WOOHOO! Today is Mughal road day!

I had been fascinated by the Mughal road ever since I read about it.
The simple way to get from Jammu to Kashmir was to take the main highway -  the NH44   - and get to Srinagar within a few hours. This national highway is a huge road, and has been upgraded in recent times with massive tunnels and bridges and whatnot, and so one can ride from Jammu to Srinagar very easily.
That’s why I was not taking that route!
What is the point in doing things that are simple?
As JFK put it  - ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard!’
For many years now I had wanted to try the alternate route to get to Srinagar - the historic  ‘Mughal road’ which cuts across the Pir Panjal mountain range and connects Rajouri in Jammu to Shopian in Kashmir
The Mughal emperor Jehangir  really took a fancy to Kashmir! He really liked Kashmir and was a frequent flyer there - or would have been, if there were planes! He made more than 10 trips to Kashmir - and when one considers that he would have travelled on elephant-back and carried thousands of people with him - and stayed for at least a few months once he reached there - one can assume that a to-and-fro trip would have taken the better part of a year!

So out of his reign of 22 years - he would have spent more than 10 years just travelling to Kashmir!
When we Amigos first came to Kashmir in 2014 for our ride to Ladakh, locals had warned us that that this route was not always safe and people had to travel in convoys for safety - but now the locals assured me that there was no problem at all, and you could travel at any time of the day or night. The road was dotted with hotels and restaurants - with signboards assuring me that they were open 24 hours a day!
One hotel even had a sign announcing that biryani was available 24 hours - round the clock!
What a sign of peace and prosperity! People wanting biryani in the middle of the night!
That tea guy was well-equipped I must say… Apart from the normal tea and eggs and Maggi instant noodles, he had a steaming pot of pink salt-and-butter tea, a local fried cheese and a few other local goodies! I was impressed. I tried some fried cheese and piping hot instant noodles and sat there enjoying the view of the bubbly rocky stream below the bridge. It was so beautiful!
One fascinating sight I got to see was something totally unexpected - a bearded wildlife photographer!
I had posted a photo from Rajouri on Facebook, and immediately got a ping that my old friend Shivang Mehta was also on the same road. Shivang is one of the foremost wildlife photographers in India, and we had been on many a jungle safari together.
Pír ki Gali is the highest pass across the Pir Panjal mountain range, and is the highest point on the Mughal road at 3,490 m. It connects the Kashmir Valley to the Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu.

There is now a charming little pagoda-style shrine there - a nice mix of Tibetan and Muslim styles and has been recently renovated so one has no idea if it always looked like that or not! It was the logical stopping point for all travellers to take a break, enjoy the scenery, have a cup of tea and get some blessings as well  - so there were a lot of cars there and some tourist milling around and taking photos.