Delhi to Kashmir Road Trip
Posted on 25. Mar, 2010 by David in Blog, Delhi, Kashmir, Things To Do, Travel
Wow, what a road trip! Last Sunday and Monday I traveled by road from Delhi to Srinagar, Kashmir for the first time.
On Sunday our trip took 14 hours to go from Delhi to Jammu. The next day’s journey from Jammu to Srinagar took us about 10 hours. Going faster is possible, but we took our time when stopping to eat or stretch our legs.
Travel by air from Delhi to Srinagar takes only 1 hour and 15 minutes, so a road trip may not be ideal for those tighter schedules or who hate spending so much time in a vehicle. If you have time to spare it certainly makes for a unique way to enter the Valley of Kashmir and then you can always fly out when you leave.
Over the weekend or early next week I’ll post a series of photos highlighting some amusing road signs along the highway. For now here’s a quick teaser of one of them:
Manasbal and Wular Lake Day Trip
Posted on 18. Oct, 2009 by David in Blog, Kashmir, Things To Do, Travel
Recently I went with some friends on a road trip to check out two lakes north of Srinagar, Manasbal and Wular Lakes. It’s a fairly easy trip with great views of the countryside outside of Srinagar. While we made the trip in the fall, I think it would make an even nicer day trip in the spring as the mountains and rice fields would be much greener.
Manasbal Lake is about a 1 hour drive north of Srinagar. The J&K Tourism Dept has made a lot of recent upgrades around the lake, building a walkway around it along with a nice park. Like Dal Lake there are shikaras available to enjoy a relaxing ride on the lake. However, Manasbal is much quieter and a pleasant getaway from busy city of Srinagar.
Beautiful Manasbal Lake
Park entrance at Manasbal Lake
Ancient Hindu Temple at Manasbal Lake
Peaceful and quiet Manasbal Lake
Wular Lake is often referred to as one of Asia’s largest freshwater lakes. It’s about another hour north from Manasbal. We only drove around the eastern side of the lake to Bandipora, and there wasn’t much water left to look at. I hear the western side has much more water. The region has had very little rain this year with some areas suffering from a drought. Because of that this side of Wular Lake looked more like a flat marshy plain than a large lake. The town of Bandipora has a lively square in the middle with several restaurants all serving the standard Kashmiri cuisine.
Marshy area at Wular Lake that used to be under water
Hopefully it's still possible to save some of this lake
More marsh with some water at Wular Lake
