Srinagar

Srinagar is the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, a city of 1.2 million people on the shores of Dal Lake, and its layered history — Mughal garden terraces beside 14th-century wooden mosques beside colonial houseboat jetties — makes it the most architecturally complex city in the Himalayan world.

Dal Lake is approximately 18 square kilometres of water at 1,585 metres, and on its surface floats an entire self-contained economy: the shikara fleet, the floating vegetable gardens of the Nelambagh neighbourhood where the Hanji fishing community grows lotus roots and water chestnuts on platforms of compressed water hyacinth, and the houseboats receiving visitors since the British colonial administration arrived in the 19th century.

The Jama Masjid of Srinagar, built in 1402 and rebuilt four times after fires, is the finest example of Kashmir's distinctive timber mosque architecture — four towering minarets rising from a courtyard that can accommodate 33,000 worshippers, the interior forest of deodar cedar columns standing in rows whose structural logic feels contemplative rather than merely functional.

Places to Visit in Srinagar

• Dal Lake
• Shalimar Bagh
• Nishat Bagh
• Old City Srinagar

Things to Do in Srinagar

• Shikara ride through the floating market
• Houseboat overnight stay
• Mughal garden walks