Niggin Lake

We arrived at our new houseboat, Shere-kashmir, and immediately felt at home. We were amongst friends, on a beautiful houseboat with more of the same 19th c. furniture that we saw at the Mount View houseboat, with a large porch jutting forth onto the most gorgeous lake in the world…possibly. Behind the lake on the other side, and hence in our sight of view, were at least five mountain ranges, one behind the other, each range higher in elevation than the one before it, creating a multi layered effect particularly stunning in the morning.

Asher and I took the last remaining room out of four in the houseboat. We were nine all together, with three people sharing one of the rooms. The cost was relatively high, at 350 rupees per head, but included breakfast and dinner. The room was the best I’ve had so far, quite comfortable beds with layered sheets and blankets, not unlike an actual motel room like that found in a Motel 6. Large windows looked onto the garden, and a private bathroom with hot water in the evenings was off to the right.

The large dining room housed the refrigerator, which we kept fully stocked with all kinds of bad junk: coke, sprite, cookies and lots of chocolate. The dining room connected with the living room, which connected with the porch, so that the houseboat itself is similar in style to a railroad apartment in Brooklyn. The houseboat itself sat perpendicular to the lake, so that the back half lies on land and the front half lies on water (though I'm not sure how one decides which is the front or the back). The half with the porch was in the water, and from the porch wooden steps led down into the water creating a sort of dock for shikaras.

I have to say quite frankly that Kashmir was a vacation from a vacation. That is, in Srinagar I learnt the true meaning of relaxation. I was in Kashmir for twelve days, and in that time I managed to do very little of what is called “traveling”, and a lot of what is called “vacationing”. By the end of our stay in Kashmir I had developed a daily routine that went something like this:

10:00AM: Wake up to the sounds of birds chirping. I was usually second to wake up, even though I was always amongst the last to go to bed. Nimrod, a 26 year-old former IDF fighter and ex-boyfriend to Anastasia (We all thought they were together until we found out they broke up right before they arrived in Kashmir), was first to wake up and was normally out rowing in our small rowboat by eight o’clock sharp.

10:30AM: Head to the porch, the weather was best in the morning. The sun at this time was perfectly situated so as to provide that kind of direct, all encompassing warmth that so seamlessly brings the body out of the coldness of sleep and prepares it for the Action of day. The sky at this time was cloudless, a perfect blue, the mountain ranges in the distance hallowed by the rising sun. Upholstered benches were built into the porch and I laid back on them with a book and read until the next person woke up.

11:00AM: The third person that usually woke was Yossi. 22, fresh out of the army, he’s one of the stable components of the group, a sort of negotiator when things turn sour between members of our group. He usually also cared for the communal boof, (we bought Kashmiri Hash as a group) and so when he came out onto the porch he was never without a piece of boof and a mixing bowl. While I read he would roll a joint, and we would smoke it. Almost as if by instinct, the rest of the crew slowly appeared around this time, and everyone was pretty much stoned before the morning chai.

11:30AM: Everyone except Olik and Anastasia up. All of a sudden everyone is up, smoking, laughing, the houseboat full of energy. The book is down and we’re playing a game of cards: maybe shithead or rummy. Adi and Zohar, Idan and Asher are up. Jamal, our innkeeper had already cleaned the entire living room by the time I woke, and was in the kitchen out back preparing our breakfast.

12:00AM: Talking, deliberating, smoking, lounging. Nimrod is back and maybe we’re taking the boat out to the middle of the lake for a morning dip. The water near the houseboats is dirty and full of weeds, but in the middle of the lake pristine waters at reasonable temperatures coaxed us out of the houseboat sometimes three times a day. Olik and Anastasia waking up.

12:30AM: “Breakfast Ready” Jamal calls and we all eagerly sit down to eat, having waited until lunchtime to eat breakfast. We ate the same exact breakfast every day: omelets, toast, jam, butter, and what seemed like the leftover salad from last night’s dinner. I have to be critical here about the Indian egg-preparation technique: too much oil!!! The eggs themselves are already mutated; the yolk of Indian eggs is not yellow but off-white. That’s bearable though, but is there any reason to fry an egg the same way one fries Schnitzel? The Indian recipe for omelet is something like two eggs, two cups oil. This obsession with oil carries over into a lot of other Indian food as well, especially in Chinese food like noodles, which is common in Indian restaurants.

1:00AM: Nauseous from breakfast, head to the living room for an after-breakfast bong hit. At this point I would normally take the bike for a ride in the city. Sometimes Olik joined me for the trip. Niggin Lake where we were is actually about six kilometers from Dal Gate, which is a gate that stands in main market area of the city and marks the entrance to Dal Lake. I had a lot of things to take care of in Srinagar: Motorcycle maintenance, gift shopping, sunglass repairing, money exchanging (I had lost my visa in Dharamshala and had to activate my spare card). I drove to the city almost everyday and got lost on the way back to the houseboat almost every time. Srinagar is a very complicated, unorganized, chaotic city full of winding side streets, alleys, none of which are properly named or properly paved.

4:00PM: exhausted, burnt out by the intense Kashmiri afternoon sun, blackened by Kashmiri dust, I returned to the houseboat. By the last few days of Kashmir I knew the city quite well and was actually considering a stint as a Kashmiri rickshaw driver.

5:00PM: More smoking, playing cards, listening to music, lounging, laughing, talking. What else does one need? We put a fund together with which we bought food for the group. I considered this an absolute waste of money but being part of the group didn’t object. Daily we bought a massive amount of junk food either from the local “food stall” shikara—an actual boat loaded with everything you’d find in the stores but for inflated prices— or from a shop on land nearby.

6:00PM: A ride out with Olik in the rowboat to another houseboat nearby with three Israeli girls, a change of atmosphere.

7:30PM: Sunset.

To be continued…