We consoled ourselves with ice cream made of RABRI, a heavily
condensed milk, and flavored with whole pistachio nuts.
We took several trips in the SHIKARAS or houseboats, shaded by
red-embroidered canopies, coursing along the intricate channels of
Dal Lake, a network of canals like a watery spider web. Here the
numerous floating gardens, crudely improvised with logs and earth,
strike one with amazement, so incongruous is the first sight of
vegetables and melons growing in the midst of vast waters. Occasionally
one sees a peasant, disdaining to be "rooted to the soil," towing
his square plot of "land" to a new location in the many-fingered
lake.
In this storied vale one finds an epitome of all the earth's
beauties. The Lady of Kashmir is mountain-crowned, lake-garlanded,
and flower-shod. In later years, after I had toured many distant
lands, I understood why Kashmir is often called the world's most
scenic spot. It possesses some of the charms of the Swiss Alps,
and of Loch Lomond in Scotland, and of the exquisite English lakes.
An American traveler in Kashmir finds much to remind him of the
rugged grandeur of Alaska and of Pikes Peak near Denver.
As entries in a scenic beauty contest, I offer for first prize
either the gorgeous view of Xochimilco in Mexico, where mountains,
skies, and poplars reflect themselves in myriad lanes of water amidst
the playful fish, or the jewel-like lakes of Kashmir, guarded like
beautiful maidens by the stern surveillance of the Himalayas.
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