Travel Photography | Why You Should Visit Kashmir in Winter

© 2012 Wazari Wazir | Kashmir in Winter

To Kashmiri people, they will always told you to come visit Kashmir in summer, it’s beautiful some people said, in fact,  summer is the peak season here in Kashmir, while winter is considered as  low season. Actually there will never be a perfect time to visit Kashmir or any other place in this world. To photographers it depends on their preferences. If you come from four season countries, then maybe you would like to come in summer but for me, who came from Malaysia, a hot tropical country, I preferred winter.

Anyway, I just wanted to narrow things down here a bit, if you ever wanted to get a picture of snow covered rocks like my picture above, then you will only get that kind of situation in winter because in summer time, there will be no snow decorating the rocks.

And if you like black and white photography, I highly recommended you to visit Kashmir in winter where everything or most of the things will look monochromatic unlike in summer where everything will be colourful, you can see a beautiful tulips by the roadside maybe. Among the places that you wanted to visit during summer is Mughal Garden, Pari Mahal and Tulip Garden and those places will never look great in black and white.

Another reason why it is good to visit Kashmir in winter is that most hotel or houseboat operators will give a good discount, because of lack of tourist. A normal rate for one hour Shikara ride at Dal Lake is Rs300 and in winter you can get as low as Rs100 per hour, this rate is per Shikara and not per person. But if you still prefer to visit Kashmir in summer, please book your flight ticket to Srinagar from Delhi well in advance, because summer time is peak season and the closer the date, the expensive the ticket but if you choose to travel during winter, then it should be no problem to get your seat.

If I ever wanted to visit Kashmir once again, I will definitely choose winter over summer…