw before graduating to a slide, while our newest friend — a very game Sri Lankan traveler named Niranjala — documented the entire descent into childhood on video for posterity.
We came for Dal Lake. We left with an alias for our driver, three gardens each claiming the title of ‘most famous,’ and video evidence — courtesy of Niranjala — that will haunt Mala and me for years.
Photo and Video Evidence
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