After breakfast we poled across to waiting cabs which then hooted incessantly all the way to the Mugul Gardens.
They were laid out by the Mugul emperors in the 16th century (there are two of them) and are both bisected by long water courses fed by a mountain stream. The water plunges over constructed waterfalls and up through fountains all the way to the lake.
Being Sunday, locals were strolling about, women in colourful, billowing saris and children in their best clothes. A group of young boys, lured by the water, stripped naked and leapt in. They had a great time until an adult shamed them and shooed them out.
From the second garden called Nishat – Abode of Love – you can see the dome of a shrine across the lake in which some hair from Mohamed is said to be housed.
After that we visited some carpet weavers. As I watched a young man was knotting a carpet so fast it was impossible to figure out just what he was doing.
Ancient patterns are sketched on graph paper and then each stitch is notated, according to position and colour, on strips of paper using arcane symbols. The value of the carpet is assessed on the number of stitched per square inch – 1600 is the tops and done only by women. As you walk around the carpets they change colour, depending on the angle of the threads. In the showroom filled with carpets was maybe hundreds or even thousands of years of work hours.
Afterwards we visited the Jamia Mosque, which used to be a Buddhist temple, and wandered among its huge cedar pillars with old men sleeping peacefully on the floor.
Back at the houseboat I asked Captain Gulam Karmai if his vessel could go anywhere. ‘Well it could,’ he said, ‘if it had an engine.’
