On 27th November 2021, we decided to stay in a houseboat. We had been enjoying Kashmir already for 3 days by then, but we had been in hotels only. Radisson hotel gave us a great starting and Batra hotel settled us down in Srinagar – the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir. The end of November was not the best of times to visit Kashmir, but we had no option as this was our anniversary trip. Our anniversary is on 24th November. So we landed at Srinagar Airport in the morning of 24th November at 10 am. After moving around in Srinagar for 3 days and after passing one high security alert day of 26/11, we thought it would be a great miss if we could not stay in a houseboat at least for one good night.
How to find a good houseboat in Srinagar
As I started to look at all the options for houseboats, I had a few concerns that I needed to verify before booking any houseboat. My first concern was related to the cold. Kashmir was facing a cold wave continuously for last few days. Srinagar was going through sub-zero temperature every night, and I was worried if I could get proper heating in the houseboat. The next big item on my list was the security, as the houseboat is essentially not a hotel per se. I wanted to be in a safe environment. Another important aspect of my search was also to find a hygienic environment where covid19 protocols were being maintained.
First thought in my mind was to go to Ghat 15 of Dal Lake also known as Nehru park for the beautiful floating park in the ghat to look for houseboats to stay in. But the scene there was quite intimidating. The moment you express your intention to look for a houseboat, the Shikari people will try to grab you and push recommendations for their choice of houseboats. Don’t think of the Shikaris as the mere mode of transport on Dal lake, they are actually means to get travellers to sellers. I could not trust these recommendations. In a hindsight, I feel one can make good use of these shikaris to visit some of the houseboats to choose one per liking. However, I did not know swimming, and I was not in the mood for an endless search for a good houseboat hopping from one to another by floating on an unstable small hand sailed wooden boat. Shikari for a quick ride is okay, but they are too fragile for my comfort to have a long duration cruise on a deep lake.
I resorted to searching online so that I can also read reviews of other fellow travellers on online websites. My search naturally led me to the huge community knowledge base of TripAdvisor. I off course searched for the highest ranked hotels in Srinagar. I was surprised to see how the chart was topped by all the houseboats, and something as luxurious as the Taj Vivanta Dal Lake did not top the list. And the top most reviewed / ranked accommodation in Srinagar was a houseboat called Akbar Group of Heritage Houseboats. The traveller reviews were all raving about it. Almost 600 reviews on TripAdvisor had only approx 4 or 5 of 1-star reviews, with most reviews giving 5 star rating to them. Mostly people praised the owner of these houseboats, a person named Adnan, for his exemplary hospitality. Guests seemed to be mesmerized by his humble behaviour, support provided by him to make their stays extra comfortable, how he made the guests feel at home, how he has a lovely family with a foreign origin wife and a NRI kid. The description seemed to be of a man you can depend on with your life, just what I was looking for. Many praised the location, decor of and view from the houseboat. Most importantly, many mentioned electric blanket and proper heating arrangements. Given all these raving reviews, I expected this property to be quite expensive. To my surprise, it was not expensive and was just about Rs 4000 per night for accommodation of two in a room within houseboat. For the purpose of safety, I wanted to get a full houseboat booked for myself rather than to share the houseboat with strangers. But the online booking platforms did not provide much of an option like that. We booked into this property. So most of our experience about Kashmir Houseboats is from the experience of this one, although this post is not a review specifically of the Akbar Group of Heritage Houseboats. I have a separate review specifically for them. Rather in this post, I will concentrate on writing about my review of Kashmiri houseboats in general. I will also include my experience of observing several of them from outside and of hearing the word of mouth about some of them.