Baramulla to Uri in Jammu and Kashmir

Baramulla to Uri in Jammu and Kashmir

The first 25 miles of the gorge, from Baramulla to Uri, is through extremely fine scenery, of wooded mountains-slopes broken by cliff-surfaces, that rise to great heights above the path, while below it the river either flows in narrow rock-passages or roars over ledges and other obstacles.

Some of the forest is of deodar, of which much has been felled to be sent down the stream to Jhelum, for use in the Punjab; the logs of it are seen as one passes, now being carried swiftly down, now being hurled by the current against some rocky obstruction. Villages are met with at intervals; after Baramulla the houses are no longer of the fashion of Kashmir, but are flat-topped. 

People of the Kashmiri race extend about one day’s march down the valley, and after them one comes to the tribes called Kaka and Bamba, which, in the Race Map, can be classed with the Chibhalis. The village are upon alluvial plateaus, at a considerable height above the river. 

Uri, a large village, situated where the road to Punch branches off to the southward, is an example of the kind of situation; it is on a plain several hundred feet above the river, towards which a steep cliff is boundary, while the side stream flows on another side in a deep narrow channel; behind are the hills, irregularly clothed with pine and deodar.