I Would call this as a “PREQUEL” of Amarnath Holy Cave Yatra blog 🙂 which I wrote earlier. I would like to share some of the experiences in my journey where we need to make a decision real quick as we don’t have time to rethink . I realized one thing that even though you are well planned on a Trip, there might be plenty of hurdles/situations comes through and we will not have choices other than to face and overcome it.
Let me explain the package which was afford to us and then, I would like to start with the sequence of events happened from Srinagar to Amarnath . The reason for giving the details is, we got a situation in Sonamarg where we have been forced to break the package in the middle and that created few more issues for us.
Package Details
Our package covers 2 night stay in Sonamarg and 1 night stay in Srinagar Boat house including breakfast and dinner, Car with Driver which includes Pickup and Drop to Airport, Drive to Sonamarg from Srinagar and return , Morning ride to Baltal Helicopter base from Hotel and return . Srinagar Sightseeing. Package includes Srinagar Sightseeing also but it doesn’t happen as we spent 2 days in Sonamarg itself and the third day we just covered Boat house stay, Dal Lake & Sitara ride and Back to Chennai.
At Chennai Airport – Time : 6 AM
We started our Journey from Chennai around 6 AM and reached Srinagar around 1 PM. From Srinagar, Sonamarg is 90KM.
Srinagar – Time : 1 PM
The first hurdle was started when we reach Srinagar, CELLPHONE!! .Mine was postpaid and my wife’s was prepaid. Once in a while we faced issues with Cell phone connectivity. It was narrow , luckily it worked when we try to reach the car driver. Driver hardly speaks English nor Hindi, they speak kashmiri. Nothing really we can do about it , Just live with it. As I updated in my earlier blog, Only Airtel and BSNL postpaid works and other networks will not work for sure in Srinagar. In Baltal, only BSNL Postpaid works and Airtel will not work.
Situation in Srinagar
The level of beauty that Kashmir incorporate itself has equally contain dark face as well Terrorist attacks, Frequent 144 ,Stone Pelting riots are part of Kashmiri Natives life. The common man,women and innocent kids would have disheartened by this sort of frequent incidents around them. I was surprised to hear on my first visit . On my second visit, the shocking news on the day we reach Srinagar was, one of the terrorist leader was shot , Riots and stone pelting incidents happening around in Srinagar. My friend (Major Jagdish) who is in Army who helped me and guided me all the way to get through the situations in Srinagar.
Srinagar – Riot with a Surprise – Time : 2PM
We got in to the cab and started our Journey towards Sonamarg. There are places in Srinagar we could see riots. We saw riots happening in one end of the road and other end people living their normal life as the riot area is covered by barricades and Army. Absolutely no sign of Riot in the other end of the road !!!!!!!! SURPRISED !!!!!!. The tourists are well treated by Police officers and Army soldiers/officers. They are helping us in any way possible.we finished our lunch as well in Srinagar.
Sonamarg – Time : 4 PM
We reached Sonamarg that evening around 4 PM and did our Hotel Check-in . We don’t want to waste the evening and planned to go for sightseeing around Sonamarg. Outside the hotel, we hired an another cab and went to Visit Glaciers/View points opposite to Hotel.We did visited few view points and didn’t went to the Glaciers due to time constraint , it is already close to 5.30 PM .
Sonamarg – Time : 6 PM
We reached hotel and could see absolutely no sign of rain that evening. We felt everything is going to be OK next day and thought everything will be smooth as per plan. But we never know our destiny is to face more hurdles through Nature !!!!!!!!
—— To be Continued !!!!
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