Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar: Timings, Who Can Visit and the Lake Drive (2026-27)

Hazratbal is where I go when I want some quiet, and a bit of spirituality. The street food there is amazing. And I like to make a drive of it: down Foreshore Road along the lake, and on to Harwan from there.

This guide covers the shrine itself, who can go where, the days the holy relic is shown, what to eat outside, and that drive. The rest of the city is in our Srinagar guide.

In short: Hazratbal is the white marble shrine at the north-west corner of Dal Lake, about 9 km from Lal Chowk. Entry is free and visitors of every faith are welcome in the grounds. Go early in the morning for quiet, or on a Friday for the market. Allow one to two hours.

What is Hazratbal, and why is it famous?

Hazratbal is a dargah and mosque that houses the Moi-e-Muqqadas, a relic believed to be a hair of the Prophet Muhammad. It is managed by the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board. It is also called Assar-e-Sharief, Dargah Sharif and Madinat-us-Sani. The name joins "hazrat", respected, and the Kashmiri "bal", place.

The building is unlike the wooden shrines of the old city. JKTDC calls it the only domed mosque in Srinagar: white marble, one dome, one minaret, about 105 m long, set on lawns that run down to the lake.

The 2025 renovation rebuilt the interior using local crafts: khatamband ceilings, papier-mache, pinjrakari lattice, calligraphy and new chandeliers, with air-conditioning and a new sound system. Two days after the inauguration, a dispute over the inauguration plaque led to a police case, and security at the shrine was strengthened, as it was again around the festival days of August 2026.

Where is Hazratbal, and how do you reach it?

It stands at the north-west corner of Dal Lake, beside the University of Kashmir, with Nigeen Lake on the other side of the campus. There are two ways to get there by road: straight through the city, or the long way round the lake.

• By cab: the easy way. The taxi union's Srinagar sightseeing circuit includes it.
• By shared cab: one travel writer advises looking for one at Dal Gate or Nishat. He calls finding a bus "almost impossible".
• By shikara: JKTDC notes you can reach the shrine by boat across Dal Lake. The Tourism Department's rate card set fares for it.

How shikara fares work, and how to avoid being overcharged, is in our shikara ride guide.

Parking: a multi-level car park for 164 cars stands near the shrine. Even so, one visitor warns that at sunset "you may not find a place to park".

Timings, entry fee and closed days

Entry is free. There is no ticket, and no source reports any charge.

The hours are where the guides disagree, because the Waqf Board publishes none. Here is what we could establish.

• It is a working mosque. A 2024 visitor account says it stays open from the morning prayer to the night prayer.
• "9:30 am to 5:30 pm" is the figure on the JKTDC page, and most sites copy it. Treat it as the safe window for a visitor, not as a closing time.
• "Closed on Sunday" is wrong. Several sites say it. JKTDC says "daily", and a 2025 report describes a woman who has prayed there every Sunday for twenty years.
• Fridays: the congregational prayer in the early afternoon draws the biggest crowd of the week.
• Time needed: one to two hours.

Can non-Muslims and women visit Hazratbal?

Yes. Visitors of all faiths are admitted to the grounds: the courtyard, the lawns and the lakefront. The inner sanctum, where the relic is kept, is restricted.

• Women: JKTDC says women are allowed "only till the first part of the mosque". Women do pray at the shrine and use the lawns.
• Dress: cover your head, arms and legs. That applies to men too.
• No scarf? The market beside the shrine sells prayer caps and veils.
• Shoes: off before you enter the shrine.
• Washrooms: new ones were built recently, which traders say has helped women visitors in particular.

When is the holy relic shown?

Only on a few days a year. On those days it is shown to the congregation after the prayers, and the crowd runs to tens of thousands.

These dates follow the Islamic lunar calendar and the sighting of the moon, so they move about eleven days earlier each year. No source gives the 2027 dates yet. Local papers print the Waqf Board's timetable a few days before each one.

If you want to be there on such a day, plan for it. For Milad in August 2026, the Traffic Police sent cars from the lake side along Nishat and Foreshore Road to parking inside the University campus at Naseem Bagh, with a separate car park for traffic through the old city, and the district administration asked for e-rickshaws to carry the elderly from the parking to the shrine. If you want quiet, pick any other day.

The best time to go

• For quiet: early morning. One travel writer who went before sunrise found hardly anyone there.
• For the view: sunset over the lake, from the lawns. It is also the evening prayer, and parking is at its worst.
• For the market and the food: Friday. Traders call Fridays and festivals their peak days. In summer the market runs late into the night.
• Season: April to October is comfortable. The chinars next door at Naseem Bagh are at their best in autumn.

The street food at Hazratbal

As I said, the street food here is amazing. It is sold in the market right outside the shrine. These are the things to look for.

• Halwa paratha: semolina halwa with a fried bread about three feet across, made at big stalls with huge burners. People take it home after prayers. It was still drawing crowds on the Friday after Milad in August 2026.
• Masala tchot: boiled chickpeas and radish chutney wrapped in a thin lavasa bread.
• Monji gaade: fish dipped in rice flour and gram flour, deep fried, served with radish chutney.
• Nadir monji: lotus stem fried in the same batter.
• Barbecue: the skewer sellers light up at sundown, and the bazaar turns smoky.

On Fridays the bazaar grows: sellers come in from across Kashmir with homemade butter and ghee, spices and wicker baskets.

One shop to know by name is Moonlight, the walnut fudge shop, in the Auqaf Building on University Main Road. It trades as "since 1896". That is the family business, which began at Dalgate; the shop moved to Hazratbal in the 1990s. The fudge is about 90 per cent walnut, with dates and honey. The listing gives 9 am to 8 pm daily.

The drive: Foreshore Road, the gardens and Harwan

This is the drive I tell people to take. Foreshore Road runs for about 5 km along the northern edge of Dal Lake, from Hazratbal to Nishat, passing Shalimar Bagh. The whole road lies on the lake bank.

Harwan is the far end of it. The district site describes a canal bordered with chinars and flower beds, fed from a lake behind the garden, with big lawns: "a perfect place for picnics". It is 18 km from Lal Chowk.

Which garden to see, in what order, and how the tickets work is in our guide to the Mughal gardens.

What else is next door

• The lawns and the lakefront: families picnic here, and children are brought for their first haircut. The shrine is also home to thousands of pigeons; shops at the front sell seed.
• The University of Kashmir: the main campus, 247 acres, is next door.
• Naseem Bagh: inside the campus, about 2.3 km by road. It was laid out under Akbar in 1586 and holds about 700 chinar trees. We could not confirm whether visitors can walk in freely, so ask at the gate.
• Nigeen Lake: on the west side of the campus, and the quieter of the two houseboat lakes.

For the lake itself, see Dal Lake; for the wooden shrines and mosques, downtown Srinagar; for Nigeen, houseboats in Srinagar.