Savages Asia Adventure: The Beautiful Place That is Dal Lake

27th July - Delhi & Kashmir

Yesterday started with a very crazy morning, exactly what we've learnt to expect, we woke up at 8:00AM ready for our flight to Srinigar in Kashmir, turns out our taxi driver waited downstairs for 1hr 30min! Didn’t even let us know that he was there and thus we sat in the hotel room worried we were going to miss our flight until we finally went downstairs to see what was! A rushed journey through the hectic New Delhi streets took us firstly to the wrong terminal and we now only had 45min before our flight left the ground. I’ve no idea how but we got straight through check-in and security and were sat on a plane in no time. Finally leaving Delhi.

The flight across to Srinigar gave us amazing views of the snow topped Himalayas! Snow in India, its very confusing at first! We were met at the airport by Ash a funny guy that took us to the docks of Dal Lake where we were staying, even driving through the town we all agreed how much more relaxed it was than Delhi. We jumped onto our first long boat with some nerves, especially with all my camera equipment! We cruised nice and slowly to our new home for 5 nights, a boat house, the inside looks like an old victorian manor which is so different to what we’ve been staying in. We had finally landed in a relaxed, friendly place! The people here’s are brilliant, Pier is an Australian who’s a retired artist that has been travelling for years simply living off his pension. He instantly invited us down to the boats seating area for both Kashmir tea and hash. Then there is Henry and Andrew, great guys that have been in and out of travelling for some time, again they made us feel at home straight away. Our arrival was shortly followed by both Fran and Amy who had been only a few hours behind us through Delhi after John at the tourism office set them on our path up North. Two great girls from Manchester that luckily are interested in doing the same activities here, two days with a single night of camping in the Mountains along with a boat ride across Dal Lake, its around 18km! It’s great to be in a bigger group, meeting same minded people and generally having a laugh.

We sat up way into the night, all of us just drinking and relaxing by the water. After several hours Asher who works at the boat house took us into the lake, its pitch black water with an array of lights from all the boats on the sides, such a great scene. These boats are not big by any means, probably 8 of us crammed onto it! When the water got deeper we decide to jump in, midnight swimming is not something i expected to be doing in India, but i’m not complaining, it was such an experience.