Ever since I read the story of Tulipmania, I was curious to see the flowers in person. In the 17th century, the random variegated varieties of tulips soon caught the fancy of market speculators and bettors, and the prices of tulips went from the best variety costing one month of pay to almost 5 years of pay. The bubble crashed spectacularly, with many people losing their investment and savings. Tulipmania gave way to tulip-fobia, where some people couldn’t even stand the sight of the flower, compelled to destroy the flower whenever seen.

In Srinagar, the government arranges Tulip festival each April, where thousands of tulips are on display. Generally this festival is from 1st April to 25th, but since it takes a lot of months for the flower to develop from bulb, the days can be slightly moved around. For best chances of seeing maximum flowers in bloom, the consensus was to visit the festival in its mid part, theoretically the second week of April.

From 9th April onwards, I planned a Srinagar tour with my family – myself, my mother, wife and 21 month old daughter Bharavee for 6 days, followed by 2 days in Delhi, and purchased tickets accordingly. We were to reach Srinagar around 2.45pm as per flight landing time. Now began the crucial step of planning the tour.

As usual, I started by reviewing itineraries of prominent travel agencies to get an idea of the must see places. Around Srinagar, the three main towns of tourist interest are Pahalgam, Gulmarg and Sonmarg. I had already visited Sonmarg in my Leh Ladakh motorcycle tour, so decided to skip it this time.

Some tours make Srinagar their base, and visit each of the three towns every day. I didn’t like this plan, as this added too much travel each day, and with apparently good stay options in all these towns, it didn’t make sense to me to rush back to Srinagar hotel rather than stay in those towns.

By a stroke of luck, I got a message that my departure flight was rescheduled and I needed to select an alternative. Looking at the options, we changed our flight that would reach Srinagar at 9am. This effectively gave us a whole day in Kashmir without changing the tour dates.

This year, the Sun loved Srinagar a bit much, raising and keeping the temperature too high. This led to early blooming (and corrorarily early waning) of the Tulips. The festival which was expected to begin on 1st April was opened on 23rd March itself. We were planning to visit the Tulip garden towards the end of the trip, but seeing how they had bloomed early, we felt that the flowers would wilt if we waited too long to see them. So we added a Srinagar Tulip Garden halt to the first day itself, before travelling to Pahalgam.

After reviewing the maps and the plans umpteenth number of times, we decided the following plan:
Day 1: Land at Srinagar airport – visit the tulip gardens – Martand Surya Temple at Anantnag – proceed straight to Pahalgam
Day 2: Pahalgam
Day 3: Pahalgam – Avanti Swami Temple Ruins – Gulmarg
Day 4: Gulmarg
Day 5: Gulmarg to Srinagar – Srinagar local sightseeing
Day 6: Srinagar local sightseeing
Day 7: Flight to Delhi.

People wanting to stay in houseboats stay there on the first night, going there straight from airport. But in our case, it didn’t make sense to waste the day and none of use wanted to stay stagnant in a houseboat. In case you want to stay in a houseboat, you may alter the itinerary accordingly.