Shalimar Bagh, Srinagar

Shalimar Bagh lies at the foot of the Zabarwan range on the north-eastern side of Dal Lake in a series of terraces, with water running down the middle of it all. The Mughal emperor Jahangir laid it out in 1619 for his wife Nur Jahan, who loved Kashmir and made the long journey up from the plains many times; in 1630 his son Shah Jahan had his governor Zafar Khan extend it. The famous Persian couplet about Kashmir, "If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here", is often associated with this garden in particular.

The plan is a lesson in Mughal garden design. The whole garden, about 587 metres long and 251 metres wide, is organised along a single axis, the Shah Nahar, a channel that carries water from the hills down through three terraces. The lowest was the public garden of the emperor's audience hall; the middle one, with its hall of private audience, was the emperor's own; the highest and most secluded was the zenana garden for the women of the court. At the changes of level the water spills over in small cascades, and behind them are rows of arched niches, the chini khanas, where oil lamps were once set so that the falling water glowed at night.

The finest building is the black marble pavilion that Shah Jahan built on the top terrace, standing in a fountain pool fed by water from higher up, with a double cascade falling against a niched wall behind it. The middle terrace alone has 410 fountains, and chinar trees line the vistas along the canal. The garden's old names describe what it was meant to feel like: Jahangir called it Farah Baksh, "the delightful", and Shah Jahan's extension was named Faiz Baksh, "the bountiful". Under Sikh rule in the nineteenth century the pavilion served as a guest house for European visitors.

The garden was once reached from the lake along a canal more than a kilometre long, lined with willows and rice fields, and visitors can still arrive by water taxi as well as by road. Its name has travelled far beyond Kashmir, into Laurence Hope's "Kashmiri Song" of 1902 with its opening line about pale hands beside the Shalimar, and into Salman Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown. Autumn, when the chinar leaves change colour, and spring are the most beautiful seasons here.

Getting there

Shalimar Bagh lies on the north-eastern side of Dal Lake, about 15 km from the centre of Srinagar. Srinagar International Airport (SXR) is about 20 km away. It can be reached by road or by water taxi across the lake, and it is run as a public park by the Jammu and Kashmir tourism department.