John Steinbeck once said, “what good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness”. The idea is true to a certain extent. Winter sure does wonders for a writer’s soul. But as someone who’s spent a fair share of time dealing with the national capital’s bitter temperature, in addition to tackling eye-burning smog every year, I, unfortunately, have a love-hate relationship with the season.
A week before Christmas I found myself en route to Jammu. It didn’t matter that the place I was heading to was colder than Delhi, covered in a blanket of snow and had recently experienced massive landslides.
The destination was about 100 kilometers from Jammu airport. I was headed to what many call ‘poor man’s Gulmarg’—Patnitop, a small hilltop town in the Udhampur district of Jammu. Set atop a charming plateau in the Shivalik belt, it rests at an altitude of 2,024 meters. As per folklore, Patnitop is a distortion of ‘Patan Da Talab’, which loosely translates to ‘Pond of the Princess’. The legend goes that a pond once existed in the lush meadows of the region, and the princess of the ruling kingdom back then bathed in it.
This story is from the February 2020 edition of Outlook Traveller.
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This story is from the February 2020 edition of Outlook Traveller.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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