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| Boat on Dal Lake in Srinagar |
Let me make it clear that it's impossible to confirm how long car a journey will take in India. Indians are vague, the roads are terrible and it's impossible to tell how many times the driver will stop for chai. The combination leads to unknown hours in a vehicle. When we left Leh for Srinagar we were told it would be about 11 or 12 hours. So Carl and I figured it would be more like 14 or 15 and we would get there at a reasonable time like 7 or 8 in the morning. Turns out we weren't lied to for once and we actually arrived on time at 4am. Why the hell would you organize shared taxis to arrive in a creepy parking lot when it's dark, foggy and nothing is open? I will never understand (put it on the list of things I can't figure out about India).
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| Creepy parking lot at 4am in Srinagar |
The internet hadn't been working in Leh and our phones wouldn't work for the northern states of Ladakh, (the state Leh is in) Kashmir and Jammu (again something I will never understand, why would a phone work for the whole country besides two states?) So we weren't able to arrange accommodations before we arrived. Luckily our taxi driver had a friend who owned a hotel. He called him and he was nice enough to come pick us up.
Carl and I quickly realized the hotel owner was a pretty big weirdo when he showed us our room and then wouldn't leave. It was 4:30 in the morning and he just stood in our room for 10 minutes asking question when all of our responses were along the lines of "we don't know, we're just really tired and need to sleep."
The next morning we had breakfast in our room: eggs, toast and chai. Then our hotel owner came in (in his pajamas) sat down and interrogated us about our travels plans while in Srinagar and since we hardly knew anything about Srinagar it was a pretty awkward conversation. Basically all we knew about was Dal Lake and there were house boats people stayed on and we thought we might want to stay on one. Our guy told us he owned a house boat too (oh lucky us) and he would take us to see it and we could decide if we wanted to stay if we liked it (no obligation of coarse).
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| Houseboats on Dal Lake |
We took an auto rickshaw to the lake then took a small boat taxi over to the house boat. The house boat was surprisingly dry and nice. All of the houseboats looked very similar, old and leaky. We decided not to stay on the houseboat because it was so isolated and we wanted to leave the next day and it would be too much of a hassle.
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| Carl enjoying tea in the living room of a houseboat |
The boats people use to get around Dal Lake are shaped similar to gondola boats in Venice but the bow and stern of the boat are lower to the water. The paddle is shaped like an upside down spade and the person rowing sits at the back of the boat. Carl and I relaxed while a nice young man showed us around the lake for an hour. When we were getting on the boat we realized to our horror that our guy was going to come with us, Carl had to ask him to please not join us on the boat. I think it was the only hour we were in Srinagar that he wasn't within 20 feet of us. The hour on the boat was so nice and peaceful. It felt similar to Lake Dillon in Colorado. Both lakes have pine tree covered mountians sorrouding them. Dal Lake is at a lower elevation and likely a lot warmer and dirtier than Lake Dillon though.
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| Carl enjoying the views |
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| Tea stall boat |
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| That's a full boat |
Our weird hotel guy said some of the house boats were a hundred years old...and they looked it. It was surprising that some of them where still floating.
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| How is that boat still afloat? |
On our little tour of the lake we went around where there were shops and houses. Houses on land...right next to houseboats. That's poor city planning if you ask me.
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| Poor city planning |
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| Nice place.. |
After the lake we went to an internet place because we hadn't had any access to the interwebs in almost 10 days. We were starting to get the itch for that good old wifi. At the internet place we went they were routing internet from a mobile phone and needless to say it was painfully slow. I sent one email in 15 minutes in order to inform my mom I wasn't dead. So we gave up and retreated to out hotel room. We told our guy we would like dinner at around 6 because he asked us (more like forced us) into having dinner at the hotel. We were exhausted since we didn't sleep in the car the night before and only slept from about 5 in the morning till 9:30. So dinner in the hotel was actually nice. What wasn't so nice was when our guy came in and sat on the bed and watched us eat, hardly speaking.
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| Dinner |
Carl and I made up a story about having to meet a friend in Dharamsala and asked him if we could get a shared taxi to Jammu so we could take a bus to Dharamsala. He told us yes and called a rickshaw to pick us up at 4:30am the next day, but he wasn't happy about it. He again stayed in our room way to long, and when he was leaving asked if we wanted to buy some stones from his friend."Nice stones, good price." We declined. He left, but don't worry, he came back to give is his business cards and make us swear ten times that we would recommend his hotel. When he was finally leaving he asked Carl if he had warm socks. Thinking he was going to try to sell him socks Carl told him that yes he had warm socks. Then he asked if he could have Carl's socks!!! Carl told him that he needed his warm socks and only had one pair. Then he proceeded to ask Carl to send him some socks from the US. (By the way, Carl brought his warm socks in India). Carl tried to reason with him saying most of the warm socks in the US are made in India or China any way. He wouldn't hear of it and told Carl he would email him about the socks. Before he finally left he told us that he would call us sometime and asked of Sunday was a good day to call. I am so thankful that I didn't put down a phone number... Well because I don't have a phone number but I really hope Carl gets a call.... Hopefully related to socks.
In the morning we took a shared taxi, in the form of a mini van to Jammu. Before we got in the taxi our guy gave Carl the most awkward hug I have ever seen in my life. It took 8 hours to get to Jammu. Our seats in the mini van were in the back with a young man that keep throwing up into a bag. It was an uncomfortable and gross ride but at that point anything was worth it to get the hell out of Srinagar and away from our hotel guy. Carl and I literally high fived when the mini van started driving away.
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| Creepy parking lot, again... |
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| Here he is: our weird hotel guy! |
Once we made it to Jammu we tired to find a bus to Dharamsala. After asking around for 30 minutes we discovered there wasn't a bus so we hired a taxi. Once we finally made it to Dharamsala we felt so relieved. Our phones worked again and our guest house has wifi!! Carl and I might never leave, it's so nice here! Go figure the Dali Lama picked a nice place to live.
Basically to sum things up Carl and I traveled 12 hours to Srinagar to feel uneasy the whole time besides the one hour we spent in a boat on Dal Lake. The next day we traveled another 8 hours in the back seat of a mini van with a boy throwing up next to us. Needless to say we won't be back to Kashmir and Jammu any time soon. But hey, on the upside we got a bunch of amazing photos.
Love you all! Wish us better luck on our next trip!
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