Srinagar - Dal Lake

After Delhi, we never had an adequate internet connection -- most of the time we had no connection at all. Kashmir and Ladakh are remote with challenging topography. The borders with Pakistan and China (Tibet) are contested, and the Indian government attempts to control information. The military is pervasive.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Today we flew from Delhi to Srinagar. Srinagar is quite a contrast with the rest of India. It's hard to believe at times that this is still India. We're staying on a fabulous houseboat in Nigeen Lake. It is essentially a floating 5-star hotel.

Our houseboat. It's even more amazing on the inside.

To get to the houseboats we boarded "shikaras" to go across the lake.

Inside a shikara.

We also used the shikaras for an afternoon excursion on Nigeen and Dal Lakes.

Shikaras at the houseboat dock.

Our parade of shikaras going under a small bridge.

The lakes around Srinagar have large patches covered with water lilies.

Dal Lake has many "floating gardens", where vegetables are grown on floating mats of grasses and sedges.

Beans growing in a floating garden. If you look closely, you can see the bean pods.

Small canoe-like boats have many uses.

Both men and women paddled these boats.

A number of women were cutting lily pads for cattle feed.

Another boat.

Birds abounded.

There were occasional groups of domestic water fowl.

And lots of wild water fowl, such as this little grebe.

The herons were particularly photogenic. I took way too many photos!

A heron taking flight.

An egret.

Hundreds of crows were sitting in a stand of trees and making quite a racket.

Two Himalayan bulbuls.

It was fun to watch kingfishers dive for fish. This is a pied kingfisher. Common kingfishers were also, well, common.

A kingfisher starts a dive.

Two kingfishers sitting on an overhead wire.

And I'll finish the day with moonrise over Nigeen Lake.