THE LIDAR VALLEY 97
-camping-ground is in a wood of blue pines, and the fresh, clear, pine-scented air is refreshing after the stuffy main valley in midsummer.
Above Pahlgam the valley bifurcates, one branch going to Aru, by which a road leads over a troublesome pass into the Sind valley; and the other leading to Shisha Nag and to the famous caves of Amarnath, the resort of many hundreds of pilgrims in July and August. Immediately beyond Pahlgam, on this latter route, the path leads through beautiful woods with fine views of rocky heights and snowy peaks. Numerous maiden-hair and other ferns, primulas, crane’s bill, gentians, and many other well-known flowers line the road-side. Above the wood line are fine grassy uplands frequented by Gujars with their cattle, ponies, buffaloes, sheep, and, goats. Lidarwat is a lovely camping-ground in a green lawn fringed by a deep belt of trees. Beyond is the Kolahoi glacier, the road to which leads over a wide and treeless valley, and in places crosses snow bridges. The camping- ground is 11,000 feet above sea-level, and is set in a circle of stately peaks. The end of the glacier is of grey ice, and so strewn over with fragments of grey rock as hardly to be recognisable as ice, though
the ice is, in fact, two hundred feet thick. Ahove 7
