Wikipedia
Shikara, Shikhara, and other variants can refer to one of the following:
- Shikara, a type of wooden ship found on Dal Lake
- Shikhara, the rising roof of a Hindu temple in North India
- Shikhar (film), a 2005 Bollywood film
- Shikar (1968 film), a 1968 Bollywood film
- Shikra, a bird of prey also known as the little banded goshawk
- Sikra, a village in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch district of Gujarat, India.
The shikara is a type of wooden boat found on Dal Lake and other water bodies of Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, India. Shikaras are of varied sizes and are used for multiple purposes, including transportation of people. A usual shikara seats half-a-dozen people, with the driver paddling at the rear. Like the Venetian gondolas, they are a cultural symbol of Kashmir. Some shikaras are still used for fishing, harvesting aquatic vegetation (usually for fodder), and transport, while most are covered with tarpaulins and are used by tourists. Some are used as floating homes by poor people.
Usage examples of "shikara".
Every now and then a shikara drew alongside and shawls, chess sets, carved salad bowls were thrust into their laps.
Sunil continued to advance, backing the oarsman down the path towards the bow of the bigger houseboat, to which his shikara was moored.
Only when Sunil was obviously gathering himself to shove the shikara out into the lake did the old man move, and then too late he was forced to wade after it, flailing for the rope end, chest deep and cursing.
Smaller shrines flanked the granite pyramid, known as the shikara, beneath which the top-secret rendezvous was scheduled to take place.
Moored alongside the main boat was the kitchen boat which also housed the servants and a rowing boat, comfortably cushioned, called a shikara, which was manned by a young Kashmiri, whose only duty was to row them around the lake, or to and from the mainland.
She stopped for tea at a Swiss style hotel and when she could not prolong her absence any longer, she hired a shikara to take her back to the houseboat.
Other shikaras on the lake were making for the lee shore, as they were.
As Ethan worked with Sunil and the cook to winch it back to the bank, two shikaras, making their frantic way back across the lake, had been knocked flat by a further gust.
Despite beating and boiling, Aadam Aziz floated with Tai in his shikara, again and again, amid goats hay flowers furniture lotus‑roots, though never with the English sahibs, and heard again and again the miraculous answers to that single terrifying question: 'But Taiji, how old are you, honestly?