Bridge over the Lidder River, Pahalgam, Kashmir

We came up to Pahalgam in April 2024, near the end of a family trip through Kashmir. The valley was just coming out of winter — patches of old snow still sat on the higher slopes, and the Lidder was running hard and cold with the melt.

I stopped on this bridge because of the sound more than the view. The water underneath was fast and loud, that grey-green colour glacial rivers get, and you could feel the cold lifting off it. Behind, the pine and deodar ran straight up the hillsides into the low cloud.

It was the sort of spot the rest of the family wanted to keep walking past and I wanted to stand on for ten minutes. I like a bridge in a frame — it gives you somewhere to stand and somewhere to look, and it says people have been crossing this same river a long time.