Srinagar, June 14 -- On most summer mornings, the pony bells would start early in Naranag. Boys would jog alongside their horses, leading tourists up the alpine paths. Shopfronts would lift their shutters to the rhythm of the rising sun. Smoke would curl from kitchens, and the scent of noon tea would drift across the Sindh River.

This June, there is only silence.

Naranag sits silently in the Kangan region of central Kashmir, surrounded by fir forests and snow-fed streams. The 8th-century temple ruins still hold their ground. The mountains still stand like sentinels.

But since the government shuttered the village to visitors after a terror attack in distant Pahalgam in April, the spirit here has faded.

"This place used to breathe with ...