Patnitop

Patnitop or Patni Top, is a hill top tourist location in Udhampur District on the National Highway 1A, on the way from Udhampur to Srinagar. It is located in the Shiwalik belt of the Himalayas, and is in Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmir. Patnitop is 47 km from Udhampur and 112 km from Jammu. This famous hill resort is perched on a beautiful plateau, at an altitude of 2024 m across which the Jammu-Srinagar Highway passes. The river Chenab flows close to this location.
Origin of the name Patnitop is a distortion of the original name of "Patan Da Talab" meaning "Pond of the Princess". In olden times a pond existed in the meadows and the kings princess often used to have her bath there. Part of the pond still exists near the youth hostel. The Britishers probably could not get the name correctly in their revenue records, and over the years it changed from "Patan Da Talab" to Patnitop.