The Hotel That Held Kashmir's Welcome

From royal guests to empty halls, Nedous Hotel now waits for its next chapter.

- Syed Nissar H Gilani

On some evenings in Srinagar, when the Jhelum turns golden and the shadows lengthen, you can almost imagine the tongas once again.

The sound of hooves on the road, the creak of leather, and the dust lifting behind them take you back in time.

And if you follow that imagined sound past the Chinar trees, you might find yourself before the Nedous Hotel.

Its facade is faded now, but it still carries a certain poise, like an old aristocrat dressed for a party that never began.

The Nedous was born from a journey that began far from Kashmir, in a Croatian village called Rugasa. Michael Henery Nedou was a hotelier before he was a dreamer. Lahore was his first stage, a modest place on Masson's Road where bread baked in the mornings and the evenings were lit by oil lamps.

But it was the valley, with its pine-scented air and light that changed like silk, that drew him in.

In 1888, he built his first hotel in Gulmarg, high in the meadows where shepherds moved with their flocks and British officers escaped the summer heat.