Day 3 – Amritsar to Srinagar
Woke up at 2.30 am, freshened up and headed down to load my luggage into the car. The Advance team had already left towards Srinagar to keep us updated with road conditions and checking out rest stops. The 3 am start was necessary to reach to reach Srinagar before sundown. Packed breakfast was kept ready for the entire convoy by the Hyatt team and we finally got running at 3.30 after saying a short prayer. Everything was pretty dark once we got out of Amritsar city, and all that could be seen were the tail lights of our convoy vehicles moving along the empty highway. We stopped at a dhaba 100 kms later to polish off the packed breakfast that we carried along from the hotel. The drive ahead was quite scenic with road surfaces a mix between rough patches and smooth tarmac. A highlight of this drive was passing through the Chenani-Nashtri Tunnel. This is India’s longest tunnel spanning a length of 9.2 kms. This tunnel was thrown open to road users in April 2017 and reduces the travel time between Jammu and Srinagar by 2 hours, a distance of 30 kms.
We entered Srinagar at around 3 pm followed by a late lunch. The food was one the most amazing that I have had in a long time. The non-veg Kashmiri dishes were incredibly delicious, and is probably the only time I had a heavy fill over the duration of this trip. Post lunch, we checked into the Radisson Srinagar for the night. There were floating plans of a visit to the Dal Lake in the evening along with a Shikara ride but those got canned as everyone decided to just relax at the hotel. Dinner was light as I was too stuffed from lunch earlier in the day. Retired to my room early, tomorrow we would be heading to Kargil.
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