How pandemic may finally sink Kashmir's famous houseboats

Building and repair ban had turned Dal Lake into graveyard for sinking boats even before coronavirus and Delhi crackdown

Ghulam Nabi Butt may be 90 years old, but he has never forgotten the three days that George Harrison came to stay on his houseboat in October 1966.

It was here, on one of Butt's first historic Clermont houseboats moored on the northern bank of Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir, that the Beatles lead guitarist met the Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar and was taught to play the sitar - marking the beginning of an musical collaboration that would last decades.