After staying and travelling around in Delhi I started up to Kashmir by plane.

I had some strange feelings, as Kashmir seemed to be a very, very dangerous zone a couple of years ago. So, I was informing myself a lot and everything seemed to be OK there. Checked a flight from Delhi to Srinagar.

The flight itself was horrible. Had to stop at Jammu due to technical problems. We had to left the plane and then getting in again after a couple of hours. The security checks have been amazing.I had to varify both of my luggage a couple of times and my body was checked again and again. People told me, that due to travelling to this zone, everything is checked a lot of times.

Then after a cople of hours (I prayed, that i do not have to enter this plane again) we entered the machine and started up to Srinagar without any troubles. Puh.

In Srinagar itself I was “welcomed” by a lot of inhabitants: Offerd me Rikshas, Stays in houseboats, in hotels, food… It wasOK. Checked a pre/paid/taxi to Hotel Swiss near the Dal-Lake. Stayed there two nights and had some recent conversations with the local hotelmanager and the people outsite there. There are not many tourists… And the present of military is amazing… Everywhere… On every corner… In every place… Made my stomache feelng a little bit different the first hours, but it was Ok then.

Visited the city whic is something like Afghanistan. Amazing and very exciting. Interesting landscape. Lake, Mountains.

The \second day in Kashmir I went together with Mehmet, a guy I met at Hotel Swiss to Gulmarg. A place in the mountains - a “ski-ressort” n INdia with a gondola up to 4.000 m (Lonely PLanet says so).

Very much exciting… stood in a qew up to one hour, but there were only 50 peple waiting for buying a ticket. Interesting temperament the people are having - the quew was controlled by military..

We went to the first section, sawq some snow a handful of skie, soe slidges and had a tea at a hut there. Strang, strange, strange. Very wexciting.

Went there by shared jeep and back the third with a local indian buys. standing near the open door, packed bnetween all other guys and having no space :) funny driveand alinteresting experience.

At the hotel swiss I got in good contact with the local “hotelmanager” as he was very much interested in Online (Marketing). I even installed him Google Analytics into his webpage aas he was interested in it. Some optimazation in the webpage will provide him a good online-presence :) Wonderful… and fiunny./

Today I met Robert and Wolfgang - both had been in Nepal last year (check Wolfgang’s Nepal-Blog here: www.sugarmelon.com/nepal). Robert showed me his pictures from his trekking-tours and with Wolfgang I had some chats about India and Nepal.

There are two possible routes, travelling through Nepal and arriving in Kathmandu.

Route 1 is from Darjeeling, passing Kakarbhitta and then 200 km in the south of Nepal to the Royal Chitwan Nationalpark, where I will start Route 2 (coming from Patna in India) and going forward to Kathmandu. Depending on time and transport and my personal condition.

In Kathmandu I am currently thinking about 2 things:

• Either flying with Yeti-Airlines to Lukla, staying there for one night or 
• doing a round-flying-trip to see the Himalaya-Mountains (Mt. Everest, Makalu…).

Fascinating - it would be great to see those landscape and those mountains about which I read about in Wolfgang’s Blog.

On Monday Morning I am going to receive my Visa for Nepal…