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 CHAPTER V GULMARG

Wuart will be one day known as the playground of India, and what is known to the Kashmiris as the “Meadow of Flowers,” is situated twenty-six miles from Srinagar, half-way up the northward- facing slopes of the Pir Panjal. There is no other place like Gulmarg. Oniginally a mere meadow to which the Kashmiri shepherds used to bring their ‘sheep, cattle, and ponies for summer grazing, it is now the resort of six or seven hundred European visitors every “summer. ‘The Maharaja has a palace there. There is a Residency, an hotel with a theatre and ball-room, post office, telegraph office, club, and more than .a hundred “huts” built and owned by Europeans. There are also golf links, two polo grounds, a cricket ground, four tennis courts, and two croquet grounds.

There are level circular roads running all round it. 83