Day 7 - Udhampur to Srinagar

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Got up at 4 am and went to Krishna temple and attended arathi. After aarathi left Udhampur ISKCON at 6:30am enroute to Srinagar.

At about 8 am reached Patnikot hill top and sat there and had breakfast which was given to us by ISKCON.

After breakfast started riding and within about 30 minutes it started raining and we had to ride with our rain coats on.

The entire route was very picturesque with lot of colourful flowers adjacent to the road and in the valleys. The valley along the road was more friendly as compared to the frightening valleys of dharmshala and dalhousie. There were huge rivers in the valleys flowing with water real force and a couple of waterfalls like Anukhee and sharmeele.

Though there were a lot of scenic views we couldn’t take much photographs as it was raining all the time.
Passing through Jawahar Tunnel which is 2.547 kms was en experience by itself. It brought back a lot of memories of my 1979 trip when I had sighted a fox just outside the tunnel. Unfortunately for me personally JT was a letdown since, I wanted to take a lot of photographs, but nowadays JT is so heavily guarded and for security reasons photography is not allowed.

Immediately after passing JT we saw the 1st view point of the Kashmiri Valley called the Titanic View point. Luckily for us the rain stopped and we got a chance to stop and take pictures. From there we did a marathon ride of 85 kms, non-stop to Srinagar and another 25 kms around the city and dal lake to reach Hazrath Bul where our host Bashir was supposed to send some one to receive us.

We waited near Hazrat Bul for about 20 minutes and then came to Peacock house boats. Once we reached the house boat sat in the balcony and enjoyed the view of Nigen lake and had early dinner and slept early by 9:15 pm.

Before I sign off one thing I should say is that one major difference that I see between now and 1979 is that you see army personell now. As a matter of fact there were jawans guarding the entire highway between Udhampur and Srinagar. I salute the jawans who make sure our travel is smooth braving the morning sun and freezing nights. I just got a fraction of the taste of how bad things can get when my socks got wet and I had to ride for about 30mns before I could change into something dry.

The total ride today was 243kms which we took 10 hours. It was 4:30pm by the time we reached Srinagar and it was only 5:30pm by the time we reached our house boat.

We were slowed down due to factors like rain, a couple of accidents which halted the passage of vehicles on the highway which cause a stack up of more than200 vehicles on each side and army vehicle convoys. But since we were on our bikes the stack up of the vehicles didn’t affect us much as we wriggled in and out of the vehicles though it did not stop us it was enough to slow us down. God save those who were in the cars, they must have taken more than 14 to 16 hours. One Army convoy had a total no. of 148 vehicles moving in the opposite direction. I saw another similarly convoy in the same direction as ours behind us. Just imagine the movement of defense personnel that happens on a daily basis and the cost of it on our exchequer.

My odo totaled 1048kms for this trip and totally my bike has crossed 10K mark today.

It is exactly 1 week since we started from Bangalore.

Photos of Day 7

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=pottumarthi&target=ALBUM&id=5624368698855799521&authkey=Gv1sRgCPXPvKmPxfWkcg&feat=email

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Comments

[Abdullah Prince]

U people are allway's wellcome.
I, amglad to learn about ur trip to srinagar, thisa fantastic job u done by making our contryman know about ur experiance, hopethis will encorage others to come here to sgr. I, fell proude if u ever come and meet me, plz. feel free to contact. Thanks for all u write.