Jannat

At the Hazratbal Mosque in Srinagar it is tradition to feed pigeons. And around feeding time there are so many birds on the buildings around the mosque one would think that they're going to fly away with them. Almost out of a Monty Python film.



When the storm came, there was hail, we were under it and all was ice!

The morning after the storm :)

Back on the lake.

"If there is a paradise, it is here, it is here, it is here."

Becoming mountains

The next day we decided that we had to go back and then further into the white. This time we were joined by a friend and the walk took us four hours till we stopped. When we did, we were at one of the worlds centers. Here the white snow softened into white clouds and there was no telling where one began and the other ended.
We huddled together and the boys lit themselves a spliff. We sat in complete awe. The kind that's demanded when you are in a place that is sacred. Then suddenly a strong wind picked up and the secret universe that we'd found turned darker, as though it was moving across a chess board. The clouds whirled and grew black. And then it began to snow.
Now i've only heard that it gets silent when it snows. That's just the beginning. It goes from silence to quiet and everything happens in slow motion, even breathing. To watch snow fall is otherworldly. We were blessed.
Then tearing ourselves away from this magical space we walked back as fast as we could. Because the elements are to be respected. We walked over ice and by the time we turned the corner the slow snow had become hard rain, we were no longer in the sky but on the ground and the white giants suddenly seemed like a dream. We smiled at each other because where we'd been was a dream, a real dream.

Kashmir

The water in Kashmir is magic, believed to have healing properties.

Jamaal Bhai, a man of the earth tending to his garden or it tending to him. "We're both growing in the rain" he said to me with his silent smile.

On a walk into the next valley, there will be more about this!

On the Dal :)

I've been avoiding this post because i had no idea where to begin. But the longer i took, the harder it got. So i figured i could start with just putting up some of the pictures.
About the photographs, there's only so much a camera can do when you're in the Himalayas. And i know that they're only going to be able to give one a glimmer of what is. But i hope this glimmer does for you what it does for me :)