Category: Americas and Eurasia and Africa

I took the photo at 6.35 am on 06 May 2024, as we were nearly back at “our” luxurious houseboat, after a very early morning visit to Dal Lake’s (floating) vegetable market.

The pictured houseboat is one of the lake’s biggest; “ours” was pretty substantial, but much smaller…and rather nicer, I suspect.

Atop the big hill – and widely visible from many points in and around Srinagar – is Hari Parbat Fort.

The largest, most luxurious boats on Dal Lake do not traverse its waters.

Its “houseboats” stay put.

In most cases their keels are grounded.

However, in the event of high floodwaters, the houseboats eventually also rise – they float, and thus escape being “flooded”.

The grandest of them – such as the pictured example – are “palatial”.

Elaborately carved woodwork is a signature feature.

This post’s pictured persons are not directly engaged in Dal Lake’s now-dominant industry: tourism.

They are members of the circa ten thousand indigenous half-amphibious families who row Shikaras on the lake, clean it, cultivate vegetables and fish in the lake for their livelihood.

(The above-mentioned are not Dal Lake’s only human residents; the total current number is circa seventy thousand. Then there are the tourists who stay on its more than nine hundred houseboats, almost all of which expel untreated waste. And don’t forget that only circa half of the human waste from the other 1.7 million residents of Srinagar – plus who knows how many tourists’ ditto – is properly “treated”. Much of that also ends up in Dal Lake)

Most watercraft on Dal Lake are Shikaras – distinctive, locally-made wooden boats.

Shikaras owned by those who transport tourists, or sell things to them, are colourful, usually elaborately decorated, and “comfortable”; they often have a name which includes the word “deluxe”.

The “non-touristy” Shikaras are unnamed, smaller, plain;  their occupants are fully exposed to sun, rain and snow.

I am very sure that the images in this second chapter of our Dal Lake series are much more representative of most tourists’ experience on Dal Lake in 2024 than were the first chapter’s photos.

Forty years ago, Indian-controlled Kashmir – Dal Lake, most especially – hosted many Western visitors.

Whether “truth-seekers”/“hippies”, “adventurers”, “nature lovers”, people who preferred “luxury” accommodation, or those who relished “roughing it”, everyone who told me about their Dal Lake experiences spoke glowingly, fondly.

A “return visit” – now – would surely shock most of them.

This series’ overall title is an oft-quoted description of Dal Lake.

”Lake of flowers” is another.

If one is up very early, sitting in a boat as it glides across the lake’s quieter end, and one looks up – or across the lake – one really can “feel the serenity”.

Then, it is easy to understand why the beauty of Kashmir’s most famous lake has long been “legendary”.