(Dis)orientation

Arrival in India is a bewildering experience. At Muhatma Gandhi International Airport we left the tidy and efficient German Airbus and soon found ourselves shuffling through a parallel universe. Everything in the arrivals hall had a retro flavour, from the lemon yellow signs and dated typefaces of the cigarette adverts to the elevator music being piped over the tannoy. Even something as familiar as changing up cash had an element of the weird about it – peering over the desk we could see photocopiers propped on metal ammunition cases, peeling linoleum and a counting machine as old as the hills. It was like visiting the bank during the blitz.

Catching the shuttle bus from one terminal to the next involved an hour’s wait and a full-on scrum with dozens of other passengers, all of whom seemed to be carrying about 16 suitcases tied up with rope. We trundled past burned-out propellor planes and army helicopters on the edge of the runway, then pulled straight out onto a busy street to a cacophony of horns and made our way across town. We were pleased to see the stereotype of holy cows wandering the road was true – even if the one we spotted appeared to be chewing on a pile of dust!

One curry, seven security checks and a few hours later we were onboard another aircraft lurching into Srinigar. This place was even more of a culture shock. Bordering the landing strip and terminal were high walls topped with barbed wire, while soldiers lurked to and fro in the background carrying automatic rifles. Here we met the weathered-looking Bashir, Peter Robinson’s right hand man in Kashmir, who guided us to a pair of 4x4s and instructed a crew of locals to strap our snowboard bags to the roof.

“I stared transfixed – genuinely certain of death”

With news bulletins from flak-jacketed journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan fresh in all our minds, we were a little unsettled at the sight of real life machine-gun emplacements on the street corners, not to mention regular check points and armoured vehicles. Then we accelerated out of town towards the mountains, flying past pedestrians and slower-moving traffic with absolutely no concern for what was coming the other way. Several times I stared transfixed at an oncoming bus as we crawled past a lorry – genuinely certain of death – only to slip through an invisible gap at the last second or even hurl two wheels over the side of the potholed road. The driver’s tactic was just to keep the horn blaring, as if that would somehow scare the other equally psychopathic road users into submission. For the most part the five of us maintained a stony silence, punctuated by nervous giggles at the more outrageous pieces of driving.

It was a relief to start climbing into the mountains. In the crisp air of the pine forest you could almost imagine you were winding your way up to Meribel or Mayerhofen, save for the odd truckload of soldiers passing in the other direction, or the distant woodsmoke spiraling up from the valley below.

Night had fallen by the time our battered little 4×4 rounded the last corner into Gulmarg. The driver struggled valiantly to charge up a snow-covered track to the hotel, his headlights swooping over the trees like a scene from Blair Witch, but to no avail. We bailed out and dragged our bags the last few yards to the Grand Hotel Mumtaz, our home for the next week and a half, and were greeted with the surreal sight of a line of smiling men in red uniform who showed us straight to our rooms.

“You could almost imagine you were winding your way up to Meribel or Mayerhofen, save for the odd truckload of soldiers…”

No one had known what to expect from the accommodation, and given the fact this is a developing country we were prepared for something basic, but as it turned out the rooms were warm, comfy and fully kitted out with en suite bathrooms and T.V. Let’s not forget this is a remote mountain town in the Himalayas, where hot water is a luxury and even satellite phones have been known to give up the ghost, yet here were Liverpool F.C. playing Chelsea, live on ESPN. It was bizarre. We grabbed a late dinner – the first of many Hotel Mumtaz curries – and with our bodies not knowing what time of day it was (or what all this spicy food was about!) crashed out at journey’s end.

Eden

Following breakfast on the first day we were introduced to Shabir, our guide for the coming days. With his piercing blue eyes he looked like a typical Kashmiri, but whereas most of the Gulmarg locals cruised around in traditional long woolen overcoats known as ‘pheran’, Shabir was fully kitted out in branded outerwear and a bright bandana. More and more tourist jobs are being created in Gulmarg but it was obvious he’d landed one of the cushiest. A previous Indian slalom champion, he had been trained in avalanche safety by a crew of Canadian patrollers and was now helping train new recruits for the Gulmarg ski area.

On the way to the lift we stopped to check out the monkeys hanging out near one of the hotels. There were about half a dozen of them loping along the tree line and scavenging through the rubbish outside, but maximum respect was saved for the big male on the rooftop who got jiggy with a lady monkey for the benefit of Wolfie’s camera – National Geographic eat your heart out!

Walking on we caught our first glimpse of the gondola that had brought us on this 7000 mile search for powder. It was a rickety old French number that looked like it had seen a fair bit of service back in the 80s before being shipped over to its new home in India. The doors clearly didn’t open properly and the bubbles were leaving the station at painfully long intervals, but looking up the cables at the mountain beyond we couldn’t care less: up there in the distance was some of the best terrain any of us had ever seen – a powder laden ridgeline that dropped down either side into an endless series of gullies, bowls and tree lines.

