Srinagar, May 13 -- By Mohammad Ilyas Bhat

Two years ago, I invited an elderly friend and his wife to visit Kashmir. He spends part of the year in Bangalore and the rest in the United States, and he had always spoken about Kashmir with a kind of longing.

He wanted to see the mountains, the lakes, the springs and the famous meadows that generations of poets and travellers celebrated. I wanted him to experience the valley I grew up loving.

But that journey turned into something else entirely.

Dal Lake stood as our first stop. My friend noticed plastic bottles floating near the banks, though he brushed it aside at first. Dal sits in the middle of a busy city. Heavy tourism, traffic and dense neighbourhoods place enormous pressure on the ...