[Leica] Houseboats on Lake Dal, Kashmir

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Larry,
Lovely - I last went in 1987 as well, so these shots are nostalgic. The area
is opening up to tourists again - my son was there for two weeks last year
traveling around by car, and playing golf (!!!) in some of the most scenic
courses in the world with some family friends - he has become a Kashmir
addict - not very difficult when you see how beautiful it is. There is a new
super deluxe hotel that has just opened in Srinagar, manged by the Indian
Taj Group of hotels (who also run 'The Pierre' in New York):

http://www.vivantabytaj.com/New-Hotel-Openings/PDF/Dal-View-Srinagar.pdf

Cheers
Jayanand



On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 1:30 AM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin at 
gmail.com>wrote:

> In the late 80s I had several lectures to give in Kashmir/Jammu and the
> sponsors were kind enough to put us up in a houseboat on Lake Dal. These
> houseboats are luxury accommodations, elaborately carved and richly
> furnished. Apparently foreigners were not allowed to own property in
> Kashmir
> so the locals built rental houseboats for the tourist trade. I'm sure
> Jayanand can furnish all the details. Ours was one of a small fleet owned
> by
> the Wangnoo family. It was built around 1900 and was the one used by
> Theodore Roosevelt when he vacationed in the area.
>
>
> Just about every surface of the houseboat interior is paneled with
> intricately carved  solid walnut. This type of wood is almost unobtainable
> in the US and Western Europe but in Kashmir it was so plentiful in the
> 1980s
> that it was being burned as fuel. The following photos show both the
> houseboats and the carved interiors in detail. The young lady is my
> daughter
> Karen who accompanied us on the trip. She enjoyed Kashmir, at least eating
> there, more than the rest of India because she didn't like curry. The
> pictures were taken with a Rollei 35SE and scanned from Fujichrome slides.
>
>
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/Houseboats+on+Lake+Dal+_87.jpg.html
>
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/Houseboat+interior+on+Lake+Dal.jpg.html
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/Houseboat+carving+_87.jpg.html
>
>
> Kashmir is one of the most naturally beautiful areas I ever visited. A
> lovely blue lake surrounded by snowy mountain peaks. On the other hand,
> there were thousands of Indian troops stationed in the area to quell social
> unrest and every decade or so there was armed conflict on the border with
> Pakistan. I took plenty of photographs of the area, the people, and the
> boats on the lake - but none of the Wangnoo family. I was politely
> discouraged by Mr. A. R. Wangnoo, the patriarch of the family. because he
> said that it violated Islamic tradition. However the Wangnoos were
> thoroughly modern in every aspect of their life so I suspect that his
> hesitance was based on the fear that the Indian authorities might somehow
> get access to the pictures. The Wangnoo family was very active in the "Free
> Kashmir" movement and strongly lobbied for an independent state of
> Kashmiristan. A quarter of a century later the problems are still
> unresolved.
>
>
> Larry Z
>
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