Tulip Garden
"Kashmir is beautiful year-round. For three weeks in spring, it becomes almost unreasonable."
Asia's largest tulip garden, a hillside above Dal Lake turned into a three-week riot of colour every spring.
I timed my second trip to Kashmir specifically around the tulip garden’s opening, which meant a certain amount of anxious weather-checking in the weeks before, since the flowering window shifts a little each year and can close early if a late cold snap or an early heatwave gets in the way. I got lucky. I arrived on the second week of the bloom, on the terraced slopes of the Zabarwan range overlooking Dal Lake, to find something like one and a half million tulip bulbs in full, simultaneous colour — reds, yellows, pinks, purples, arranged in broad geometric blocks that from a distance look almost artificial in their intensity.
The garden, officially the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden, opened in 2007 and has since become Asia’s largest tulip garden by area, a fact the local guides repeat with evident pride. What struck me wasn’t just the scale but the setting — most tulip gardens I’ve seen photographs of sit in flat Dutch polders; this one climbs a hillside with the Himalayas as a backdrop and Dal Lake glinting below, so that every wide shot accidentally becomes a shot of three different kinds of beauty stacked on top of each other. I walked the terraces slowly, in no hurry, while families around me organised elaborate photo shoots involving entire changes of clothing.
A gardener taking a break near the upper terraces told me the bulbs are planted fresh every autumn, tens of varieties trialled each year to see what handles the valley’s specific cold and light best, and that the garden’s brief window — usually late March into mid-April — is exactly why locals treat opening week like an event, arriving with the same anticipation other places reserve for a festival. I understood the fuss by the time I left. Kashmir doesn’t need help being beautiful, but for three weeks each spring, it clearly enjoys showing off anyway.
When to go: Late March through mid-April, though exact dates shift with the weather each year — check ahead before planning your trip around it. Go on a weekday morning to beat both the crowds and the midday heat.