Carl and I didn't feel an any strong urge to take the same road back to Manali after our previous journey so when a shop keeper told us we could go through Kashmir and Jammu (a northwestern state of India) to Dharamsala we were sold. We were informed that the road was better and there were a couple bigger cities we could stop at to break up the journey: double sold. We were aware that Kashmir isn't the safest place because of conflict between Pakistan and India and we knew there had been flooding there but the roads were still suppose to in good condition. Everyone we talked to said the conflict between India and Pakistan was next to the border and not in the cities. Since we really didn't want to back track we decided to just go for it and make Srinagar our next destination.
