TRAVEL
PLAN JOURNAL
PHOTO GALLERIES
FEATURES PEOPLE
MAPS
DOWNLOADS
GUESTBOOK
Patrols even on the waterways
A kingfisher on the railing of the houseboat.
2003-08-07/08
- Srinagar
(Day 114-115)
I hadn't seen Steve and Adrian since before arriving at Srinagar so I took a shakira over to Dal Lake with fearless Imran as my guide. The ride took almost an hour by boat through the canals and streams that run through the old town and I was seeing scenes that exactly matched the drawings in a book from 1923 on Kashmir that I am reading. One gets the feeling very little has changed in those last 80 years except water passing through the canals.
On the way, I was surprised even to see an army patrol on another boat checking the waterways. There are guys with submachine guns everywhere in this area.
Making it into Dal Lake, we are confronted with the task of finding Steve and Adrian's boat which with the profusion of boats one on top of the other took us another 45 minutes. I climbed on to find that they had left that morning for Jammu and I had just missed them. However, the ride was worth the trip and I have another lazy ride back to Nageen Lake as the sun set.
The 8th was just a day of chores and dealing with bureaucrats. We have decided to go fishing with the family and need to get permits, which the local fisheries official does not want to give out as we want to go on Saturday but local Indians can only fish on Sundays unless they want to pay the tourist price. It is an hour and a half of haggling and waiting in the stuffy offices in a reply of the waiting, I did in Recong Peo, which just leaves me amazed that anything actually gets done as far as the government here is concerned.
In a similar situation, we get to the one back which will do cash advances in Srinagar on credit cards to find that their swipe machine is not working and then that the line is not working for the approval agency. Another hour slips away as we wait for the problem to be fixed¡K just living on "Indian Standard Time"
Permits and money in hand we make the rounds to buy the supplies we will need for tomorrow and I end up being the proud owner of 13 flies for fishing.