Staying in a Houseboat on Dal Lake in Srinagar

Because "old enough" is a cultural construct

We arrived in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, by plane. We planned to spend most of our time in Kashmir in the region of Ladakh, road tipping through the mountains and poking around in the Buddhist monasteries that dot the regions.

But we had a week in Srinagar first. And where does one stay when in Srinagar? Probably, one should do like George Harrison (probably) did and stay on a houseboat on Dal Lake.

So that is what we did.

I had been dreaming about lazy evenings spent lounging on the porch of a houseboat on Dal Lake since I was a teenager, after I happened to read an article about a place called Dal Lake. I read that on that Lake, there were many, many houseboats. And in those houseboats, there were tourists . . . or they were empty, depending on the security situation at the time.

People who had been there spoke of a mirror-like lake surface  where you couldn’t tell which way was up, and which way was lake.

People spoke about life on the lake, a stream of boats loaded down with greens from the lake bottom barely remaining afloat with the weight plying to and fro.

They spoke of small children paddling themselves to school . . . or away from school, depending on the time of day and the disposition of the small child.

I wanted to experience it. All of it.

A man takes his produce to market

Finding a Houseboat in Srinagar

The experience started off for us a little low on romance. There was a kiosk at the Srinagar airport where we looked through a catalogue of boats. There were pictures of the different boats, along with a variety of packages and prices.

So we flipped through pages until we found something we liked.

The houseboats range from class A to D. We found a nice class B that looked perfect for us. We tried haggling, but prices didn’t come down at all from what was listed (but they did throw in additional inclusions). We paid $650 USD (in 2016) for a whole week on the boat, including breakfast and dinner, a city tour, a lake tour, and a trip out to Narang (where we hired ponies and went on a day trek).

These days, finding a houseboat on Dal Lake is a little different. Now, you can browse dozens of houseboats online, complete with filtered searches, star ratings, and review wars over breakfast quality. Sites like Booking.com list plenty of options, and there are even dedicated platforms just for Srinagar houseboats. You can still go old-school and negotiate on arrival—but if you're traveling in high season or want something specific, booking ahead is probably the smarter play. Fewer surprises. Fewer mystery dinners. Probably.

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The daughters on a water taxi, headed from boat to shore.

One thing to keep straight: a houseboat on Lake Dal is totally different from a houseboat on the Kerala Backwaters. On the backwaters, you are in a boat that has some of its space turned into sleeping quarters. On Dal Lake, you are in a house that happens to be floating on a lake. On the Backwaters, your boat moves throughout a network of rivers, canals, and lakes. On Lake Dal, your boat remains stationary. On the Backwaters, you will likely be moored to a dock in the evening, and you can simply walk off the boat and onto land. On Dal Lake, you will be somewhere out in the lake, and you will need to either arrange a ride to shore with your host, or flag down one of the passing water taxis (NOTE: don't stay too far out on the lake, or it becomes difficult to make the trip to town).

Both experiences are lovely.

Your local corner store on the lake

Culinary Cash and Burn

The only real downside of the experience for us was the food on the boat. It was bad. Straight up bad. Maybe one hair this side of inedible. It was really the only time through all our time in India that we got consistently poor food.

It was a shame, because every little random restaurant we ate at on shore in Srinagar was delicious . . . or maybe, thinking back, it just seemed delicious because the food on the boat was so bad. I mean, it was really bad.

Just bad.

What can you do. Sometimes you get unlucky.

And that is all it was: luck. Looking back, there isn’t anything we should have done to prevent this from happening. The way things were set up, it just came down to luck.

And luck kicked us square in the tastebuds this time.

Evening on the Lake

But every day, after choking down a sad excuse for dinner, I would walk out to our front porch. And I would sit there in the calm of the dying day. I would watch the mix of boats move by. And, just as the sun began to set, the call to prayer would start.

At first, I would just hear one voice extolling the greatness of God, echoing out over the quieting lake. And then another voice would join. And another.

It was fun to try to pick out how many different calls we could hear. It was many. Seven or eight, at least.

And in those evenings, those perfect evenings sitting on that porch, I was simply filled with too much travel bliss for the lingering, evil miasma of a wretched dinner to bring my spirits down. Because travel can fill you with wonder in a way that chases out all the negatives. At least for a while.

A woman about her day on Dal Lake