Explore the Beauty of Kashmir

After decades of conflict, peace is taking hold in Kashmir, offering new opportunities to explore its traditional cultures and scenic beauty

By TOM DOWNEY

“THIS ISN’T INDIA. This is Kashmir,” a fellow passenger told me as we landed at the Srinagar airport. Now, as if cued by the scenery—striking alpine vistas of snowcapped mountains surrounding a vast lake fringed with lotus flowers and terraced Mughal-era gardens—my taxi driver says the same thing. It’s a statement I’ll hear repeated many times during my two-week visit, expressing a popular belief that Kashmiris want to live in an independent state, free of India and Pakistan. Beyond politics, it also recognizes a fundamental truth: Kashmir is culturally distinct from the rest of India.

The last time I set foot here was more than 20 years ago—long before 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, when the idea of Western tourists seeking beauty in Sufi shrines, mosques and other Islamic sites wasn’t unusual. Shortly after my visit, an American tourist was shot and killed in the streets of Srinagar’s old city; the following year six European and American tourists were kidnapped from a mountainous region popular with trekkers. Violence here peaked in the early 2000s, when President Clinton called Kashmir “the most dangerous place on earth.” A tourism industry that had been the envy of all Asia was shut down by a protracted conflict that left tens of thousands of Kashmiris dead and more than half a million Indian troops here on high alert.

Recently, however, a new peace has taken hold in Kashmir. Though there have been no grand political compromises or history-making treaties, things are fast returning to normal. The number of civilians killed annually in terrorist attacks, which often exceeded 1,000 during the worst years of the conflict, has shrunk to fewer than 35 for each of the past five years. And most of these attacks have taken place far from Kashmir’s tourist trail. Tourists from other parts of India and abroad are starting to flock here, drawn to a place immortalized in Bollywood blockbusters and travelers’ tales as a kind of earthly paradise. Looking across the city from the garden of the Vivanta Dal View, a luxury hotel built in 2012 on a mountainside above the lake to cater to this new wave of tourists, I begin to understand why. As the sun sets over the Himalayas, the lights of the city flicker below. An ancient fort is visible in the distance, and songs from dozens of mosques echo in the brisk night air. Today is Shab-e-Barat, a Muslim holiday traditionally celebrated by song and prayer sessions that last through the night. Unlike any other state in India, Kashmir—or Jammu and Kashmir, as the region is officially called—has long been a majority Muslim place, with a language and culture that owe as much to Iran and Central Asia as they do to the Indian subcontinent to the south.

Today, as conflicts ravage many of the great Islamic cities of the world, Kashmir feels both nostalgic and revelatory. Unlike the dusty deserts of Rajasthan, the profane piety of Varanasi or the epic bustle and squalor of Mumbai, the region has been off the Indian tourist circuit for decades. It also has a multireligious and multicultural history: Many of the region’s mosques betray Buddhist architectural influences; Kashmiri carpet-making methods come from Shiite Persia; its Hindu temples once catered to a large Brahmin population.

What also sets Kashmir apart is that it has been ruled—and formed—by Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh leaders. Islamic rule, which left the strongest imprint on modern Kashmir, began in 1339 with the Sayyid dynasty, continuing with the Mughals in the 16th century and ending with the Durranis, the founders of modern Afghanistan, in 1819. Kashmir then fell under Sikh control until the British defeated them in 1846; for the next century, the Raj era, a Hindu maharajah ruled locally while ceding control of the state to the British. When independence came to India and Pakistan in 1947 and partition ensued, Kashmir’s fate remained undecided. Hari Singh, then maharajah, wanted independence for Kashmir and resisted joining either India or Pakistan until conflict broke out. Singh called in Indian troops and acceded to Indian rule. That fight left Kashmir haphazardly divided between Pakistan and India. I’m visiting the Indian side of that border, across which lies what the Pakistanis call Azad, or free, Kashmir—their territory now. A United Nations resolution that ended the armed conflict in 1948 promised a plebiscite on the region’s future to be held in all of Kashmir—a vote that has never been held.

