Most people book one hotel in Srinagar and miss the whole valley

Srinagar airport runs a second security check after baggage claim, and it is thorough. Budget ninety minutes from touchdown to the car park. Then the driver takes the Boulevard road south along the Dal's eastern shore to the three Mughal gardens: Chashme Shahi, small and spring-fed; Nishat Bagh, twelve terraces laid out along the zodiac; and Shalimar Bagh, which Jahangir built for Nur Jahan in 1619 and which is still the most composed garden in India. All three in one afternoon, entrance under ₹30 each, and you are done before the tour buses finish their afternoon stop.

At dusk, a shikara from Nehru Park. The boatman takes you past the floating vegetable gardens — planks of weeds that have been farmed since the Mughals — and into the quieter channels behind the houseboats. One hour on the water costs around ₹800. The floating market itself, at Rainawari, runs between five and seven in the morning and is packed away before most visitors are awake; if you want that, set your alarm.

Eighty kilometres up the Sindh valley on the old Leh highway, past Kangan and Gagangir, to Sonamarg at 2,800 metres. The meadow is wide, green, and crossed by a chalk-blue river. From here it is a four-kilometre pony ride — or a stiff walk — up to the snout of the Thajiwas glacier. Hire gumboots at the base if you don't have them; the last stretch is slush even in summer, and leather sandals don't recover. The glacier holds snow well into July, and the scale of it against the surrounding rock is the thing photographs don't prepare you for.

Back in Srinagar by evening. Skip the pony-wallahs who offer Drung waterfall as an add-on; it adds three hours and nothing the Sindh valley hasn't already shown you.

Two hours west through Tangmarg to Gulmarg at 2,650 metres, the meadow that gives the place its name: gul for flower, marg for meadow. Your gondola tickets for both phases are already issued, because in season Phase 2 sells out online days ahead. Phase 1 lifts to Kongdoori at 3,050 metres; Phase 2 carries you to Apharwat at 3,979 metres, the world's second-highest operating cable car. At the top, in June, you are standing on permanent snow in a jacket, looking across to Nanga Parbat on a clear day. Phase 2 shuts without warning on high wind, so we go up first and keep the golf course, St Mary's Church and the afternoon meadow walk for after.

The afternoon is the golf course — one of the highest in the world, and free to walk — and St Mary's Church, a colonial relic that opens on request. Skip the horse rides offered at the gondola base; they go fifty metres and come back.

Four hours across the valley floor, and two stops worth making. Pampore is where most of India's saffron grows, in flat fields that run right to the roadside. Any month gives you the purple-green carpet; the crocus blooms only for two weeks in late October, so don't rearrange your trip for it. Awantipora, twenty kilometres before Pahalgam, is a pair of 9th-century Shiva temples built by King Avantivarman — both in measured ruin, both largely skipped by passing cars, and both worth fifteen minutes of yours.

Pahalgam is at 2,130 metres where the Lidder river runs milky grey out of the Kolahoi glacier. The pine slopes start right behind the hotels. Walk the river bank in the evening — it costs nothing and the light on the Kolahoi direction is good from five onwards.

Private vehicles are not allowed beyond Pahalgam town, so the morning runs on the local union taxi — included in our price — out to Betaab Valley, Aru and Chandanwari. Betaab is named after the 1983 Hindi film shot here and takes about twenty minutes to walk across. Aru is quieter and better for an actual walk along the river. Chandanwari, at 2,895 metres, is the base camp for the Amarnath yatra; when the yatra is running — roughly July to August — the road is crowded and the prices at the stalls triple. We route around those weeks.

Back to Srinagar by late afternoon and onto a carved deodar houseboat moored off the Boulevard. The sitting room has inlaid walnut furniture and a view of the Zabarwan hills turning pink at six. Dinner is Kashmiri home cooking — haak saag, nadru yakhni, dum aloo, rice — served at the table. The wazwan is mutton throughout; this is not a trip for guests who don't eat meat, so we flag it clearly. Evening shikara to the floating market channel if you want it, or sit on the deck.

Depending on your flight time, the morning covers the old city. The Jamia Masjid at Nowhatta is built almost entirely of deodar wood — 378 pillars, no reinforced concrete — and the interior courtyard is one of the quietest large spaces in any Indian city. Shankaracharya temple sits on a 1,000-metre hill above Dal and gives you the full bowl of the valley, the lake, the houseboats and the Pir Panjal on the far wall. The papier-mâché and shawl workshops at Zaina Kadal are where you buy things, and the prices are fixed if you walk in cold without a referral from your driver.

Airport drop is three hours before departure. Srinagar runs a double security check and will not hurry for anyone. Pack your shawls flat and declare anything over customs limits; the airport staff are familiar with the quantity tourists carry and will open bags.