Kashmir

The Kashmir Valley — eighty kilometres long and forty wide, ringed by the Pir Panjal range to the south and the Great Himalayas to the north — has been called the most beautiful valley in the world often enough that the description has become a cliché, but a cliché earned by the actual landscape.

The Mughal emperors came to Kashmir for the same reasons their contemporary visitors come: the climate, the gardens, and something harder to define — a quality of light and cool water that made the emperors write about this valley less like administrative reports than like love letters. Srinagar's Dal Lake, with its fleet of houseboats that have been receiving guests since the British arrived in the 19th century, is the most emblematic of India's natural attractions — not the most dramatic, but the most achingly beautiful when the mountains are reflected in the water at dawn.

The crafts of Kashmir — the shawls, the papier-mâché lacquerwork, the carpets, the walnut wood-carving — are the product of a culture manufacturing luxury goods for export across Central Asia and Europe long before the Mughals formalised the trade routes. The kani shawl, woven using a system of coded threads that can take a single weaver two years to complete, is among the most technically demanding textiles produced anywhere in the world.

Places to Visit in Kashmir

• Dal Lake
• Mughal Gardens, Srinagar
• Gulmarg
• Pahalgam

Things to Do in Kashmir

• Houseboat stay on Dal Lake
• Shikara boat ride
• Gondola ride at Gulmarg
• Mughal Garden visits