Finally out of Srinagar, from Rob

It was a rough jeep ride, but we arrived safely in Jammu. It's great to have our freedom back, we felt like prisoners in Srinagar. Not to mention it was damn cold there. Last night we were finally able to sleep without socks, pants, 2 shirts, a sweater and a touque. After arriving in Jammu and securing a very nice hotel room for 500 RS (about 14 CAD) we decided to treat ourselves. For almost our entire time in Srinagar Glenn and I would take turns naming meals we would love to have, trying to one up each other.

Examples:
The greasiest meatlovers pizza from Athena's (in Victoria) washed down with several cold beer
Marc's or my own lasagne with a mountain of organic greens, garlic bread and wine
Huevos rancheros
My own chicken enchiladas with black beans and sour cream
Blueberry Pancakes with maple syrup, and a mound of bacon, ham and sausages
Stir fry with lots of fresh veggies
My mothers turkey dinner

So after a week of watery dahl, mushy overcooked veg, rice, very little meat and no beer we had worked ourselves up to have quite a feeding frenzy. We asked our hotel manager where to go, but we didnt fully understand the directions through his thick accent so we just wandered in the general direction that we thought he said. We passed up many ok looking restaurants till we came to one with a doorman. We had good experiances at restaurants with a doorman in Delhi so we decided we would give it a try. It also had a neon sign saying Restaurant AND Bar which in English means grub and beer. Our waiter's English was not so good and our Kashmiri was worse but eventually what arrived on the table was one of the most enjoyed meals I have had. We started with a Kingfisher each which are large sized (650mL) Indian beer, and complimentary peanuts. We gobbled those down quickly and the dish was soon refilled. One "problem" we have had is when we order food, sometimes we end up getting a lot more than we expected. When our tandoori chicken came out we were a bit surprised. I thought it was supposed to be an appetizer but they brought us an entire chicken. It was easily more than twice as much meat as we had eaten in the last week and a lakh (100000) times more delicious. I am not usually super carnivorous but I felt I had some catching up to do. After that we had more beer, rice with stuff in it, a dish of mixed veg, 2 butter naan each and we got our waiter to bag us 2 more beer to go. In the end the meal with tip came to 800 rupees, or about 23 CAD. Not bad and way cheaper than Athena's. After that we wandered back to our hotel. We got lost and eventually gave up and asked a rickshaw driver to take us to our hotel. He basically drove us around the corner to our hotel where I had a real shower (not a bucket) and watched Hot Shots on tv until I passed out.