Pahalgam, J & K, India

Here comes my scribbles on our 3rd day of the itinerary. So early morning we were all fresh and ready for our Pahalgam sojourn. We had a pretty good breakfast, Kashmiri Kahwa/Green Tea and asked them to prepare authentic Mutton Pulao for our dinner the next day we return back to Srinagar. I had planned a night stay at Pahalgam as it would have been tiring & hectic to return on the same day from there after sight-seeing there. Our hotel name was Green Height at Pahalgam. Now here let me give you a piece of advice- we did not check beforehand the location of the hotel at Pahalgam and that was, well, I won't say a “drawback" sort of but yes, owing to the existing situation there at that time, we should have checked the location of the hotel beforehand. I’ll elaborate on this later in this post.

Lidder River

Now we left pretty early as Pahalgam is approx. 3 hours journey from Srinagar via Awantipora and Anantnag and reached our hotel by 11.30-12-ish. We were mesmerised by the view from the hotel and the silence all around and immediately fell in love with the location. 

Hotel Green Height, Pahalgam

But the hotel was not “inside” Pahalgam but 10 km before “main” Pahalagam. Anyway, we were not aware of this. We took the best rooms in the hotel, dumped our luggage and left immediately for sight-seeing at Pahalgam.

On our way to Pahalgam from Hotel Green Height

There was stringent security check at the entrance of Pahalgam as it was the season of Amarnath Temple Yatra and just 5 days before, there was a terrorist attack on a yatri bus hurting some pilgrims. We reached the Pahalgam Club Garden, opposite Pahalgam Police Department and our driver had his acquaintances who owned horses (this time they had beautiful, majestic horses unlike the mules in Gulmarg). Now here, we were duped again as we did not see the riding charges as determined by Jammu & Kashmir Tourism board (INR 350 approx for the 1^st 2 hours and then INR 250/300 per subsequent hour for the horse ride). Those fellows charged us INR 2200/person upfront and they didn’t even give us any place for bargaining as it was more or less monopolised. Nonetheless, we really were excited for Pahalgam hence we acceded to their demands and off we went to Baisaran and Kashmir Valley (here we committed another mistake when they said that due to Yatra season Chandanwari, Aru Valley & Betaab Valley are closed. We should have confirmed this from the local police station- will describe later why I said this).

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