The first time you see Habba Khatoon Peak, you'll probably think it's been photoshopped, or that someone built it. The shape is that exact. It rises over Dawar as a near-perfect triangle, symmetrical enough that it looks drawn rather than eroded by geology, straight out of a dream sketch of what a mountain should look like. There's no gentle build-up to it either. You round a bend in Gurez and it's just there, filling the sky above the town, and every conversation in the valley eventually circles back to the woman it's named after.
She was born Zoon, meaning "moon" in Kashmiri, in the village of Chandhara near Pampore, in the 16th century, to a peasant family that had no idea what to do with a daughter who could compose verse the way she could. She was married off young to a peasant husband who resented her for spending more time on poetry and song than on the life expected of her. Villagers started calling her Habba Khatoon, "Habba's servant," a name built around her husband rather than her own, and it stuck for the rest of her life anyway, unfair as its origin was.
Yusuf Shah Chak, who would go on to become the last independent ruler of Kashmir, heard her sing and was struck by what he heard. He arranged for her divorce and married her, and Zoon became queen. For a stretch of Kashmir's history, the person ruling it had chosen a poet as his wife specifically because of the poetry, not despite it.
It didn't stay a settled life. The Mughal emperor Akbar moved against Kashmir and captured Yusuf Shah Chak, taking him away, most accounts say to Bihar, where he died in captivity, far from home. Habba Khatoon spent the rest of her life wandering Kashmir's valleys, composing songs of loss that Kashmiri households still sing today, generations later. In Gurez, the story is that she came to this valley and sat at the base of this particular mountain, watching the peak and waiting for a husband who was never coming back. Over centuries, the mountain's shape and her story fused into one thing.
This isn't just one story, it's a whole cluster of local belief. Shepherds in the valley talk about hearing her voice in the wind on certain evenings, a version of her songs of longing carried down from the peak. The spring at the mountain's base, known as Habba Khatoon Spring or Achura Spring, is considered by the local Dard-Shina community to hold healing properties, and people still visit it for that reason as much as for the water itself. Some versions of the tale say her spirit never left the mountain and still watches over the valley from it, which is part of why locals treat the peak with a kind of quiet reverence rather than just pointing it out as a photo stop.
The peak sits at roughly 3,962 meters (13,000 ft), directly above Dawar, its triangular shape visible from nearly anywhere in the valley. At its base is the spring, and around it, meadows that trekkers use for day hikes. Sunrise and sunset are when the mountain changes character most, shifting from grey to gold to a deep rose as the light moves across the rock face.
Short hikes on the lower slopes near the spring are accessible to most visitors without technical experience. Reaching higher points on the peak itself is a more serious undertaking requiring proper gear and a local guide.
May through September gives the clearest weather and greenest meadows at the base. Most visitors pair a Habba Khatoon viewpoint stop with a broader day in Dawar, walking the meadows and visiting the spring before heading further into the valley.
Habba Khatoon Peak is one of the fixed highlights on our offbeat Kashmir tour, where the story gets told on the ground by a local guide, not read off a signboard.