Muzaffar Andrabi, a slim, mustachioed man with long sideburns and a neat, almost military manner, started working in the tourism industry in Kashmir 25 years ago. “I left here 20 years ago because I had to,” he says. “There were no jobs in tourism. But when I saw that things were getting peaceful again a few years ago, I decided to start my own business to show tourists the Kashmir I knew before the conflict.” He’s returned permanently to Srinagar and works in two businesses: his tour company, Kashmir Caravans, and a traditional weaving and embroidery enterprise called Andraab.

When Andrabi invites me to the wedding of his nephew, I eagerly accept. (Many Kashmiris had told me that marriage celebrations are the best way to sample formal Kashmiri cuisine.) The wedding, like much of the life of this city, takes place behind high walls inside a family compound. The only indication that a celebration is happening is the faint sound of singing voices and the insistent beat of drums.

Inside, I see a colorful arrangement of large tents. In one, women sing traditional Kashmiri songs accompanied by rhythmic brass clappers. In another, the men sit to eat a special meal, called wazwan, consisting of about 35 distinct Kashmiri dishes, most meat-based and requiring long, laborious preparation. Behind the festive tents, a dozen or so men pound ingredients to form meatballs. A master chef presides over copper cauldrons boiling over charcoal flames; a colorful array of spices (asafoetida, Kashmiri chilies and ginger, among others) stands ready in metal vessels, while butchers carve sheep before the cuts are pounded, seasoned, stewed and served.

“Part of what I want to show people,” Andrabi says, “is our unique culture. Our food, crafts and architecture, of course, but also our language, which is different from what anyone else in India or Pakistan speaks. I talk to my children in Kashmiri. But increasingly, many young people prefer speaking Urdu or English. I just hope we can keep this culture alive.”

After the wedding, we take a walk through the old city and enter the Shah-i-Hamdani shrine. “Like so many buildings in Kashmir,” Andrabi says, ushering me inside, “this has diverse features. Look at the chain strung across the top of the entryway. It seems like something from a synagogue, not a mosque. The roof takes its shape from Buddhist temples. And the artwork inside is papier-mâché with Persian motifs.” The green and gold interior is colorful and strange—a combination of details unlike those in any mosque in this part of the world. This shrine, built in 1393, is named after Shah Hamdani, a poet and scholar who brought with him not just the literature and religion of his native Persia but also hundreds of craftsmen who introduced what are now considered quintessentially Kashmiri arts.

Outside on the street, a man wearing a knitted conical cap slices up sweet melons for us to eat. As we walk down to the river, Andrabi explains that canals fed by the Jhelum River once wove through the old city. Most of them were filled decades ago and turned into streets, but a few still remain. The riverfront is lined with beautiful old houses, most from the mid-1800s, many of them with windowed structures, called dabs, that jut out of the main building and offer sweeping views of the city. “This river was once the main artery of commerce,” he says. “Now it’s been abandoned, and everyone uses roads and lorries, but the old houses remain.”

The architecture of Srinagar encompasses many time periods and styles: There’s the majestic main mosque, the Jamia Masjid, built in 1400 in a Buddhist monastic style and rebuilt many times since. Even more striking is the tiny Madani Sahib shrine that dates to 1444 (now closed, the victim of a conflict between Sunnis and Shiites) and boasts a traditional green grass roof—a feature once common among Srinagar structures. Throughout the city there are also ancient Hindu temples. Though most have been abandoned, the Shankaracharya Temple, built circa 200 B.C. and perched on a hill high above the city, is Srinagar’s most popular Hindu tourist sight.

My accommodations that evening are a houseboat, Sukoon, reached by a short boat ride from the lakeshore. Hundreds of houseboats dot Dal Lake and neighboring Nagin Lake, artifacts of the Raj era, when non-Kashmiris (such as the British) were not allowed to purchase land here so instead constructed elaborate wooden marine homes to summer in. These spawned a special kind of boutique lodging—the houseboat hotel—anchored near the edge of the lake and offering elaborate carved-wood interiors with furniture that appears to be from the Victorian era. Though Sukoon has traditional carved interiors, it also has comfortable new beds, bright modern bathrooms and a service ethos shared by the company’s other houseboat in South India, The Lotus. The roof deck allows visitors to take in views without being assailed by waterborne retailers who aggressively hawk their wares to guests on the lower decks.

