Lazily Lounging in Lakeside Luxury

August 12th, 2012 - Srinagar, Kashmir, India

Hello all you good people from Canada!

Thinking of you here as we are "lazily lounging in lakeside luxury."  I keep thinking of home so much because, here we are sitting on the deck of our houseboat (I will explain), and the ONE thing that's missing is that I HAVEN'T GONE SWIMMING.  I love swimming.  But here, I must cover my shoulders and be conservative instead of frolicking in a bathing suit like I would at home.  A shame.

If you haven't already guessed, its Marina writing this email.  I shall pick up where we left off... Leh!

So we really didn't do anything in Leh besides chill and enjoy the mountain culture.  But after recovering we didn't stay too long.  Trekking would have been lovely, but we ARE going to Nepal, and it was soooo overpriced.  So we decided to wait.  So we left!  We showed up at the bus stand with our packs and after some yelling/bargaining we hopped in the trunk/back seats of a Jeep heading to Srinagar.  You know where you normally put all your bags and things in the back of an SUV?  The place with no seats?  Well there were seats there, and that's where we sat.  With our knees bumping together, we hit the road!

It really wasn't that terrible of a drive actually.  Compared to what we'd been getting used to, it was luxury!  Somehow, our young flexible bodies were able to bend into awkward lying down positions and we managed some sleep.  I used a bag of potatoes for my pillow, and Orion used a stranger's suitcase.  In the morning we awoke to breath taking views of the mountain pass we were crossing as we descended into the Kashmir valley.  As we began to wake up enjoying the beautiful views, everyone else in the Jeep began falling asleep.  Including the driver.  We were supplied with an excellent view of his drooping eyelids and purple bags through the reflection in the rear view mirror and watched in horror as his head often lolled to one side.  Orion would shout something random about stopping for chai every once in awhile, and he would only grunt, and ask for a tip from us when we arrived.  What could we do but have faith that we were not yet supposed to leave this world?  We visualized white light around the Jeep and went back to enjoying the scenery.   

Somehow we arrived in one piece, and our driver managed to stay awake.  As soon as we began to enter the city, a van with two shouting man began to give chase to our Jeep.  We pulled over and found out they had somehow sniffed out the white people hiding in the trunk of the Jeep and wanted to show us accommodation.  We immediately refused.  After driving for awhile longer, our driver arrived at a suitably random place to dump us by the side of the road, so we got out.  The men had followed us for about half an hour and BEGGED to show us their room.  We told them our cheap budget, and they promised it would only cost that much so we reluctantly agreed to go.  We expected a cement hole in the wall in some sort of dark alley.  That's usually what you get for following the hotel touts.  But, we were presently surprised to be led to a houseboat - Srinagar's main tourist attraction.  It was a seriously funky boat, and it was shared with the actual Indian family who lived there, but the price was right so we agreed to stay.

Our room was made of whatever scraps of wood they could find nailed to the floor, roof, and walls, completely covered in random scraps of colourful fabric, and over-postered in ONE stupid Airtel (an Indian cellphone company) add.  There were actually like 30 of the SAME poster...  Our bathroom floor was slanted at a 45 degree angle, and there was a lovely hole in the boards of the wall situated directly behind the squat toilet.  Lovely.  But it was still a fun room!  We quite enjoyed moving into it.  

We discovered we were close to town as well.  All we had to do was cross a simple walking bridge!  Or so we thought...  As we strolled comfortably down the cement bridge, we were surprised to see that the bridge sort of ended halfway across...  All that was left was the framework - long boards crisscrossing over the 6m drop to the river below.   To get to the boards, we had to step off the cement about 60cm down to the sketchy boards..  Then balanced precariously, we walked across one framework beam.   When we reached the end of the beam (blocked by some random hunk of machinery), someone had placed old, splitting 2x6s in a terrifyingly sketchy "walkway" the rest of the way across.  We then stepped from the stable framework beam onto the unstable wobbly boards and made the rest of the journey across!  And LO!  The other side was waiting.  After a day or two, we became quite proficient at the art of walking the bridge.  We even attempted the feat in the rain.  One time one the way home, we had to wait at one end for a family to cross.  We were impressed to see a young little girl leading the way.  As she approached, we could see she wasn't as brave as we thought, as she was crying "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!"  the whole way.  But everyone made it without incident.  I guess you have to learn the ways of such things at a young age in order to survive in India!

