I had seen some spectacular photos of the Tulip gardens of Srinagar - and so I set that as the destination on Google Maps on my phone and went off to check them out. 
This place - it used to be called the  ‘Siraj Baug model floriculture center’ before a bunch of sycophants changed the name to the ‘Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip garden’ after the ex-Prime minister - is the largest tulip garden in Asia!


Not that they were blooming currently, unfortunately!
‘The Tulip season is in spring.’ They told me. ‘Imagine looking for Tulips in September! Come back sometime in spring…March and April…, and see the beauty of our garden! It’s  simply amazing! Lots of people come to see them - in a single month we get more than 3,50,000 visitors!’


I could well believe that - because inspite of it not being the Tulip season, the garden was extremely beautiful!
What a fantastic garden!  And the setting - right along the Dal lake shore boulevard - was amazing. This was one of the modern gardens, where it seemed that the people of today were in competition with the ancient Mughal and Persian gardeners, as if trying to show them that they birthed capable descendants!
My next stop was another garden - the Cheshmashahi gardens.
This refers to the Royal (Shahi) spring (Cheshma) - a spring of fresh water which was the beloved of Mughal emperors. The emperor Shah Jahan liked the spring so much that he had a nice garden built for his favourite son - Dara Shuko. Later rulers also liked the spring water - apparently Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru drank no other water, and large tanks of Chashmeshahi water were shipped to Delhi for him.
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The mouth of the spring was decorated with a nice marble monument, and apparently the water was still quite popular for its mystic health-giving properties - people were filling up bottles and cans with that water to take back with them. It was so popular that people seemed to be getting on top of each other to reach it, and the authorities had put up a stern signboard that exhorted us that ‘Washing of feet or going inside spring area is strictly prohibited!’.
I moved on to the nearby ‘Pari mahal’ - a lovely fort-like structure on a nearby hill - the Zabarwan mountain.  The current name means ‘Palace of fairies’ - but it is a corruption of the actual name - ‘Peer Mahal’ - ‘Palace of wise men’, who apparently used to do star-gazing and fortune telling and other wise stuff there. Pari Mahal was built on the orders of Prince Dara Shuko-  the eldest son and heir of  Emperor Shah Jahan - for his Sufi tutor, Mullah Shah Badakhshi, and he apparently learnt astrology and fortune telling there.
He clearly did not see the right future for himself though - his younger brother, the fanatical Aurangzeb staged a takeover of the Mughal throne towards the end of Shah Jahan’s life - defeated the unfortunate Dara in battle and finally imprisoned him and cut his head off in the Peer Mahal itself.

Now there is no sign of these dark times, and the building is deserted and is maintained by as a historical structure and a lovely garden  by the Archeological survey, and the stone fortress has a mysterious and brooding air. I went up to the top level and enjoyed a magnificent view of the Dal lake and Srinagar town.
I abandoned the tourist trail and went off to explore a lesser-known place - the sufi shrine of the Shah E Hamadan mosque.

This place had been recommended to me by a traveller I had met at Aru - ‘It’s a slice of central Asia in India.’ He said. ‘A remarkable place.’
It is located in the Old City of Srinagar,  on the banks of the river Jhelum - and It is held to be the first Khanqah—mosques associated with specific saints—in the Kashmir valley.
It’s about 600 years old, and is a wooden structure, and has a pagoda-like structure, rather than the normal onion-domes that we associate with mosques.
The really amazing thing about it is the beautiful Papier-mâché interior painted with vibrant colours and Central Asian designs!
There were beautiful crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and the pillars were covered with beautiful green and gold patterns.
The walls and the ceiling were even more colourful - with beautiful geometric patterns of green and gold and red - and it looked as beautiful as a beautifully detailed set of Indian bangles.
There was a rich carpet covering the floor and looking at the whole effect,  I felt like an ant (or a very tiny human I suppose) who had got inside a jewel box and was looking around in awe!
Next on my list was one of the iconic monuments of Kashmir - the Hazratbal mosque - which is famous for having an important relic -  a hair of the prophet Mohammed.
The name Hazratbal means ‘Respected’ (Hazrat) place (bal) - and is also known as Dargah Sharif (the Holy shrine)
I reached there and parked my bike - and was happy to see that there was no overwhelming security presence out there. The shrine is located on the banks of the Nigeen lake, and it was a picnic atmosphere out there! People had come with families and were chilling out on the lawns in front of the lake - children were running around and playing soccer, and adults were sitting around and relaxing.
What a lovely sight!


The shrine was not a spectacular sight like the Shah E Hamdan - the original pagoda structure was long gone, and now was a normal marble building with the dome and minaret. Fancy enough, I suppose - but rather characterless.
It was blazing hot now and I had had enough of tourism. Time to go and have some lunch!
This time I decided to go to Ahdoos! The earlier day had been a disappointment and I was determined to set the record straight by staying with the basics and that meant going back to the tried and tested Ahdoos!
And I was completely vindicated!
And they had introduced a most innovative menu! You remember that I had said how it is impossible to eat a whole wazwan, as we are not used to it - and ordering  many different dishes is not possible for a solo traveler, or even a small group. One would get stuffed in just one dish!
So to solve that problem, they had introduced a ‘Wazwan thali’ - a kind of tasting platter with small quantities of all the different wazwan dishes! The perfect solution for the single diner!
All the items were excellent, and it was a very happy and satisfied biker who was sipping down a refreshing Kashmiri kehwa  - a fragrant, warming, mild green tea made with whole spices, saffron, and nuts like almonds or walnuts - at the end of the meal! An ideal way to end a meal!
The final Mughal garden of Nishat baug was on my way home, so I stopped to see the place.
Nishat Bagh means the ‘Garden of Joy’ and  is a terraced Mughal garden built on the eastern side of the Dal Lake, and has the Zabarwan mountains as its backdrop.
It is an awesome garden - with 12 levels of terraces from the lake side to the mountain side, and the spring flows down the central channel through all the levels. It is a huge area, and has acres of beautiful gardens with all sorts of trees and flowers.
Everything was lovely - except the fact that it was beastly hot! I was getting burnt to a crisp.
I wondered how the tourists who had come from all over India to escape the heat in their home towns were feeling! They must have come expecting Himalayan temperatures, the poor sods - but I suppose that it is better to get roasted in a beautiful garden than in your dusty and polluted hometown!