Kashmir is known as heaven on planet Earth. The beauty of this place remains pristine. Although tourism has been severely disrupted by the terrorist insurgency by Pakistan, Kashmir remains one of the most beautiful places to visit. Your visit is going to be incomplete without a stay in the cute house boats. These wooden houses built on boats are housed in the major lakes of Kashmir. These floating houses offer you the beauty of Kashmir in it’s most unadulterated form.
Instead of choosing the crowded Dal lake to stay, we chose the serene Nagin Lake for our stay. The Martin Houseboat was one of the biggest ones floating around. With beautiful wooden carvings done on every part of the boat. With a large drawing room along with two bedrooms and a dining hall, the Martin houseboat is a perfect place to spend your time to Kashmir in. Trips to the land usually take place in the small delicate Shikaraas.
Now let’s come to the incident. By our third night of the stay, the weather had started to turn a bit chilly with a bit of topsy turvy waves. By the nights, the winds had taken full effect and they began rattling the houseboat with all its might. The whistling of the strong winds against the wooden structure created an eerie sound in the night. By the deep of the night, the winds had picked up even more and the houseboat started swaying uncontrollably. Fear gripped us like never before. The fear of 
the houseboat becoming unmoored from its attachments on the land and going deep into the lake. A crash later the cries began. Now the fear of not getting through the night seemed like a possibility. The rattling decreased a bit as the night wore on and we huddled into a single room. Morning broke and the owner of our houseboat jumped in to check onto us.
His house is the next houseboat moored to the land. Apparently the howls the previous night were of some clothes flying away instead on someone dying. Throughout the whole day, the winds maintained their intensity amd getting to land was an impossibility. We missed visiting Tanmarg as we had scheduled it for the day. But the experience of being stranded on a houseboat for nearly 36 hours is something that will remain with me throughout my life. Tell us about such incidents in the comments below
