My father and grandfather needed a break from all their work stress, so we decided to go to Jammu and Kashmir for the trip because the options were minimal.
We landed at simara airport the next afternoon at 1:20, from the plane we saw our factory about 700m from the airport.
We went into the factory for a short tour while my dad and grandpa decided to stay for a quick meeting with the manager. The way to my grandpa’s sister’s house in Birgunj was not so good, and it was full of potholes.
The following day we left for Patna in a Hyundai Creta and Nissan Kicks. We crossed the bridge in between and then we had to go across lots of bad roads until we reached our factory that makes food for farm animals. We had a nice lunch there until our car from Patna arrived. It was a Hyundai Xcent and Toyota Innova Crysta. We kept the baggage in the Hyundai and sent it to Patna with the drivers; about 20 minutes later, we left in the Crysta. The road was quite bumpy, but it was a pleasant experience.
After reaching Patna, we went to my grandma’s eldest brother’s house in an apartment. My grandparents stayed there while we 4 stayed at my uncle’s house for the night. The next day we went to my mom’s sister’s house. She has a nine-year-old Golden Retriever and three kids. One of them is also nine years old and loves playing Grand Theft Auto; we played the game on his ps5 and had a thrilling experience. We left about an hour later, from there we picked up my mom and then we went to my grandma’s youngest brother’s house, which is a bit far from the rest of the city. Over there, they have a little four-month-old husky named Kiwi. She’s adorable! We came to the DMD apartment later in the night after doing a bit of rakhi. The following day we left the house at 9:30 am. We reached the airport and caught the flight just in time, to Delhi! We landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport Delhi about an hour and 20 minutes later; after that, we went to Jammu and settled into the Radisson Blu Jammu!
The next day we drove to Katra, we reached the helipad for Vaishno Devi Temple. A few minutes later, I found myself on a helicopter right next to the pilot, 1200m above the ground, trying to cross a mountain to get to the other side, which is the temple. We had a wonderful darshan and enjoyed it a lot. On the way down, though, it started raining. We walked 3 kilometers to the helipad from the temple. As soon as we reached the helipad, it got cloudy. So we took three horses and headed down, one for my grandma and Laksh, the other for my grandfather, and the third for my dad, who wanted to walk down with us. We were told it was 20 kilometers, but we used stairs half the way, so it was only 16.5 km for us. That’s a lot too!
The following day, we left on a plane to Srinagar. The whole flight, we had a picturesque view of Kashmir. When my grandparents went in January, they got a meter of snow, but what we got was 25 Degrees Celsius. We got into a taxi and drove to the Radisson Srinagar, which was like a 4-star hotel. There were only 70 rooms, and they were kind of okay, but they took over an hour to get an extra bed when only like ten other rooms were occupied. So they didn’t have much staff. Military trucks were driving around the whole city in convoys, and soldiers scattered around the city. Pakistan borders Jammu and Kashmir, and India and Pakistan don’t have a perfect history, which scared us quite a lot. In the evening, we went on Srinagar’s famous Shikara Boat ride, like a canoe. The view was astonishing. The whole experience was beautiful, especially when they were selling quality walls ice cream in another shikara. We went to dal lake and even dressed up in traditional Kashmiri clothes. The next day we drove to this hill station called Gulmarg.
When my grandparents went there, their taxi could barely make it on the route. They had to take a pickup truck equipped with snow chains. We got a pretty much regular road the whole way, but on some places, a bit of the road was dug up because the road was slightly broken. We went up and got on to the cable car to go to the 1st phase. It was windy, but the fabulous view made up for it. When my grandparents went, they got much snow on phase 1 and stayed there; they didn’t even have to go to Phase 2 because it was 2 meters already on Phase 1. When we reached the line for Phase 2, the person said it would take 2 hours to get into the cable car because the queue was very long.
We went back down, and when we were down, we drove to the Khyber Resort, where we had a wonderful North Indian lunch before going to the hotel. We even tried this native drink called Kashmiri Kava. It tasted pretty good! We drove to a handicraft shop not far from Radisson. We bought some things there, then we went to Radisson and got all of our luggage before checking out and into Vivanta by Taj. The next day we went to the main market area of Srinagar, where we bought some more things. We even went to the Lal Chowk.
We arrived in Delhi the next afternoon at the airport and got a Crysta Taxi. We reached our fantastic hotel called Taj Palace! A few minutes later, my parents and grandparents left for shopping and returned at 9:00 pm.
The following day, we left the hotel in a Mercedes MPV Van. We went to a few shops and bought some shoes and shirts and coats for my eldest sister’s wedding in December. We had a lot of fun, but we also had to shop a lot, which was boring. We didn’t come back to Kathmandu directly. We took a plane to Gorakhpur, then drove to Bhairawa and took a plane from there because there was way too much price difference. The driver was driving at 125 km/ph on a two-lane Indian highway. We reached the border and then took a plane back to Kathmandu!
Tarush Travels 