The next morning, I awake early. A small, human-powered boat, called a shikara, is waiting for me below. The shikara is a distinctively Kashmiri vessel that can be adapted for use as a tourist shuttle, a school bus, a flower shop and much more. The boat I climb onto looks like a floating, mobile sofa, bearing some sort of advertisement on its outward-facing panels. In Kashmir’s heyday, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of shikaras crisscrossed Dal Lake, shuttling Indian and foreign tourists. A few boatmen remain at the 20 or so shikara stations around Dal Lake shouting out their services to passersby. The photo boat, which offers portrait services, today also stocks memory cards and batteries. The main pleasure of these watercraft is to recline on the shikara sofa, luxuriating in the serenity of the lake while taking in spectacular views through a curtained canopy.

We have a different goal in mind: to paddle into the backwaters of the city. The side of Dal Lake known to tourists faces north, toward the mountains and the city. But behind the hundreds of houseboats lining this side of the lake is a hidden, private world, sheltered by floating gardens, reachable only (or primarily) by boat. As we push off from Sukoon, our vessel veers starboard to avoid colliding with a flotilla of turbaned Punjabis, then circles back into the waterways behind Dal Lake. Passing under wooden bridges that span narrow canals and cutting through lush layers of water hyacinth, we enter a peaceful district where ordinary Kashmiris live. Women in head scarves paddle on their way to work, to bring children to school or to shop and socialize.

Andrabi has advised me to take three paddlers so that I can explore with ease and speed. (Typically shikaras are piloted by a single boatman, charging about $10 per hour, which makes for slow lake travel.) Near a stretch of river I’d visited yesterday, we pass old houses with new windows and fresh coats of paint—repairs made after flash floods devastated Kashmir last fall. Just as the tourism industry and the economy were starting to recover, a large swath of the region was submerged, and nearly 650 people were killed. Despite decades of hardship and this recent catastrophe, I see much less poverty, disease or squalor here than in almost any other Indian city I’ve visited.

The rise in tourism is certainly part of what’s helping to boost the local economy—Indian tourists to Kashmir topped one million in 2011 and every year since. Nevertheless Kashmir’s per-capita gross domestic product remains lower than the Indian average (though its rate of economic growth is faster). Another factor that has kept the region afloat is its thriving artisanal culture, which produces not just tchotchkes for tourists, but some of the world’s finest textiles, shawls, rugs and embroidery. Traditional Kashmiri pashmina production uses thread spun from a rare variety of wool sourced in the high mountains of neighboring Ladakh. There are conflicting accounts about the origin of the cashmere industry, some crediting the 14th-century scholar Hamdani for its creation, others citing the 15th-century leader Zain-ul-Abidin. (The word cashmere is an earlier spelling of Kashmir; in the early 19th century it became a byword for any fine wool from the region.)

Abeer Gupta, a designer who co-founded a local organization called Srinagar Walks, takes me around the city to visit Kashmiri craftspeople. We walk down an alleyway in a labyrinthine neighborhood in the old city and enter the home of Hakim Jan Mohammed. In the kitchen, Mohammed’s wife sits on the floor next to a small wooden wheel that she carefully turns while gently spooling on white fiber. She rubs the material between her fingers with one hand and rotates the wheel with the other. “This is real pashmina,” Mohammed says. “Normally this is work that women do in the kitchen, when they have some extra time during the day or night.”

Though in the West pashmina is now a generic term for any oversize woolen scarf, historically it refers to material spun from the highest grade of cashmere wool, taken from Changpa goats, the finest examples of which are raised a few hundred miles east of here, in Ladakh. Kashmiri craftsmen have traditionally been the exclusive buyers of this wool, a right enshrined in treaties brokered by the British in the mid-19th century. “Pashmina is so thin and so delicate that you really need to do this by hand,” Mohammed says, showing me a tangle of fibers that his wife is spinning into long off-white strands. “It takes a huge amount of skill and practice to be able to do what she’s doing.” Many of the world’s craft traditions come from rural areas, where people had no choice but to make things themselves by hand; but this Kashmiri craft is an urban tradition, in which items have long been made not for home use or for extended family but for sale, often for export. Mohammed’s scarves are remarkably light and smooth, with a heft that feels different from any pashmina I’ve encountered. The houses surrounding his are owned mostly by his extended family; each contains five to 10 looms.

