Every evening, the air inside a small restaurant in Srinagar's Jawahar Nagar turns warm with the aroma of freshly made idlis and dosas.

Inside, a Tamil cook wearing a green cap stands over a hot griddle, swiftly spreading batter into thin circles, while Kashmiri staff move between tables carrying plates and calling out orders.

Customers wait at their tables, some scrolling through their phones, others watching for their plates to arrive. A few have travelled across the Kashmir Valley. Others are tourists from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

Most, however, are surprisingly Kashmiris.

They are here not for wazwan, the Valley's famed cuisine, but for something simpler — food from nearly 3,000 kilometres away.

Among them is 26-year-old Zahid Iqbal Shah from Srinagar, who is visiting for the first time.

"South Indian food is healthy and lovely, and I have been to South India," he says. "When I heard that South Indian food is available in Kashmir, I decided to come here. I mainly like dosa, and this is my first time here."

At the centre of this culinary bridge is Sindhu, a 27-year-old from a small village in Tamil Nadu, who first arrived in Kashmir in February 2021 as a solo backpacker, with no plan beyond travel.

Dressed in a green embroidered pheran, the traditional Kashmiri robe, she moves between tables, occasionally stopping to speak to customers — an image that reflects how closely she has blended into the place she once visited as an outsider.

"Initially, I came only for 10 or 11 days," she recalls. "Even then, I came only for travel purposes. But the experience I had here, with local people, made me come back again. I did not expect that feeling."

An accidental journey to Kashmir

Sindhu's journey to Kashmir was never planned.

After COVID-19 restrictions eased, she set out on a solo backpacking trip across India, travelling through Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. Kashmir was not on the list.

"Honestly speaking, I had not planned to visit Kashmir initially. When I was in Delhi, I randomly checked if I had the budget and whether there were trains available. I found a train to Jammu and thought, 'Okay, let me go,'" she says.

But she carried with her a set of fears shaped by what she had heard.

"In some places, I felt a little discrimination because I am South Indian. But in Kashmir, never. Not even a single day," she tells The Better India. "The people were so kind. I felt safe. That made me want to stay."

When asked why she eventually decided to stay on in Kashmir, Sindhu says there were two........

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