Srinagar, Feb. 5: Those inclined to sniff at government-backed cultural exchanges will be tempted to go ahead and eat this one.

For the first time since 1947, Indian Kashmir’s famous cuisine, the wazwan, will cross the border to give Pakistanis an insight into what makes the Valley a gourmet’s delight.

Come March 15, the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation will kick off a 10-day festival of Kashmiri food and handicrafts at Lahore’s Avari hotel.

At the heart of the effort will be the scores of local chefs, called wazas, whom the corporation will take to Lahore.

These chefs specialise in cooking the multi-course wazwan and are native to the Indian side of Kashmir. It’s their skills that have made Kashmiri weddings and other social functions the envy of foodies everywhere.

The wazwan isn’t just a feast, connoisseurs swear. It’s a symphony of more than two dozen dishes served in a well-orchestrated sequence to the guests, who sit in groups of four, each around a large copper plate called a trami.

The prelude is the lifting of the trami’s lid, which releases the aroma of the Kashmiri saffron in a gust as the diners take a deep breath and get to work, pausing only for a moment to marvel at the art behind it all.

The courses ? the tabakmaz, kabab, rishta, mirch korma, rogan josh, abgosh ? follow one another till the arrival of the last dish, the gushtaba, announces the end of the meal.

It takes a full-fledged wazwan around two hours to be complete. By then, local gourmets claim, some diners gain a few kilos.

“We shall be taking to Pakistan scores of local chefs and local utensils that are used in preparing and serving the wazwan,” said the tourism corporation’s chief, Abdul Aziz Wani.

“There’s a local saying that if friends get estranged, they should sit around the trami and share a wazwan,” another official said. “That’s what we are doing.”