Badari's Perspectives: Chapter 10: Experiencing a Transition (into Kashmir)

23-Aug (Thu):

Jammu

Srinagar

Jammu - Udhampur – Anantnag – Srinagar(5184)

6.30 AM

8 PM

298 KMS

The drive today would get us today into the famed Srinagar valley through Jawahar Tunnel. I was excited; I am going to be driving on ‘real’ hills today… unlike the ghats in southern India!

We left at 0630hrs after seeking blessings from Ayesha’s parents. They had almost treated us like their sons. After refueling moved on with our itinerary. Udhampur was our next stop where we stopped at a hotel on the way for breakfast. The newspaper of the day had all horrific stories of heavy rains the previous day. The deadliest of them was of a BOLERO being swept away in heavy rains in Rajasthan!

After driving for almost five hours, we were crossing Patnitop. A misty morning at 11.30 is hard to come by at planes. The drive was pretty picturesque. An hour later, stopped at the Badarwah Dam View restaurant for a photo session of the new dam being built. I wished that Sir MV was alive today to see many hydel projects coming up in J&K. The visionary would have been pleased by the full fledged attempts made by the governments to harness the hydro power.

The traffic on the route was low except for a long serpentine queue as we approached Jawahar Tunnel at around 3.30 PM. After some eight hours of driving since morning, we reached the two-kilometer plus long Jawahar Tunnel. It was time to stop, and we chose to stop at the Titanic View Point, about six kilometers from the tunnel.

Car was badly dirty since last 6 days of drive. We just decided to have a water service done for the car. We had also noticed that the high beam of the left headlight was fused and we had to badly find a place to replace the bulb. On approaching Ananthnag, we drove into MAS (I don’t even remember the name for the quality of interaction that I had with them). It was almost 4.30 and they did not oblige to change the lamp! Cooly they indicated that we could make it to Srinagar in daylight. The very reason for their DOS (Denial of Service) was that they were winding up their day !! The service engineers as I came across them are more under the mercy of the mechanics and are not in a commanding position to decide on what work has to be taken up.

Drove into a water service station, and for the level of dirt that had accumulated, it sucked away good ONE HOUR of our daylight. Even the serviceman asked “Ap kahAn se Aye ho ?. Mujhe nahi lagtA ye miTTi yahAn ki hai !” was quite amused for his acumen. I was thoroughly happy for the amount of attention he paid to clean my car. Indeed he took care of my care more than what I would do normally. Also shared 2 chocolates for his kids other than the agreed Rs 150 for the car service. It was a complete paisa vasUl.

We drove into Srinagar by around 7.30 and we missed an important turn. Had to enquire the route towards DAL LAKE. In one such U TURN, bumped into an Innova of KA registration. Many thoughts flew on who it could be. It was indeed Amber Rao (A fellow HVK Forumite). He sped ahead of us to indicate to pull over. After a a 2 min informal talk, followed him to HOTEL MALIK PALACE right in front of Gate 1 of DAL LAKE.

Post a longer informal chat, settled down in our room and had dinner at an adjacent Punjabi dabha. Our hotel surprisingly was more popular for carnivorous food than vegetarian food.

Retired early.. considering that tomorrow would be a longer day for us.

Photos of the day...