The autumn sun lights up the 40-seater vistadome coaches introduced this month on trains plying in the Kashmir valley. The glass roofs give you a glimpse of the sky, which will soon be filled with swirling snowflakes as winter approaches, making the ride even more breathtaking. For romantics who would travel to Switzerland to recreate the train scenes from the 1995 blockbuster, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kashmir has set a perfect stage this winter.
The exteriors of the coaches, however, have a local touch — in summer blue with Kashmiri women in traditional winter outfits, depicting the dance, roaf, popular during weddings in the State. These coaches will open a new chapter for tourism in Kashmir. “Tourists will get a visual experience of rural Kashmir, its orchards and fields,” says Nasir Shah, chairman of Kashmir Leisure and Pilgrimage Tour Operators. They have been added on the Srinagar-Banihal leg and come equipped with inbuilt GPS-based information systems. Banihal town is the gateway of Kashmir and connects the Valley through the Jawahar Tunnel. The train passes through the Banihal-Qazigund Railway Tunnel, which is 11.2 kilometres long, cutting through the Himalayas. The Banihal stretch, which was constructed as an alternative cart road by Dogra kings in the 1920s, is set to become a railway track, too.
