It's the tourist cliche to run from, a week on a houseboat on Dal Lake. Also, it's way beyond our budget. Also, shouldn't we wait till things calm down in Kashmir? Wrong on all counts.
There is one kind of peace that never leaves this valley, and it is here, it is here, it is here. In a green crescent bordered by a stone wall that Emperor Akbar built is a garden shaded by massive, aged chinars. Dahlias wearing improbable colours nod at velvet coxcombs, while young willows, unweeping, stand on the banks. Slipping into the lake itself is the uncultivated garden, where the vegetation starts from pond scum, algae and duckweed and culminates in the lotus. Between the gardens are anchored houseboats, far from their closely packed fellows in the city centre.
At Butt's Clermont Houseboats, you can banish thoughts of rocking, oily water, and damp smells. Mr Butt runs floating stately homes, smelling of cedar and pine and complete with butlers. The boats are fitted with carved panels and windows, venerable desks, and a profusion of crewelty on the drapes.
It is late afternoon when we arrive. The sun glows on the Hazratbal mosque, and the boats float on a bed of lotuses. Waterdrops lie like quicksilver on their leaves. Kingfishers watch from the poles marking the border of this floating hotel, and on the other side is a more bustling human life. Women glide their boats through the weeds to gather lotus stems and water spinach. Twenty-eight geese waddle up the banks. The mountains flatten into monochrome as a thin mist fingers the lake, and the clouds flame briefly into orange. The smell of wood smoke reassures us that hot water for a bath is on the way.
Abdul, "our" butler, comes to ask what we will have for dinner. There are no telephones (or televisions), there is no menu card. The cook will make what we want. He lays out a candle and matchbox, in case of power cuts, and silently withdraws. But not before telling me why I can't find that black and russet bulbul in the book: it is not a bulbul at all, but a flycatcher.
The lights go out at this moment of discovery. I step out into a spectacle of starlight. Winking lights outline the shore, and the night is loud with quacks from the geese and indefinable plashes from the lotus bed.
Next morning Lassa rows us out to the middle of the lake, where fishermen are casting their nets. The women are gathering lotus stems again. Whistling kites wheel overhead, and Lassa points out the distant tower of the Shiva temple. The breeze on the lake has turned our minds to food. Abdul has watched for our return and laid out breakfast. I could get used to this.