The last break we took was at about 1.30PM and thanks to the heavy breakfast we still had enough energy to keep going. Thankfully the terrain had a little bit more greenery. We stopped for lunch somewhere before Banihal for lunch at a small dhaba. This again was 'vaishno' dhaba and we had roti and rajma dal. My helmet had developed a strange habit of falling down from the bike in the past few days, it fell once more when we reached the dhaba. Only difference was that this time it actually broke the visor mechanism. I thought I'd tape up my visor and ride with it down throughout the trip, but luckily for me I manage to fix it to certain extent only problem being that every time I put the visor down it would involve a bit of circus antics. We din't spend much time at the dhaba we were packed and ready to go within about 40 minutes.

Beyond the dhaba the scenery was undergoing a welcome change, a change that would truly manifest itself on the other side of the Jawahar tunnel. But for now we were smitten by it and stopped at a place just a few kilometers after the dhaba where we had our lunch. We took a couple of pics and for the first time in the ride we saw bikers who were coming in the opposite direction, a friendly wave was exchanged. Right above the place where we had stopped a couple of local boys were all excited looking at us and were cheering us on from the top, they wanted their photo's to be clicked, I was wondering what is the point they might never get to see it ever in their lives.

I was pretty excited about Jawahar tunnel as I had read about it in my school textbooks, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Before entering the tunnel we were supposed enter our details at a checkpost at the entrance. I was shocked and amazed to see that tunnel was actually very small in height and was quite unlike I had imagined it. But being small in size meant sound would act differently, so I pulled the clutch and revved hard...the roar of the bike was awesome and I had fun in doing that once in a while passing through the 2.5kms long tunnel.

As soon as we got out we din't know what to expect and so we stopped at the first view point that we saw. Nothing and I mean nothing would have prepared us for the vista that lay in front of us, it was nothing short of STUNNING!!! Our jaws were open for the few minutes before any thoughts of clicking it could come to our minds. There it was, Heaven on Earth, the Kashmir Valley. We spent some time here sipping on tea and letting the beauty sink in. Srinagar was just short of 100 kays from here and it did not seem so far considering the beauty that surrounded us.

After this view point, the roads descended down into the valley and the roads were pretty bad till we reached the bottom. After this the roads were pretty good and were could manage to hold some decent speeds. We stopped at one more place before Srinagar, here the dry yellow grass spread far out and had beautiful look to it.