When Dr Marc Stollreiter, a first-time German visitor to Kashmir, went on a shikara ride on the picturesque Dal lake recently, he was shocked by what he saw beneath its tranquil waters. "We found huge quantities of syringes and needles. We saw mounds of rotting garbage. We saw tourists throwing empty chips packets, plastic bags and the like from shikaras into the lake."
The Dal lake is shrinking. It s waters are weed ridden. Untreated waste finds its way into the water. People continue to build land on the lake area. An ambitious project to save the lake was launched in 1997, but hardly any headway has been made
The colony that has mushroomed upon the Dal Lake is the only slum on water in Srinagar. A byproduct of the proxy war between India and Pakistan, it threatens to kill the lake
Call them the lakers . Some 10,000 of them. Parts of the Dal land and water belong to them. And when they feel the need to make a floating garden or land on the lake, they simply do it. Especially since the militancy problem in the Valley began, there
