Finally reached Kashmir and my thoughts on the Aharbal waterfall.

The trip had already been canceled once in April 2021: the dreadful time for all of us when India was engulfed in the second wave of Covid 19. In fact the same day that we were to catch the Delhi-Srinagar flight(if we had not canceled it already) the Srinagar airport got shut.

Itinerary planning takes time specially if a 'micro managing & everything should fall in place ' kind of a person, plans it!

I took almost two weeks to research. Read blogs, travel articles , property reviews and watched videos after videos to chalk out the best ever plan for an all girls roadtrip in Kashmir.

That and all the calls to the various shortlisted property managers as well as my Kashmiri acquaintances.

After a lot of back and forth over emails, multiple discussions with my travel partners/friends a seven night stay was finalised.

But of course lockdown happened and all the hard work was almost down the drain, but for the good use of these connections which enabled the same itinerary for almost the same rate for the next year i.e April 2022.

And thus our Kashmir itinerary and bookings, this time, were effortless !

Except, right the evening before we were to fly, my sister in law Savita, also traveling with us, sprained her foot.

I was almost certain she would cancel her plan. And I would have understood! But we decided that she should consult a doctor and at least get a medical bandage for her foot so as to decide how she is feeling the next day right before the flight.

Well the -brave or crazy- girl that she is, she was at the airport, wearing two different footwear in two different sizes: one sliders to fit her hurt foot (which was easily two size bigger coz of the bandage) & other a flip flop to comfortably fit her unhurt foot.

I was so glad she decided to travel!

Indigo ground staff at Delhi airport, was extremely helpful. They arranged for a wheelchair, so that she can avoid the strain of the long walk involved to reach the boarding gates in terminal 2. The staff pushed her through out, wqaited with us before the boarding was announced and finally dropped her right till the aircraft door.

Our 90 minutes flight from Delhi to Srinagar was special!

The scene of the ground below, the moment the plane was flying over the Himalayas as well as during the descent, blew my mind.

The ground below looked 40 shades of green and as if the different the lush green was not enough, the houses below with tin roofs reflected sunlight beautifully almost making the ground look lik a beautiful piece of polki jewellery.

Making Kashmir look like the crown of India that it is.

The excitement that I felt, while landing, soon vanished when the cab driver, we had intimated well in advance about our flight timing was late.

A bit late would not have irked, but the fact that he continuously kept lying to us about his whereabouts and then reached after an hour long delay totally unapologetic of his behaviour & the delay, made us all very angry.

Willing to trade our grumpy mood for a possibility of a brighter and better day ahead, we decided not to argue. I mean everyone wants a holiday to be memorable for good reasons, especially when you are traveling after ages(it was our first trip since the pandemic hit humanity)!

The plan after landing was clear: we were to go straight to Aharbal waterfall and then to our cute wooden Airbnb in Pahalgam. It was supposed to be a little over two hour long drive to reach Aharbal from Srinagar airport and another couple of hours to our Airbnb from there.

But you can never trust the travel time estimate that Google map shows, especially in India and especially in the Indian mountains.

We took almost four hours to reach Aharbal from the airport with just one short stop over to pick local sim for better connectivity- prepaid phones and some postpaid connections too do not work in Kashmir. The local sims are easily available against your ID proof and the connection is almost instant.

I was cent percent sure that the beauty of Aharbal would stun us, while researching I had seen multiple pictures of the waterfall & so many travel influencers feeling amazed at the sight of frozen water from the fall forming icicles (in winters of course). I was really looking forward to visit this beauty.

I imagined it to be pristine, untouched and in its most natural form, away from any human intervention.

That is exactly what it was, but in my imagination!

When we reached we could not see the fall nor could we hear any water. I remember being very confused about how and where the falls were situated. Soon a local directed us to a ticket counter. A ticket!!! To see a waterfall? Really!

Visitors with a ticket (nominal cost) get an entry into a park premise . There is a canteen and perhaps a government guest house too in there.

From one end of that park, there is a cemented walkway & stairs fenced with iron grill all along the way to the falls. It is a good twenty minutes hike to the falls from the park.

The closest one can go to. the falls it to a point where the authorities have made a raised platform which you can climb up for a better view. Or you can figure out a way to get past a locked gate which will give you access to the waterfall up close.

But this is not what I had expected. I did not expect any garden or walkway or iron grill taking away from the beauty of the falls. But I guess that is the price of tourism, the destination has to be made tourist friendly and safe, even if it means constructing around it, which takes away from the natural"ness" of the landscape.

Anyhow we picked up our spirit, plastered a smile on our face & clicked some pictures. And of course walked back to our car hiking uphill, walking along the grill into the park and back to our vehicle where Savita was waiting eagerly.

Well I have to admit, that besides all the disappointment with the destination, the drive upto Aharbal falls really surprised us.

Later in the day, I realized that Shopian, the district we crossed to reach Aharbal, is situated on the glorious and scenic Mughal road(some part of it). Of course it had to stun us the way it did.

A drive on the Mughal road is high up on my bucket list. Now even more so. A definite bucket list for all road trip suckers!

We reached our Airbnb in Pahalgam in another three hours, the day was long and with the driver's attitude it was also a bit unpleasant.

We decided to cancel the driver for the next two days and booked a taxi locally, through the Pahalgam taxi stand. For sightseeing in Pahalgam as well as to drive us back to Srinagar.

That drive, to Srinagar too, is a story, which we all will remember for a long time to come.

But this time for all the good reasons.

Not sure if I will document that experience for my blog page, but am already editing a video of that drive for my Youtube channel. So do not forget to visit me there. You can click here to find me on YouTube.

See you there!