That afternoon I visit Muzaffar Andrabi at his textile showroom. “Most of what you see on the market abroad and even in India comes from wool from China or from Mongolia,” he says. “For the most part, that wool is not nearly as good as what you get from Ladakh—but it’s much less expensive.” I try on one of his scarves, a striking indigo and white pattern. “Don’t be deceived by how smooth something feels,” he tells me. “It’s very easy to apply chemicals that make a scarf feel smooth at first. The real test is how it wears and feels in the long term.” Andrabi’s prices reflect this commitment to quality. Even in Kashmir, most of his scarves sell for about $200; some of his finest embroidered pashminas sell for thousands.

I decide to explore the opposite side of Dal Lake, climbing alongside cascading fountains through the terraces of Shalimar Gardens, the fabled Mughal paradise built in the 17th century by Emperor Jehangir as a tribute to his wife, Nur Jehan. On the way back to the city, I walk through a small village and stop to watch a parade of horses led by bearded, turbaned men with fierce-looking dogs on short rope leashes. I stare at the saddlebags on the horses, their wildly creative designs; in a moment, the nomads have disappeared up the mountain.

“Those were probably Bakarwal nomads,” Andrabi later tells me, “moving their sheep to higher ground for the summer. They travel hundreds and hundreds of kilometers from the lowlands of Jammu to the mountains of Kashmir.” The nomadic peoples of Kashmir, known as the Bakarwal and Gujjar, have their own languages and customs. Their crafts, Andrabi explains, are the opposite of Kashmiri city crafts: They make what they need for their own use, not for sale.

I soon discover, however, that a project in the mountains around Pahalgam, a few hours away, is helping Bakarwal and Gujjar women to market and sell their own crafts. Ramneek Kaur, a 39-year-old Sikh woman who runs the organization, Shepherd Crafts, tells me she had reached out to these nomadic women to see if they would sell their creations to outsiders. Her project is small-scale, and it’s not clear what sort of long-term income it will provide, but Kaur has already felt an impact: “Seeing outsiders admire their traditional crafts has changed how these women see themselves,” she says. “Before, they were all starting to dress more like Kashmiris. Now, after seeing how much outsiders appreciate their Gujjar caps, they take pride in and wear their traditional clothing more often.”

Toward the end of my stay, I spend the night at Almond Villa, a Raj-era home nestled in a garden sloping up from Dal Lake. The interior is old-fashioned, with the sturdy furnishings of an old English country home. So far most of the connections to the cultures of the past I’ve seen in Kashmir are fleeting and historical: a Buddhist roof detail, a Mughal garden archway, a Hindu spire. But now an elegant older gentleman wearing a green cap walks through the doorway and greets me with a British-inflected Indian accent. We start chatting, and he explains that he knows my country because he was once the Indian ambassador to America. He is Karan Singh, the last regent of Kashmir, the son of the last maharajah of Kashmir and a former governor of the state. His daughter has taken this house, once part of the maharajah’s family estate, and turned it into a guesthouse.

Almond Villa and the other new ventures I’ve seen on my trip indicate a sea change in Kashmir: In the past 25 years, for almost everyone born here, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh alike, Kashmir had been a place to escape from—a place where you had to fear attack from Kashmiri militants if you were Hindu, or imprisonment or torture from the Indian army if you were Muslim. Beyond these struggles, it had become desperately hard to find a job, feed a family, imagine a future. On the way to the airport I stop off to see Andrabi again. From his office, on the road that connects the airport to the city, he can see the hundreds of vans and buses that daily shuttle the next new wave of tourists into Kashmir.

“Now we have a new kind of challenge,” he says. “A million tourists a year who come here just to snap photos of themselves on Dal Lake with the Himalayas in the background will make some economic difference, but they’re not going to keep our culture alive.” I think about what Andrabi has told me: A few more years of relative peace and prosperity, coupled with a steep rise in mass-market Indian tourism, might do to the local culture what decades of war could not. “The only solution,” Andrabi says, “is to show visitors our Kashmiri way of life and make that the reason people come here.”