Ah! A factual error in previous post about waking up in Srinagar: we actually woke up early that day — the timestamp on photographs confirms it.
26th May 2010: We woke up, dizzy and weary. What shook us into consciousness was a bird flying straight into the room and flying around for a while. I was happily photographing while everyone didn’t respond that nicely ;-)
We were without a shower for two days now, so that was on priority. Taking a shower was a different experience, again. The houseboat was obviously made completely out of wood, the floor was wooden too. So they had installed a bath-tub and had a plastic carpet. There was no way to plug the bath tub, moreover it was fairly cold and the “hot” water we got was lukewarm at best and the quantity was one bucket each. So each one of us stood inside the tub, with the bucket on our side and enjoyed a “shower” with mug-fulls of water on our heads instead. Heh.
A protip from a biker to other bikers: that short I’m wearing is actually my thunderwear ;-) It’s custom made at home and is necessary for a hairy dude like me. If I’m to ride for more than 2 hours in a day, I prefer these as I’ve found from painful experiences that this plain no-elastic garment is a hundred times more comfortable. And… hair around my thighs don’t get entangled in the elastic and aren’t pulled till the skin becomes to sensitive that I can’t stand or sit without hurting. And no, it’s not gross, it’s just how I am, and many guys are. Just repeat after me “he’s a motorcycle tourer… they can be like this.” Let’s move on…
Shrenik photographed other houseboats from the window in the meanwhile, here’s one photograph. Photo by Shrenik, postprocessing is done by me.
Breakfast was no issue as there’s a nice restaurant just opposite the houseboat. Or so we thought. We walked in to find all chairs stacked up on the tables, three people with mops and buckets cleaning the floor while another man with a broom trying to keep his sweeping faster than the guys with mops. They quickly wrapped up that work and laid out the tables. We couldn’t decide out what to order as they were just starting their kitchen and we were in a hurry.
Finally we asked “जल्द से जल्द क्या दे सकते हैं?” (what can you serve quickest?) and ordered Aaloo Parantha, and if I recall correctly, sandwiches, also chai for some coffee for others. I’d like to remind fellow travelers and my friends: when in a hurry, order the same dish and drinks for everyone. Our orders took half an hour to arrive, I went shooting in the meanwhile.
.
.
There were so many flowers! I was excited and shooting one flower then another, much like this black bee gathering nectar…
The enchanting Chinar, a huge tree with fully grown leaves bigger than your palm and pretty round and furry flowers. They look very elegant, so tall yet gracefully bending all the way down so you can still touch their leaves and flowers while the tallest branches are over three floors high.
I picked a small leaf and after photographing it here, pressed it between pages of my notebook. A souvenir from Srinagar, a little gift for my mother who loves these trees.
After the breakfast was done, we filled up water in our canvas bags and plastic can. Asked the waiter to get a few jugs of water - he pointed us to a wash basin outside and explained “It’s the same water I’m going to bring, will be faster if you fill from here.” So we did!
.
Came back to the houseboat to pick up our stuff, packed everything on the bike - another half an hour and left towards Dal Lake.
.
.
I had heard a lot, I mean a LOT about Dal lake being beautiful and scenic. That the Shikara boats were a “must” to be photographed… little had I realized how commercialization eats up everything that is beautiful in the process of excreting money. Nearly every Shikara had an advertisement for underwear. Almost every houseboat carried hoardings of toilets, wash basins or creams to make you look prettier and instead of the shikara-shops carrying fresh vegetables and flowers, all I could find were soda bottles and packets of chips. Again, yesterday’s experience of locals hounding visitors for making a sale - a whole group of shikara owners surrounded us trying to convince us to take a boat ride, elbowing each other away while blocking my view of the lake. I promptly put the camera inside and started the bike… revved up the engine to make space in the mob and escaped!
.
.
.
I stopped away from the people to try and photograph once again. Managed a few better frames this time.
.
.
Also noticed that there was a major cleanup operation going on, with many machines and a lot more people removing weed from the lake’s surface.
We didn’t have much time left so pressed towards Leh route. What we had in mind was simple: reach Drass or Kargil by night. So we skipped the Mughal gardens. In retrospect, we should had spent the day in Srinagar since we were still here at around noon. Our plans to reach Kargil or even Drass were about to be smashed.
Will continue in next post ;-)
