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Romantic Gardens of Kashmir
| Article
# : |
10873 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1986 |
1,227 Words |
| Author
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Carole Ottesen
Carole Ottesen is an author and freelance writer who
specializes in gardening topics. She lives in Potomac,
Maryland. |
Shah Jehan, the Mogul emperor who built the world's most beautiful building, the Taj Mahal, had a hand in designing some of the world's most exquisite gardens. Located in Kashmir, India's northernmost state, three Mogul gardens-Nishat, Chamsa Shahi, and the most famous of all, Shalamar-recall the grandeur of Mogul court life.
Descendants of Genghis Khan and Timur Lenk, the Moguls were foreigners and conquerors in Hindustan-and unaccustomed to the white heat and choking dust of the Indian subcontinent.
Both Shah Jehan and his father, Jehangir, had Indian blood, the result of Mogul Rajput alliances. Nevertheless, imperial politics allowing, both escaped the hot season by heading north to the cool, high valley of Kashmir. In summer on the Indian Plains, Jehangir complained, his body "burnt like furnace."
When imperial caravans with hundreds of people, elephants, horses, camels, goats, bullocks, and peacocks crossed the 11,400-foot Pir Pinjal Pass into Kashmir, it required weeks. Today tourists visiting Kashmir board the one hour Indian Air Lines flight from Delhi to Srinagar, capital of Kashmir and site of the Mogul gardens.
Located just outside the city of Srinagar, the gardens nestle into the Pir Pinjal mountains, foothills of the Himalayas. They look out over lotus fringed Dal Lake. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect setting.
In the days of Moguls the gardens were reached by boat. Shalamar had a special entrance, an 1,800-foot canal, lined in part with a black marble that is repeated within the garden in the pillars and the zenena-women's-pavillion. A modern road truncates the canal and Shalamar's lowest terrace, but it is still possible to hire a shikara, the timehonored Kashmiri water taxi, and approach Shalamar by water.
While Chasma-Shahi contents itself with a lake view, both Shalamar Bagh and Nishat stretch between lake and hazy mountain, stepping up the slope in three elegant rectangles through which canals are cut. In some places canals widen to still pools; in others, they narrow to swift-flowing currents which tumble from level to level over stone chinikanas (pigeon holes) in which lights were placed to glisten through sheets of falling water.
Water is the soul of these gardens. It unites the mountain from which
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