The beauty of Kashmir is legendary. The valley of Kashmir, an irregular oval of land, picturesquely against the backdrop of the Himalayas, "Bare, rugged and frowning rocks, a wilderness of crags and mountains, whose lofty summit tower to the sky in their cold and barren grandeur – a solitary and uninhabitable waste', wrote William Wakefield, a medical officer who visited Kashmir in 1871, 'Yet in the midst of this scene of unutterable desolation, there lies spread out a wide expanse of verdant plain, a smiling valley, a veritable jewel in Nature's own setting of frightful precipices, everlasting snows, vast glaciers, which, while adding to its beauty by contrast, serve also as its protection". "Each spot in Kashmir one is inclined to think the most beautiful of all', observed Sir Francis Young husband, who was Britain's resident in Srinagar at the beginning of the twentieth century, 'perhaps because each in some particular excels the rest".
