Patnitop

Fremont

After our darshan of Vaishno Devi and Bhaironath we were very tired and even we were not in a position to talk to each other. So we decided to take rest and in the evening plan our further journey. So all of us went to our rooms and slept whole day.In the evening all were fresh, now all of us wanted to go for shopping, so after tea we went for our shopping and after our shopping we planned that at 90'clock we will leave Katra for Patnitop.

After our breakfast we left at 9 o'clock sharp for Patnitop, in two cars.Patnitop is a hill station in Kashmir at an altitude of 2024 m. across which the Jammu highway crosses. In winter it is covered by thick snow.Some of the main attraction of Patnitop, Kashmir are delightful picnic spots, magnificent views of mountains and Chenab basin. It is about 120 k.m from Katra, and about 112 km from Jammu, and from there Srinagar is about 200 km.Patnitop is amongst the best- developed tourist place in Kashmir valey.Here you can see an amazing dense forest of pine.There are number of tourist huts and dakbungalows, people come for picnic and stay here. People can trek, do skiing in winters, can enjoy many more snow games, they have the option of 6 holes golf course in summers and sight seeing in all the seasons.

When we left Katra town and came to the highway, by that time we were knowing many things about Katra and Vaishnodevi, but we were unknown to Patnitop and Kashmir rout, so we started inquiring about it from our driver. Our driver was a sardarji, so he started explaining us nicely in hindi. Since we were on the Shrinagar highway, two types of vehicles we saw on that road, tourist vehicles, and army's big vans and trucks.

After 25-30 km, both sides of the road was full of pine and pomegranate trees.As we entered the Kashmir the real scenic view started. Now the famous chinar and pine tree could be seen. Sardarji was telling us about each and every tree and places.When it was nearly 25 km,we could guess that now we are closer to Patnitop. Now the dense forest of pine and river Chenab could be seen. It was exactly what I had read in the books or seen in the movies. All of us were exited and watching the scenes we reached Patnitop. Now the driver stopped the car and told us that, it was the most famous spot of Patnitop. We got down, wow! what a nice garden and picnic spot it was, full of flowers and tall straight pine trees, we saw some stalls of Kashmiri suits, shawls and stoles in the garden, the most interesting thing was the stalls of Kashmiri costumes.

As we entered the gate of the garden we saw a stall just near the gate, and all of us went near the stall and quickly purchased some suits.I was busy in nice collection of kashmiri handicraft and when I turned back to see what others were doing, I found no one there, only Kusum(my friend) was there, I asked her about all of them and she showed me with her finger.Both of us laughed together, all were in kashmiri costumes and standing in pose, some had pot on the shoulder, some had hukka and some flowers too.The photo session was going on. Any how, it took at least an hour in that. After the photo session we had a look of the nice garden,it was woo!Now this we saw some more gardens and picnic spot and then went to see a famous Shiv temple.It was a very famous temple, I think all the visitors of Patnitop goes to visit that temple.Here again you have many stalls of kashmir handicrafts.Why should we leave those stalls untouched, so we visited those stalls and took some suits and stoles there too.Now we were getting late for Jammu because we had our train for Haridwar from there.We with our packets and smiling faces got into our cars. Now we told the driver to take us to some nice place for lunch because we were hungry and after that we will go straight to the station.