Srinagar, May 23 -- By Farah Zaidi

By the time we crossed Boniyar in north Kashmir's Baramulla district, the road had already begun to thin into the mountains.

Srinagar felt far behind us. Traffic disappeared first, and then came long silences between scattered homes, army bunkers, and roadside shops. Dense deodar forests slowly closed around the road, turning the journey into something slower and more intimate.

My husband Sajid drove carefully through the sharp bends while our son Salman pressed his face against the window, trying to follow the streams that appeared and vanished beside the road.

We had heard people call Dudran Kashmir's "Milk Village," though the phrase sounded too simple for a place hidden this deep inside the fores...