In December 2023, I planned to travel to Kashmir in hopes of finding snowing conditions at the end of the year. However, as people might know already, there wasn’t any snow till January end, almost a month delay to snow in popular areas such as Gulmarg, Sonmarg, Pahalgam, and so on.
I remember it was only snowing the day before we left for Srinagar.
Let’s first talk about where we began our journey.
Day 1 - Took an overnight train to Udhampur (Martyr Captain Tushar Mahajan Udhampur railway station)
Day 2 - Upon reaching Udhampur, shared a cab to Banihal, which is another railway station from where you get a train for Srinagar and cabs.
During the travel, we encountered a landslide, climbed down the mountain, took a lift to Banihal in between, and got stuck in traffic for almost 6-7 hours.
You can find a quick overview of that day from one of the YouTuber’s vlogs Deep Ranjan Sachan. He was also traveling to Srinagar on the same day and stuck in traffic as we were.
We were stuck at Ramban in between Banihal and Udhampur railway station.
Later, we decided to walk down the road and find a way to cross it somehow, as some of the people had already done it. So we managed to cross over to the other side of the road near the landslide, reached Banihal, and took the last shared cab to Srinagar.
During our transit to Srinagar, our driver had to stop at a police checkpost. He stayed there, and one of the people in the shared cab was driving up to some kilometers. All of this happened while my friend and I were sleeping. When we woke up, we asked who was driving. Then we got to know that one of the passengers driving was the driver, and the cab owner was still at the checkpost. Somehow that guy came in time before we decided to leave him and reach our final destination, Srinagar—this is what all the passengers decided.
This has been the most adventurous and dangerous experience for us. Luckily, we reached safely and checked in at Zostel Srinagar.
Disclaimer: Still drafting, please check after some time.