We had just two more days before we say good bye to such a wonderful place. For day 5 in Kashmir, we didn't have any plans set. But talking to others in our camp night before, we came to know about 2-3 places which we could visit. We got up early to catch the sun rise, even though you can see the light but sun came out late as we were in a valley. So we roamed around the camp itself capturing the beauty all around.
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| House opposite our camp |
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| Some fields around the camp |
Little after sun rise, we were just lazying around the camp, listening to the river flowing at the back. All in all just chilling. We thought of going for para gliding but it seemed experience for just 5 min ride. After relaxing breakfast, we headed to Pahalgam town. We hired a taxi from taxi stand to take us to our destination for today "Sinthan Top". Its one of the highest peaks in the area at 12500 ft. This place is about 100 km from Pahalgam. One the way, the terrain kept changing, we saw apple orchards, walnut trees, small mountains, steep climbs, huge mountains covered with pine trees all around. The view was worth every second.
Once we reached Sinthan top, the first feeling we got was of extreme cold. Even though it was peak afternoon with sun over our head, the temperature was about 5 deg C. With cold, it was quite windy too. There was not many tourists at that place.
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| View of Sinthan top from base |
To reach the top of the mountain we climbed for about 1500ft. It was quite difficult owing to the cold wind. My ears started to hurt as I forgot my cap in the camp :(.
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| Trying to cover my ears with others scarf |
After some struggle we reached the top, but the climb is all worth it once we reach there. The view all around is just majestic. Snow clad mountains are visible on one side with lower mountains covered in green and on the other side winding road was visible.
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| View from Sinthan top |
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| Winding roads |
We enjoyed the view there, but seriously we could not stand there for more than 15 mins. We climbed down to see a beautiful glacier lake.
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| Glacier lake |
We had maggi and tea (best food at hills) at the small stall there and started our return journey. On the way back, we decided to visit 2-3 places.
First one was the Kokernag, it has a mughal garden. I wasn't very keen on garden as we had seen enough in Srinagar, but still we went ahead. But once I went in, seeing the garden it looked like its a must visit. This garden is much more bigger in its size compared to one in Srinagar. Also it has a natural river stream flowing inside, which is broken into various smaller steams all through out the garden. There were huge willow and chinar trees. The garden has a nice element of small bridges built over the stream to reach small islands. We actually ended up spending much more time in there but it was all worth it.
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| Water stream in the garden |
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| Bridge over the stream |
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| Willow trees in the garden |
Next we saw Martand Sun temple but we didn't go inside. This is the same place where the Shahid kapoor's movie Haider was shot. Next we went to another Sun temple, which is very unique as it has gurudwara in the same premises, temple of Shiva, Ram etc. It has a huge pond with thousands of fishes in it. At this place, we observed people of all the cast and creed. There was no differentiation, all were equal. Such harmonious places in Kashmir are a rare sight.
By this time, it started to get dark, we headed back to our camp. One the way, we also saw the dargah where song from Bagrangi Bhaijan is shot ( yes I know I am a movie buff :)). We reached our camp late to get a view of the camp fire which was already lit. New foreign tourist have come to the camp today, we chatted with them for some time, had dinner and took some star gazing photo before calling it a day.
1. Paragliding is expensive because there are only two vendors
2. From Aru valley to Pahalgam, there are shared taxis available which are quite cheap and convenient.
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