Home · Practical
Before the postcard
Practical notes
SIMs, taxis, shrines, packing, and the ways a day gets steered into a shop. Read them once. They are dull on purpose.
Paperwork
Prepaid SIMs in Jammu and Kashmir
Do not fly to Srinagar assuming you will buy a Jio or Airtel prepaid at the airport the way you might in another Indian city. Jammu and Kashmir has long treated a new prepaid co…
Staying in touch
Signal, Wi-Fi and maps
Srinagar has ordinary city signal. The meadows are patchy. Gurez and the high walks are where a downloaded map stops being a hobby.
Practical
Safety, without a speech
People travel the Srinagar–Gulmarg–Pahalgam circuit every week of the year. The risks that actually rearrange a trip are weather, a closed road, a protest day, and ordinary thef…
Kit
What to pack
Pack for the coldest hour of your coldest place, not for the noon photograph of Srinagar. A July Gulmarg evening and a January boulevard are both capable of embarrassing a cotto…
How to behave
Etiquette
Kashmir is hospitable and also tired of being treated as a set. The manners are not complicated. They are specific.
Getting around
Taxis, unions and ponies
You will spend real money on cars. The argument, when it happens, is almost always about a price that was never said out loud, or a route that grew a shop in the middle.
Spend the day better
Traps worth skipping
None of these will hurt you if you can say “not today” without a speech. Most of them depend on you being new, polite and in someone else’s car.