Individual tickets for the journey up were scrupulously checked and re-checked by the gondola staff – apparently there had been an issue the year before with some Russian skiers bribing lifties to get extra rides; this year the authorities were making a public show of nipping such behaviour in the bud.

On the way up, we were initially a bit disappointed to see the snow looking tracked-out beneath the pylons. Queues of grizzly freeriders in the lift station were our first warning and here was the proof: Gulmarg’s secret is officially out.

Still, as soon as we boarded the top section and began the approach to the summit of Mt. Apharwat things looked a whole lot different. Provided you were happy to hike a while to get back to Kongdori (the mid-station) there was plenty of scope to find fresh lines further along the ridge, and in any case the stunning view alone was worth the trip. A lake of cloud stretched below from one side of the valley to the other, while looming in the distance were the mighty Himalayas and the ninth highest peak on Earth, Nanga Parbat. It really did feel like the roof of the world. With Shabir leading the way we did a quick warm-up run, then traversed the crest for a few hundred metres and dropped down into a virgin powder field.

Local Character

That evening Shabir took Josh Wolf and I to get our boards serviced at the ‘Kashmir Alpine Skishop’, in reality a tumbledown workshop on the edge of town run by a wiry old character called Yasin Khan.

Yasin took one look at a nasty gouge in Wolfie’s base and gave a better assessment than you’d expect in a fully-equipped British snowboard store, sucking in through his teeth and suggesting he cut a p-tex patch and clamp it with araldite for two days. We settled for a quicker temporary job, and for the equivalent of about three quid he agreed to fill any scratches, give the board a wax and deliver it to our hotel room for 8.30am the next morning. Bargain! He then brewed up a coffee so strong you could stick a spoon in it and led us next door to his second business, a rug shop, where for half an hour Josh and I were given the run of hundreds of carpets, scarves, and saris and taught to recognize genuine pashmina from rabbit fur. Naturally we left the place a few rupees lighter but it was all good natured haggling.

“Grooming in these parts is severely limited and the lift is slow – you should really only come here if you’re looking to freeride and are prepared to hike”

Passing a pair of soldiers on the way back to the hotel I asked Shabir what he thought about the political troubles in Kashmir. “The fighting is between militants and the army,” he explained. “they’re not really interested in civilians or outsiders. Most of the ordinary people want peace – it’s only the politicians that benefit from the fighting. Some people want to be joined with Pakistan, some people want to be a separate state, but most of the people want peace.”

Shabir had more reason than most to dream of an end to the conflict, having been forced to turn down two offers of work in Canada and New Zealand because the governments don’t look favourably on Kashmiris.

“Do you have monkeys in England?” he asked me, shifting to a more lighthearted subject. “No,” I replied.

“No monkeys?!” It seemed hard for him to believe. “What about leopards?”

“No, no leopards either. Are they, er… are they common in Gulmarg?”

“Oh yes, very common. They mostly come out at night.”

And with that unnerving thought we parted ways.

When Monkey’s Attack

We spent the second day exploring further along the ridgeline, sharing the gondola with a variety of folk from rich Indian holidaymakers with vintage 70s ski equipment to Scandinavian powder hounds. One time we found ourselves squeezed into the cramped cabin with a soldier clutching his rifle, surely the most unlikely companion yet.

Every time we started to feel like we were on a normal snowboarding trip something strange would happen to remind us where we were – like the wild dogs prowling around the cornice at the top, or the guy mysteriously welding bits of machinery in the lift station. None of this concerned us as long as we were picking off powder lines, but in the afternoon came news that the top section of the gondola had packed in. What had started as a familiar delay had turned out to be a problem with the gearbox, and a few hapless skiers were eventually lowered back to the piste by rope. Luckily for us we were between rides at the time, but over chicken curry that night we were forced to come up with a contingency plan.

Sure enough, by the morning of the third day no progress had been made at restarting the top section. Worse still, rumour was circulating that an engineer would have to be flown over from France with the necessary parts. This could take anything up to two weeks! Plan B, Monkey Hill, came into action.

Monkey Hill was a steep, tree-covered face overlooking the base station of the gondola that we’d first spotted as we waited for the lift to get started (in Gulmarg – even before the latest break down – you never know exactly what time they’ll crank the lift up. If they say 9am it’s more likely to be 10 or 11). There was no lift access to the hill but the hike looked do-able and we could already spy numerous pillow lines, drops and stumps.

“Before you can say ‘rabies’ the five of us were retreating down to the road with a pack of simians in hot pursuit”

There was only one problem: a posse of monkeys clambering around the trees near the bottom. We got as far as the fence line, striding through deep snow, when one of the males leapt down in front of us and screeched through bared teeth at Ryan. Panic set in and the other monkeys could smell it. A whole gang of the bastards came running over to join the leader and before you can say ‘rabies’ the five of us were retreating down to the road with a pack of simians in hot pursuit. A handful of locals were gathered at the bottom laughing at us and we felt pretty small as they suggested bringing some bread as a kind of peace offering the next time.

