The village of the shepherds is often known as "Mini Switzerland" of India.

Pahalgam, the village of the shepherds is located in the Anantnag district of Kashmir and is around 100 km away from Srinagar, involving a scenic 3 hours drive through Awantipura Ruins, Saffron Fields and Cricket Bat Factories. Recently, it was in global news because of the horrible terror attack on April 22 killing 25 tourists and a local, which has given a crushing blow to Kashmir's tourism sector.

We visited the place as part of our Kashmir tour, and interestingly, we had to hire a local taxi from this taxi stand, after reaching there, which did not resonate with me, but our driver said, they have a very strong union and won't allow outside vehicles.

And what came next was a heart thrilling ride - the guy was driving at 100km speed in the valley and I had to stop him - look, safety is our first priority and we have not come here to enjoy your ride.

This is the place, where we were left by the driver and there is no road from here to Baisaran meadow, where the unfortunate incidence happened. The local tour operators were behind us to go to Baisaran meadow using horse ride, but I was not comfortable as we saw another accident involving a person failing from the horse ride and breaking his back.

Even kids were not very interested, so we decided to stay and spend some time at this place and return.

As we were roaming in this big field and enjoying the scenic nature, a person came with his parrots offering his service, to use his white parrots for photography. He initially quoted a hire amount but finally agreed to take 150 rupees for one hour and we utilized his service to the fullest.

She wanted to do a reel here, but then few shots did not work well, so we gave up the idea.

Spending half an hour more, we decided to say good bye to the Mini Switzerland, capturing few more last pics.

Shot with SONY α6400 with 18-135 mm Zoom Lens

Some of my other Kashmir posts if you are interested to explore more :

• The Paradise on earth - Kashmir
• Pari Mahal, Srinagar - a seven terraced garden from mid-1600s
• CHESHMASHAHI Mughal Garden, Srinagar
• Gulmarag, Kashmir
• Getting up in the snow - The Meadows, Gulmarg

It takes immense amount of time to write posts like this with all context, so if you like it, please consider upvoting it.

This post will be part of my Google review of this place, a little hive marketing. I have also joined a Sony A6400 Shooters Facebook group (with more than 40k members) where I share my posts so that other photographers may also discover our blockchain and share their work here.

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