Northern India Journey - Day 3 New Delhi to Srinagar - 15/12/2010

After the breakfast, we were heading to the airport for Srinagar - Kashmir. But we has to go separate airports as we booked the tickets late so we took different airlines to Kashmir. I was cheated again (not really a cheating but a bad bargaining power) as the hostel charge me 300 rupees more for an extend ride from the international airport to the domestic one! (afterwards, I realized that there was a free transfer couch between 2 airports!). Fine, that didn't not cost too… much. I paid for it. In the entrance of the airport, the security is quite strong, like, if you didn't print out the e-ticket, the security person even won’t let you in. Inside the airport, they also ask for double security check for their own reasons.

Something bad luck has happened that the flight which Kai took was delayed. I had to wait for couple of hours for his flight. Never mind. When I first arrived the airport, there was a staff requested me to do a registration which for all foreign visitors. During the waiting, there were some nuisances happened to me. There were 3 people who started asking you question like where are you from, did you booked the accommodation. (Again someone who wanted to "do" business with you.) And they started saying like don’t trust the people; they are the persons who can be trust and so on. They were just try to make you to believe them and follow them, of course for money. They just stop talking to me until there was another flight arrived which meant other business. Haha…

My friend’s flight finally landed the airport. The man who picked us up had been waiting for a long time.(Sorry for that) He had even called the people inside the airport to check our situation before. When we finally left the airport, we met the guy who in-charge our time in Kashmir. When he saw us, he showed his friendliness and enthusiasm of our visiting. He took us to a car and brought us to the Dal Lake. Once we left the airport the weather there was quiet freezing.

When we arrived the lake, we saw our houseboat. It's named Crown of India. That was a nicely built one. The interior was full of beautiful crafted woodwork and carpet. Although we spent extra,as we book through agent, especially we were tourist and have no cure about the right price, I still thought that's worth coming here to stay. When we settled everything, we couldn't go elsewhere as the people said everything in Kashmir will close around 4:30pm. It's been too late for us to go sightseeing or whatever. In the night, as there was so cold that the keeper opening a heater for us which was burning wood and coal.