Amar Mahal @ Jammu City, India

During last week of June, Nitin called up for 3rd Mughal Rally in Shrinagar. So the journey started early in morning at 5:00am from Gurgaon. This Photo Journey shares some of the moments captured in my HTC Desire HD MobileJourney started in Nitin's gypsy... Thankfully weather was comparatively better, but we also had AC in the gypsy to handle weather conditions... We stopped at various places in Punjab to have fresh sugarcane juice or lemon-soda.After smooth journey through Ambala, Ludhiana & Pathankot we reached Jammu at around 4:30 pm. Plan was to stay at Jammu and leave for Shrinagar in early morning. We stayed at Hari Niwas Palace which is near to AMAR MAHAL Palace in Jammu. It was beautiful place to stay. River on other side of the hotel with wonderful view makes this a great place to stay in Jammu.After refreshing halt at Jammu, next journey started at 5:00am with convoy of Mughal Rally Officials who had come from various parts of the country. Mughal Rally is basically organized by Himalayan Motorsports with support of J&K Bank and J&K Tourism department. Of course local administration, government, police and army are integral part of it's success. We came to Shrinagar from Jammu via old Mughal Road, as we wanted to understand the stretches one day before actually start our project on these hills. Most of the stretch has wonderful landscapes with snow capped hills looking into the beautiful valleys with white-water streams and waterfalls. It took approximately 6 hrs to reach Shrinagar from Jammu via Mughal Road. Mughal Road is good shape except few patches where work is under progress. We were in a convoy of around 15 vehicles... We stopped many times on the way to feel the change in weather, appreciate natural beauty all around and snacks..It was scrutiny day, we spent some time around Shrinagar Golf Club where all the formalities were happening. Capturing some scrutiny moments, we headed towards our hotel, Cetaur. After some snacks and meeting different folks I thought of heading towards Dal Lake. I was happy to see Dal Lake in well maintained condition. In fact, cleaning of the lake was in progress while we were there. I shall be sharing a separate Photo Journey on Dal Lake with more details about the way people live around this lake and how they commute to different parts of Shrinagar City Weather at Shrinagar was not very interesting as town is in foothills and very much crowded like other cities. Traffic Jams are very well popular in the city. So it's like any other Indian City...Again Road Journey had to be started at 2:30am. So we started towards Peer-Ki-Gali from Shrinagar on first day of Rally. After few hours of drive we reached the place and it was freezing cold there. Of-course, we were carrying some warm cloths but the chilly wind was unbearable in early morning. On top of that, we had to wait for Rally vehicles to come and there was enough time to start the rally. Now we were three - Nitin, Varun and Myself. We placed ourselves at various places in the stage.Day-1 was extremely tiring and ended with some good shots around Peer-ki-Gali. At around 5:00 pm we headed towards Shrinagar. It was time to take some rest & take backup of Camera-Cards. After dinner, it was time for early sleep as next day we had to start at 3:30am towards Sinthan Pass.Next day, journey started in Nitin's Gypsy at 3:30am from Hotel Centaur Shrinagar. It was 3 hrs of drive from Shrinagar to Sinthan Pass from where first stage had to start. Sinthan Pass was surrounded with while snow in extremely solid form although melting speed increased as sun came on top. Most of the regions around the Sinthan Pass had broken roads with lot of water flowing through them. Flow kept increasing with day, which was good for us to take some action shots with comparatively good compositions.All these days at Jammu & Kashmir were extremely hectic, but Nitin had everything in his Gypsy to make these travels comfortable. Sleeping bags/mats, Eatables, Gas for making Maggie etc... I can't list all the stuff we were carrying, as this is a good material to frame about MobileGIRI Photo Journey :Maggie Time at Sinthan Pass, J&K, INDIAAfter Stage-1 of Day-2, it's time to take some rest...

2 years back when I covered 3rd Mughal Rally in Jammu & Kashmir state of India, we stayed in Hari Niwas Palace on first night. 'Amar Mahal' is located at same place and a beautiful piece of Architecture. 

The Amar Mahal Palace is a beautiful palace located on the bank of river in Jammu town. Now it has been converted into a Museum and one of the popular places in the town. Amar Mahal was built for Raja Amar Singh, who is a Dogra king. This palace was donated to the Hari-Tara charitable trust by Dr. Karan Singh  for use as a museum. This beautiful building has some of the most beautiful golden throne weighing 120 kg, Pahari miniature and Kangra miniature paintings , a library of more than 24 thousand books and rare art collections.

The palace was the last official residence of the Dogra dynasty , and a large collection of portraits of the royal family are also on display in the Museum. Usually there is good security around this place and very well maintained space around it. This place is very close to Raj Bhavan in the city and has quite peaceful surroundings. 

To know more about Amar Mahal in Jammu, check out - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Mahal_Palace

If you liked this post and found it helpful, I would request you to follow these things when traveling -

- Manage your waste well and don’t litter
- Use dustbins. Tell us if you went to a place and found it hard to locate a dustbin.
- Avoid bottle waters in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create lot of mess in our ecosystem.
- Say big no to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags. Rather buy fruits.

- Don't play loud blaring music in forests of jungle camps. You are a guest in that ecosystem and disturbing the locals (humans and animals) is not polite 

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