Srinagar at Length — Five Nights on the Water

Met at the airport and taken to the lakeside. With five nights ahead there is no need to schedule anything today: the included hour of shikara in the late afternoon, out past the floating gardens and the lotus beds, is all this day needs. The lake is at its best in the last hour of light, when the Zabarwan hills behind it go orange and the boats come back in. · Srinagar · Private vehicle

The eastern shore in sequence — Chashme Shahi of 1632, smallest and highest, built around a spring the water of which is still drunk; Nishat Bagh of 1633, twelve terraces for the zodiac and the finest outlook on the lake; and Shalimar Bagh, laid out by Jahangir for Nur Jahan in 1619 and the archetype of the form. Pari Mahal on the ridge above, a Sufi school turned terrace, is where to be as the light goes. In season, the tulip garden below Zabarwan is added to the morning — the largest in Asia, and open only for a few weeks from late March. · Srinagar · Private vehicle

A whole day in the half of Srinagar the short itineraries never enter. Jama Masjid, founded 1394 and rebuilt after successive fires, rests on over three hundred deodar columns each a single tree. Shah-e-Hamdan on the Jhelum is built of wood without nails, its interior painted and papier-mâchéd. Khanqah-e-Moula nearby is of the same tradition. Between them lie the workshops — walnut carving, khatamband ceilings assembled without glue, sozni embroidery worked by hand over weeks — and the day is better given to those than to another monument. · Srinagar · Private vehicle

Nigeen lake in the morning, connected to Dal by a causeway but quieter, clearer and with far fewer boats — the swimming lake, historically, and the better one to be on. Hazratbal on the western shore is the valley's most revered shrine and the only domed mosque in the city. In the afternoon, Shankaracharya temple on Takht-e-Suleiman, around two hundred and fifty steps up from the road, with the entire lake system and the valley beyond laid out from the terrace. Phones are not allowed at the summit. · Srinagar · Private vehicle

South out of the city for the gardens most visitors never reach — Verinag, where the Jhelum rises in an octagonal tank built by Jahangir in 1620, and Achabal, laid out by Nur Jahan, both about an hour and a half away through the saffron country at Pampore. Back in the afternoon, and onto a houseboat for the final night: carved cedar, carpets, a verandah on the water and dinner served aboard as the lake goes quiet. · Srinagar · overnight Houseboat · Private vehicle

Out on the water before five for the floating vegetable market, which is the right way to end five nights here — growers paddling in from the floating gardens to trade boat to boat, done and dispersed by seven. Breakfast back aboard, then the airport. Allow three hours: Srinagar's security cordons begin well outside the terminal and every bag is screened more than once. · Srinagar · overnight — · Shikara and private vehicle