Aru - The nature in its bloom: Aru is a grassland surrounded by a gorge on one side. Aru is a beautiful shaded valley of the Lidder river. Encircling and protecting Aru, are the conifer spread mountains with occasional flash of high, snow-covered peaks rising against the blue sky. The one of the most beautiful hill resort of Kashmir is still, serene and idyllic.

There are small hamlets of wood-and-stone houses, some of them in the typical Gujjar-shepherd style with flat roofs, squat and backed against the hillside.

Aru is on the shepherd's trail to the high Kashmiri meadows. While on your visit to Aru, you will often encounter with the Biblical-looking Bakerwal or Gujjar herds people - lean, saturnine men, beautiful, dark-eyed women and children, fierce dogs with burning yellow eyes, living in their log huts with their flocks of sheep and goats, on way to the higher pastures for the summer. This most ideal hill station is abundant with melodious river, rising up from the gorge and misty mountain ranges.

The little village of Aru is actually the first point from Pahalgam on the way to Lidderwat and the Kolahoi glacier. If you brimming with energy and zest then you could ride to the Lidderwat meadow, 11 kms away from here, making an interesting day walk from Pahalgam. Or you could trek for 24 kms to the Kolahoi Glacier at 3,200 metres. You can also spend the whole day unwinding. Walk in the hugging & whispering woods with the sun shafting in. You can also stretch out on pine-needles, bask in the honey-glow of the sunset. And when you sleep, let peace lull you in its soft arms across the high meadows of Kashmir's Aru.

The melodious chirrup of birds, the gentle touch of the breeze, the blue sky, is all that you may find at Aru. Aru is far away from the routine urban life, with meadow bordered on one side by a ravine of the Lidder River. A little stream also flows past in the green-gold grass.