Delhi - Srinagar

Day 2 11/09/2012 – location Srinagar – Kashmire & Jammu

            Im currently sat on a bed in a room on a house boat, just off lake naga, considering going trekking in the Kashmir mountains for a couple of days, however ill track back to the beginning of my trip. As I wondered around the lacking duty free I found my self having somewhat of a dawning as it occurred to me that I had not considered the scale that two years of travelling. Luckily I had a couple of hours before my flight began to ponder on this, to put it simply my trip did not begin without a fair amount of trepidation. My flight was pretty standard, a lot of films and no sleep to be had.

            Upon arrival in Delhi I promptly found myself outside the the airport proper spinning in circles wondering what I had done and asking why? Despite my best efforts my exhaustion won and I fell victim to the normal first taxi con but for all that it got me near where I wanted to go. In fact I noticed another similarity in these first taxi drivers they all seem to know plenty of travel agents. A mixture of being tired and not having a plan lead me to deciding to book  a flight through the travel agents instead of following  my original idea of finding a train. This was far more convenient than it could have been. This lead to me staying the night in Delhi in one of the hotels that I had found on the flight over. The hotel was more than I was expecting and they even delivered dinner to my room, my first sample of the local cuisine was only a simple dish but was very much to my liking.

            This morning I woke up to the baking heat and bustling noise of Delhi and found my worries from the day before with a slightly looser grip and a cool shower only made things better. I had some toast and chai tea for breakfast and made my way back to the travel agents to collect my tickets and await for the taxi to take me to the airport. Two things struck me as different on this flight; one their was mist  descending from the ceiling and two its common practice to hold auctions on domestic flights. The trip was relatively short compared to the 22 hour drive that could have taken its place. Despite this fact the difference upon alighting the plain were instantly noticeable; for one it was 8 degrees cooler and things were a lot calmer. While collecting my bag I was informed that I must register for being a foreigner entering the Kashmir/jommu province, which didn’t take long but I still found this curious. Once outside a man named Asif who would be driving me to the house boat mooring. Asif was kind enough to drive me the long way to the boat and gave me as much insight into the area as he could for which I was grateful. Once at the accommodation I was shown to my room which again was plenty sufficient, after a small flutter when I thought my toilet was a bucket in the bath. Once I found the toilet I had a wonder around the boats and jetties and ended up talking to one of the men who was in charge of the house boats. He was an ex-travel agent (or not) and he gave me some advice as to my route around India and what to do after my few days aboard the house boats. Which leads me to where I am now, considering what to do next....