Habba Kadal is one of seven historic bridges spanning the Jhelum River through the old city, and the one most worth pausing at. The current bridge is a concrete replacement but the area around it retains some of the most intact traditional wooden architecture in Srinagar. The ghats (riverside steps) below the bridge are where laundry is still done, boats are moored, and older residents sit and watch the river in the way people have done here for centuries.
The name means "love bridge" in Kashmiri, derived from Habba Khatoon, a 16th-century poet and singer who became a queen of Kashmir and is one of the valley's most celebrated literary figures. The area around the bridge was her neighbourhood; the streets here still carry the names of the old craft guilds that once worked them. Walking along the Jhelum from Habba Kadal northward toward the Khanqah-e-Moula is the best river walk in the old city, passing ghat after ghat with views of the wooden houses that lean over the water.