Anyway.  So Srinagar!  The things to do here are stay on a houseboat, ride in a shikara (a gondola like boat with pillows and curtains and shade that you lounge in while being paddled around), and stay on a houseboat. I am aware that I said that twice.  We figured our houseboat/homestay experience on the river was good enough so we thought we had that checked off.  Not so!!  

We decided to get a shikara ride around the lake the next day.  We were paddled around in luxury on Dal Lake and the smaller Golden Lake.  We got a good look at the water based culture in Srinagar.  When the British were in India, for a reason I forget, they were not allowed to own land in Srinagar.  So being so clever, they built a MILLION houseboats and lived on the lake.  There are still here today, only they have been occupied by the locals.  Everything is done on the lake.  If you want to go visit your neighbour, you take your canoe, not your car.  If you want to buy fruits or veggies, you wait for the floating veggie market to come paddling by in a canoe. Or the canoe-based supermarket with chips, cigarettes, chocolate, and EVERYTHING.  Or the floating homemade soft ice cream boat with delicious cardamom flavoured ice cream for only 10 Rupees!  We (especially me) soon realized the appeal of the fancier houseboats on the lake and were convinced to look for our own immediately!  

We found a seriously CUTE little boat for just around 1 dollar over our 5 dollar each budget, which including breakfast and dinner, and the entire boat to ourselves.  Excited, we moved in the next morning, crossing the precarious death bridge with our ridiculously heavy packs and instruments, expecting to stay maybe 2 nights...

Our room has a massive comfy bed (amazing) and the bathroom is clean and doesn't smell (amazing!) and if we walk down a tiny narrow carpeted hallway, we enter our sitting room area with lovely white cotton curtains blowing in the wind, leading to our deck.  Our deck is the best part!  It has two benches for sitting, and  two bed-like loungers for lounging.  I immediately decked my side out with pillows for maximum comfort. :)  The view off our deck is of the gorgeous mountain in Srinagar with a shrine dedicated to Swami Shankara at the top of it, a quiet but lively "roadway" where lots of people in their little boats paddle past all day, and a view of other cute little houseboats.  Suddenly, 2 nights became a week.  HOW?  We got sucked in to serious chilling!  Like I said earlier, the only thing missing is that I'm not wearing a bathing suit and jumping into the lake every time I get a little too warm.  But this is India!  And Srinagar is mostly Muslim.  So I don't..

2 days ago we did a pilgrimage to the Shankaracharya temple in celebration of Krishna's birthday.  Being in a Muslim city isn't the ideal place for celebrating Hindu holidays but I think we picked the best place to be.  After paying our respects in the temple, we started the walk down and enjoyed GORGEOUS views of the city.  We even used our cameras to zoom in on our houseboat, so tiny from so far up!  We also celebrated Orion's birthday on the 8th!  There just happens to be a lot of ice cream in Srinagar, so obviously, we had ice cream. (Orion's favorite thing ever.)

Right now happens to be the Ramadan (Ramazan), the hugest Muslim celebration of the year.  The Muslims fast for 30 days from dawn until dusk with lots of prayer throughout the day.  They project their prayers through loudspeakers placed EVERYWHERE.  There are a million different people singing a million different songs all with terrible singing voices and all at the same time.  VERY loudly.  ALL the time.  And since we can't understand what they're saying, it makes it slightly more confusing.  Up on the top of the mountain, way up high, we could still here the drone of the thousands of voices.  Because of the chaos of sound, seeming to us to sound like thousands of people moaning and groaning, we have dubbed it "The Zombie Apocalypse."   (One of the reasons we were happy to leave our first houseboat was because we were literally woken up EVERY night like TEN TIMES a night to actually the LOUDEST most HORRIBLE singing ever.  Like so loud it hurt our ears and we couldn't sleep even with earplugs in.)

Well that's about it..  We plan on leaving tomorrow to spend the rest of August before our departure to Nepal hiking Vaishno Devi, visiting the Sawal's again in Pathankot, seeing the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and possibly going for a pony ride in Dalhousie.  LOTS to do.  Anyway that's all for now.  Hope this rant wasn't too boring or lengthy like all our emails tend to be.

Please everyone, after reading this email, women especially, put on your bathing suits, put on SHORTS and a SLEEVELESS SHIRT over top, go to the lake, and wearing only your bathing suit, no black robes or headscarves or ghost costumes with only tiny mesh eye holes, GO SWIMMING.  Then exalt in your freedom and rejoice in your equality! (This is aimed at women.  It is so difficult to see such oppressed women in this culture.)

LOVE Marina (And Orion who is sitting beside me patiently correcting my spelling and grammar)