Amid The Unrest In Kashmir, Dal Lake's Floating Produce Market Is A Lifeline
Kashmir Valley, a place of stunning beauty, has been engulfed by violence for decades. While curfews often grind the rest of life to a halt, one market, sourced from giant floating gardens, is exempt.
In pre-dawn darkness and near-freezing drizzle, the shikara — a graceful, gondola-like canopied boat — made its way through a series of waterways. It was taking me to the daily wholesale floating produce market that begins at daybreak on Dal Lake in Srinagar, the main city of India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
Kashmir, the region disputed between Pakistan and India and engulfed by unrest for decades, . But on this morning on Dal Lake, the only sounds were the steady dipping of my Farooq's heart-shaped paddle, his low singing in Kashmiri and the occasional splash of a water
