Need to Know The Facts About Jammu
Health & Safety
Health
India Travel Packages - The quality of health services is not consistent though there are some moderately good hospitals, 24-hour chemists and competent doctors. Medicines are available at subsidised and government controlled rates and while most chemist shops in the city are well stocked, it is always a good idea to take along prescription drugs - Travel Packages of India.
Indin Travel Packages - Travellers from yellow fever areas are required to have an inoculation certificate. Prior inoculation for poliomyelitis is recommended - Indian Travel Packages Asia.
Travel Packages to Jammu - The major risks to your health from the armies of mosquitoes are malaria, encephalitis, kala azar and dengue. Cover your arms and legs; be liberal with the repellent and in problem areas sleep under a mosquito net. Traveller’s diarrhoea is another running problem and year after year traveller after traveller gets the ‘loosies’. Ensure it’s nothing nastier by avoiding green salads, uncooked food, and water that you haven’t sanitised by dropping an iodine pill into. Slightly more serious is the risk of contacting AIDS, Hepatitis B and other sexually transmitted diseases. For your sake and the sake of the people you’re visiting always use a condom. Have safe responsible sex - Jammu Travel Packages.
Travel Packages of Jammu - For climbers and mountaineers: look out for symptoms of altitude sickness/acute mountain sickness. If you ascend above 3500 m too fast you might feel nauseous, breathless, sleepless, and your head may ache. In this case your body is telling you that you’re having acclimatisation problems so let’s descend, buddy. Jokes aside, this is a very serious situation to be in and the only thing to do is to descend to lower altitudes. Also carry sunscreen with minimum SPF 20 to escape sunburn - India Travel Packages.
Safety
Travel Packages of India - All parts of Jammu and Kashmir, sad to say, are not safe destination for travellers. It is one of the places in India where militant activity is very wide spread. Violent street demonstrations, army and paramilitary anti insurgency operations, kidnapping and hostage taking, cross fire deaths make this trouble prone area unsafe. The Kashmir valley, particularly, Srinagar and its environs is often the scene of bombings, police firing and riots. As a consequence, travel in and around even relatively safe areas like Jammu and Leh becomes affected. Cases of mugging, theft and worse aren’t completely unheard of but they are the least of any traveller’s problems. Trekking has become particularly hazardous and is actively discouraged. All travellers are strongly advised to consult their embassy in New Delhi before venturing into the Kashmir Valley - Indin Travel Packages.
Some basic precautions that all travellers will do well to implement are:
Keep your money and travel documents close to your body- perhaps in a pouch slung around your neck, tucked out of sight under your shirt. In Srinagar, make sure you carry your passport and special permit on your person at all times.
Keep several photocopies of your passport, insurance, travellers’ cheques etc. scattered through your luggage,
Do not use a waist pouch, it may as well be a transparent plastic bag: it’s that fragile and that obvious!
Do not put all your money in one place,
Be extremely alert in the dark. One of the things that protect travellers to India is the vast crowd in any place. The multitudes however, disappear into their homes at night, and you go from having a huge thick safety quilt to a flimsy sheet! Try your best to be in a familiar area when it gets dark. If you are not, at least know how you can get to that area from wherever it is that you happen to be.
Many women travellers wear the long tunic and loose pyjama dress of Indian women called the salwar-kameez and find that it substantially dissuades unwanted male attention.
If you are travelling alone, do not advertise it.
If you lose your passport lodge a First Information Report at the local police station and contact your embassy.
Weights and Measures
India uses the metric system where 100cm=1meter; 1000meters=1km, liquids are measured in litres and solids in kilograms.
Electricity
Indian Travel Packages Asia - 220volts/ 50 hertz is the frequency at which electricity is available WHEN it is! Power cuts and ‘load shedding’ is a regular feature. Another reason for visiting in the colder months would be that not only do power cuts become fewer but you’ll also feel the pain of them less! If your electric razor has flat-pin plug then carry a combination plug that will feed into a round-pin socket: across the sub continent plug point sockets are round rather than flat - Travel Packages to Jammu.
Customs & Duties
If you are above 17 years you may import the following in without attracting duty;
200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 250 grams of tobacco, a litre of alcoholic drink, 250 ml perfume, gifts up to a value of Rupees 750 (foreign passport holders), gifts up to a value of Rupees 6000 (Indian passport holders) and articles of personal use.
It is illegal to bring in drugs, gold and silver bullion, plants and coins that have gone out of use.
Post & Communications
Postal services in India are quite efficient. Letters overseas must be marked "Air Mail" or "Par Avion". It takes a week to 10 days for letters to reach the U.K. and the U.S from Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and other major cities. Have letters for you (surname first) addressed to the GPO (General Post Office) of Jammu, ‘Poste Restante’. The post offices hold letters for 30 days, and you’ll have to show them your passport for identification. Parcels are a bit tedious to send or receive and often when they do finally arrive, they’ve been tampered with. Courier services are widely available in the cities and small towns.
There are a few "Cyber cafes" and Internet centres where for a price, you can check your mail and surf the net. Very often the Internet business is an extension of what used to be a just a "PCO". In loopy lanes, beneath shady peepul trees, in busy markets........little yellow boards spill out of little kiosks with the cryptic letters "PCO-STD-ISD" (...... huh?) 15 years ago the telecommunications miracle swept India and today, proud bearers of that legacy, ‘Public Call Offices’ bring to the streets the services of ‘Subscribers’ Trunk Dialling’ and ‘International Standard Dialling’. Most offer fax services, and more and more now, Internet facilities too.
Country code for India: 0091. Codes for the metros: Delhi-011, Mumbai-022, Calcutta-033 and Chennai-044. When calling from overseas omit the zero in the city code.
Tipping
It is customary to tip 10% of the bill at restaurants, but you may tip less if service charges have been included in the bill. At hotels tip 10 bucks to the bellhop, the same to the doorman ‘durban’; if the service is particularly good, substantially more to the concierge and housekeeping.
Black and yellow cab drivers do not expect to be tipped. The opposite is true if you have a hired a cab for a long period.
You’ll find some of the most friendly and colourful service at tiny nondescript roadside stalls called ‘dhabas’. A small tip, even if it is only loose change, will be appreciated tremendously.
English Language Media
No matter where you are in India it is never going to be difficult to find an English language newspaper. All the major dailies, and there are many in this country where the fourth estate is startlingly independent and strong, have multiple editions with at least one from every region and one on the net. All major English national dailies have a regional edition and weekly newsmagazines are available at vendors and bookshops in Jammu and Kashmir. Cable TV has reaped a rich harvest and most towns have a skyline that blooms with electronic blossoms of dish antennae. BBC World Service and CNN beam the latest news; ESPN and Star Sports keep you up to date with how your club is (or is not) thrashing its rivals in UEFA; and Star (elsewhere known as Sky) beams an entire stable of entertainment channels.
The more widely accessible national channel too has some English programmes, and a daily English news segment. BBC World Service and Voice of America are on the MHz bandwidth but the frequency varies.
Recommended Reading
Crafts of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh by Jaya Jaitley
Kashmir: Garden of the Himalayas by Raghubir Singh
Kashmir in the Crossfire by Victoria Schofield
The Charms of Kashmir by C G Bruce
Jammu and Kashmir Folklore by Somnath Dhar
Leh and Trekking in Ladakh by Charlie Thoram
Ladakh: Crossroads of High Asia by Janet Rizvi
My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir by Jagmohan
Kashmir, Ladakh and Zanskar by Rolf Schettler
Alpine Flora of Kashmir Himalayas by U Dhar & P Kachroo
Kashmir: Paradise Lost by Martin A Sugarman.
