ENORMOUS DAL LAKE

The next morning we boarded our 35 minutes Indigo flight from Jammu to Srinagar airport, my mother, my aunt and my uncle never felt before touching clouds so closely and their happiness was just inexpressible for me.

All of us were very excited as we touched Srinagar, our taxi was already waiting for us at the exit door of airport. We loaded our bags on taxi and all set to go to our houseboat ''Majestic group of houseboats' in Nigeen Lake owned by old gentleman Hamir and caretaken by polite Kashmiri Muzaffar. The Nigeen Lake is the most cleanest, uncrowded and purest branch of Dal lake, it was told to us by localites that it was specially cleaned by J&K government for the foreigner tourists to settle here as it indulges huge funds to clean entire Dal lake. The first expression rolled out from our mouth is "Wow...!! this is the Jannat." And these are the words that stuck to us in the following days..!!

Nigeen Lake in all its serene presence

As soon as we reached the houseboat, its time to meet my first unknown trusted friend Shahid, though we had not talk much before, but presumably, we both had some opinions about each other which I think proved to be fatal after meeting each other. But as I believed people are judged by nature more, we remained glued to our words. He suggested us for a shikara ride first and we took his words.

So, our first freshening encounter with Srinagar started with famous shikara ride in Dal lake, the Srinagar city is cherished by the astounding lake, one can find a new world over there, the mobile markets, the ladies roaming using boats for their daily households, the floating water lily gardens, the natural herbs or vegetables growing in between the lakes making all your eyes glued to the every scenic beauty of lake.

Plantations of water lilies making it a natural glory

Our boat rider showed us his artistic ability by creating a beautiful necklace for us out of the naturally grown water lily adding beauty to our charms.

Pictresque vegetable gardens

There are famous Meena Bazaar where you could do shopping like clothes, saffron, handmade jewellery, the mobile eateries coming all along to serve you delicacies like seekh kebabs, pakodas, tea, coffee n famous kahwas.

The mobile eatery shop

Also, the newest of this, the mobile photo studios promising to give you the taste of real tradition of Kashmir, and trust me, this is something that everyone should try to have that ''KASHMIR KI KALI' look.

The mobile photo studio all set to keep you in right pose

The lady rowing to purchase her daily households

While boating through Dal Lake, I and my elder sister Pooja also tried our hands in rowing the boat with bow all way coming back, and trust me at that time, we actually felt the challenging and struggling life of the people living at the bank of lake, one can find everything out there from the honey factories to the medicos, from the confectionary shops to the groceries and the only way to reach to them is by rowing a boat.

lets have a hand in rowing a boat too...!!!

the boatman showing the varsity of Dal Lake to its customers

The honey factory in between the Dal Lake

 The ruins of the Kashmiri Pandits are still intact which embark the glory of their presence and the hearts of their neighborhoods calling them again here with all love and affection.

Still intact house of Kashmiri Pandits waiting fullfledgedly for its real owners

It takes us almost 3 and a half hrs to visit entire scenic beauty of Dal lake and we returned to our houseboats with pleasing memories.

Rowing back to our homely houseboats.

At the dinner table in the houseboat, we were served with Kashmiri Zaikas that is all pure vegetarian, It was quite surprising for us in a state where Kashmiri Wazwaan was so popular, we were delighting our tongues with pure vegetarian Kashmiri Zaikas, all credit goes to Shahid and his attendants who cared for us. We slept so relaxing like we were in our homes dreaming about our next destination "Valley of Flowers".