We have left the Alps behind us-a long climb, but finished at last-and now here we are suddenly transplanted to that beautiful garden called Kashmir-the Indian Italy, a land breathing of Romeo and Juliet.
We have made our entry at Baramula, where the Jhelum, the Hydaspes of the ancients, leaves its silent, grassy banks to fall headlong into the plains of the Punjab, becoming ever wilder as it leaps from rock to rock. How quietly it flows here through the valley between its smiling banks! A feeling of warmth and peace steals over our senses. Sweet-scented carpets literally spread themselves out before our astonished eyes-the whole valley is one moving mass of bursting bloom in the June haze. What a sparkling, laughing, enticing world! Nature here draws her resources from the deep wells of life’s eternity! |