At 5.46 am on 06 May 2024, we were at Dal Lake’s floating market.
My photo is looking at two strangers – to us – but they were also satisfied customers of the lake’s “tea king”.
Over four days, we floated across parts of Dal Lake on at least eight occasions.
Aside from members of our own party, the pictured couple were the only “Westerners” we saw in a Shakira.
Once upon a time, not so many years ago, Dal Lake was a “magnet” for Western tourists; for many of them the floating market was a key destination.
That was before tourism in Indian-controlled Jammu & Kashmir collapsed, catastrophically, thanks to “security issues” and “the virus”.
Western governments still advise against travel to Jammu & Kashmir, and to Pakistan.
Very few ”Foreign” tourists visit them.
The vale of Kashmir’s tourism industry has, however, recently enjoyed a spectacular rebound.
We saw a great many tourists there; almost all were holders of Indian passports.
(later that day, on “dry land” in Srinagar, we saw a small number of Westerners. If one added them, the couple pictured above, and the members of our party, over a little more than four full days in Jammu and Kashmir, “Westerners” comprised fewer than thirty of the thousands of tourists we saw)
Presumably, most Indian tourists would not find a floating market as “exotically alluring” a destination as it would be to many “Western” tourists….and perhaps affluent Indians on holiday are also less inclined to get up at 5 am, or earlier.
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