Ask anyone who has spent time in Kashmir, and they’ll likely recall these famous lines:

Agar firdaus bar rū-ye zamīn ast,

Hamīn ast o hamīn ast o hamīn ast.

If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.

Growing up, Mahrukh Inayet (48) and Gulrukh Inayet Parmar (53), when asked to paint a landscape in art class, would just imagine their vacation home in Pahalgam, Kashmir, and draw it. Set in the quiet of the valley, the landscape was almost as if nature had dipped her brush into her finest colour palette and painted the masterpiece herself. 

And the sisters would try to replicate this onto their art sheets: the rolling grasslands, the wooden homes with sloping roofs that sat against a backdrop of towering deodar trees, and the river. Today, when you set foot into Yena’s Lodge — as they christened their vacation home when they turned it into a homestay in 2016 — you’re also bound to feel as if you’ve just entered a story setting.   

As Mahrukh........

© The Better India