Sharda & Kel

Temple ruins and river villages.

Sharda's ruined stone university and temple complex, once a major centre of Buddhist and later Hindu learning, sits above the Neelum River in a state of quiet, moss-covered decay. Further up the valley, the meadows around Kel offer some of Azad Kashmir's most dramatic river scenery, glacier-fed water running turquoise between pine-covered slopes, largely untouched by mass tourism.