Quite good shops for European stores and articles are now springing up in Srinagar. Cox & Co. and the Punjab Banking Co. have branches there, and Cockburn's Agency do every kind of agency work, engage boats and servants, and let out tents, camp furniture, etc. There are also many respectable native firms who do the same—of whom, perhaps, the best is Mohamed Jan, because he does not pester and importune the visitor in the way that most others do, and really render life in Srinagar intolerable.
There is a large choice of expeditions from Srinagar to points of interest, which will be described in detail in a later chapter. First in the immediate vicinity there are picnics to be made to the Dal Lake, to the two Moghal gardens,—the Nishat Bagh and the Shalimar Bagh,—and to the beautiful camping ground of the Nasim Bagh. These are expeditions which can be made in a single afternoon if necessary.
Of more remote tours the favourites are:—up the river to Islamabad and the beautiful Achibal spring and garden; to the clear crystal springs of Vernag, one of the many sources of the Jhelum; to the famous ruins of Martand which occupy the grandest site for a temple of any in the world; to the Lidar valley, Pahlgam, the Kolahoi glacier, and the caves of Amar Nath. Islamabad is the starting-point for both the Lidar valley and Martand, and here the house-boat may be left. Islamabad, thirty-four miles distant, may also be reached by a road which, though unmetalled, is in dry weather quite good. I have left Srinagar in a motor car at 8.45, have spent over an hour going round Islamabad, have eaten lunch under the glorious chenar trees at Bijbehara, and have been home again at Srinagar by 3.15 the same afternoon.
Down the river are equally delightful tours to be made. At Shadipur, at the junction of the Sind River with the Jhelum River, there is a charming grassy camping-ground under chenar trees. Ganderbal is a few miles higher up the Sind River, and forms the base for expeditions to (1) the Wangat ruins and the Gangarbal Lake, an exquisite torquoise-coloured sheet of water reposing immediately beneath the great cliff and glaciers of the Haramokh mountain; and (2) the beautiful Sind valley with its grand mountain scenery, and the charming camping-ground of Sonamarg (the golden meadow) also under towering mountain masses and close to glaciers. Up this valley also lies the road to the Zoji-La Pass on the far side of which branch off roads to Baltistan, on the one hand, with its fine ibex-shooting ground, immense glacier region, and K2, the second highest mountain in the world; and on the other to Ladak with its Buddhist monasteries perched on any inaccessible rocky pinnacle that can be found, and Leh, the meeting-place of caravans from Lhasa and from Central Asia—a most quaint and picturesque little town embedded among bare, sun-baked mountains which has been the starting-point of two journeys I have made across the dreary, lofty Karakoram Pass (18,500 feet) to Turkestan and to the Pamirs.
From Shadipur, at the junction of the Sind with the Jhelum, the next expedition to be made is to the Wular Lake and Bandipur, from whence ascends immediately the long and numerous zigzags to Tragbal, a favourite camping-ground amid the pines, and to the Tragbal Pass (12,600 feet), from whence a magnificent view of Nanga Parbat (26,600 feet) may be seen, though I am bound to say that I have never seen it myself in spite of having crossed the Pass six times on the way to, or returning from, Gilgit and the Hunza frontier which lies in this direction. It is by this route, too, that sportsmen proceeding to shoot markhor in Astor, or ibex and bear in Tilail and Gurais, make their way, as also the few who obtain permission to shoot Ovis Poli on the Pamirs. For myself the Tragbal and Bandipur have many welcome associations, for it is here that I have finished two great exploring expeditions, and on a third occasion returned there after a stay of two and a half years hard service on the Hunza and Chitral frontier. It is impossible to convey the delicious sense of relief the traveller feels in descending from the Pass, in leaving behind all the rigors of severe mountain travel and intense cold, and with each easy step downward feeling the air growing warmer and warmer, and at length reaching the lake throwing himself into an armchair in a comfortable house-boat, and then gliding smoothly over the placid lake with the evening sunlight flooding the beautiful valley, and a soothing sense suffusing him at difficulties surmounted, at hardships past, and at present relaxation of body, mind, and purpose.
THE VALLEY OF GURAIS