Having circumnavigated the monkeys we managed to bag a few shots of a pillow line bathed in sunlight before the bottom section of the gondola sprang into life. For no apparent reason a search point had been initiated across the road to the lift station, so we found ourselves queuing at a small hut to be patted down by a surly-looking soldier. They even had a female official on hand to frisk Natalie – just another of the odd experiences that are part of everyday life in India. Back up at the mid-station any faint hope that the top lift might be running was soon dashed, and we spent the rest of the afternoon constructing a monster gap jump that would become known as Nelson’s Nipples.

Part of a group of massive bumps beneath the lift above Kongdori, Nelson’s Nipples are two breasts of snow about 20 foot high and 60 foot from nip to nip. Wolfie had first eyed them over a plate of pilau in the café, and there was a lot of debate about whether the slope above would generate enough speed to clear the gap. With nothing better to do we decided to give it a whirl, initially shaping a modest take-off then graduating to a full-blown run-in; by the time we’d finished it looked like Chad’s Gap.

“He charged down the run-in and launched himself into space – like Eliot in E.T. crossing the moon on his bike”

It was getting late and the light was disappearing when Nelson made the long hike and strapped in for a third time. He’d already tried it twice, slamming straight into the far wall on his first attempt before readjusting the wu-tang on the lip and getting closer the second time. Ryan and Wolfie – faced with the reality of this Evil Knievel-esque leap – found their enthusiasm melting away with the sun. Their preferred option was to leave the project till the next day, but Nelson was in determined mood. He charged down the run-in at mach 10, launched himself off the kicker… and into space. He looked like Eliot in E.T., crossing the moon on his bike. There was just time for him to tickle an indy grab before heading back to earth for a sketchy landing on the far side of the gap. Not perfect, but a balls-out jump and one of the best photos yet.

“Word spread that one of the Russian group had been attacked by a snow leopard”

Somewhere in the blur of this bizarre duet a burly kiwi appeared at the table and plonked two beers down in front of me. He was totally hammered and had a slightly manic expression, like a Vietnam vet that had spent too much time in the jungle.

“How’s it goin’ mate? I’m a guide here,” he explained in a thick accent.

“Cool,” I replied, “Whereabouts you from?”

“Canturbury. Christchurch Heli.”

“Any idea when the gondola’s gonna be fixed?”

“Haha! Fuck knows! You’re in India now!” He warmed to his theme. “How’s that? You travel half way around the world, go to the lift and they’re like, ‘Sorry, it’s not working.’ Gotta be gutted ey? Course you could go down to Srinigar instead and try not to get blown up! Haha!”

Then he stood up and left.

I was just getting my head round this disturbing conversation when word spread that one of “the Russian group” had been attacked by a snow leopard earlier that day. Apparently it had been sleeping beneath a log when a skier woke it up by riding over the top. Initially the cat had darted off towards the woods, then turned round to see what the disturbance was and decided a Russian skier was nothing to be scared of – so it ran back to attack him! The terrified bloke was forced to fend it off by thrusting at it with his ski pole. Listening to the story I couldn’t help but think how us snowboarders didn’t have the luxury of ski poles…

Organized Chaos

We stayed in Gulmarg for a total of 10 days. I could go on and on about the riding, but to be honest Natalie’s pictures do the talking. This place has so much potential it’s ridiculous. Everywhere you look there are kickers spots and natural features to play around with, all that’s needed is a little imagination and a willingness to do some digging. Unlike France the trees are nicely spaced out and even in town there were numerous ledges, jibs and drops that looked doable – like the fence Davo cab 180’d to the bemusement of some local passers by.

With the lift closed much of our time was spent hiking around on Monkey Hill, where we gorged ourselves on mushroom pillows and lived in constant fear of sleeping leopards. I remember one morning, getting our boots on in the hotel room, I had a conversation I never thought I’d have on a snowboard holiday. It went something like this:

Me: Did you remember to pack some bread for the monkeys?

Josh Wolf (deadpan): I’m more worried about the snow leopards.

Such was the irrational terror Wolfie and I worked up in each other about those damned leopards that one evening, on a spooky moonlit walk to Gulmarg’s only bar at the Highland Hotel, we carried a can of deodorant and a match to serve as an improvised flame thrower.

For a few days the resort’s sole piste basher was put to use ferrying people halfway up Mt Apharwat from the midstation at Kongdori. This was like a Health and Safety officer’s worst nightmare. About twenty snowboarders managed to cram themselves into the low pen on the flat bed behind the driver’s cab, while another thirty or so skiers hung onto two ropes strung out the back.

“An Indian passenger jumped off early and was rewarded by getting his leg run over by the caterpillar track. A collective cry went up from the crowd, prompting the driver to stick the machine in first gear and run over his leg the other way”

Having helped pass up all the snowboards I found myself with no space left in the pen, so I perched on the very back and clung to the metal rail for dear life. Opposite me was a soldier clutching his AK47 and casually smoking a cigarette. After much hollering in Kashmiri the engine roared to life and we trundled up the steep face, at which point I noticed the driver had left the grooming tiller down. Basically, if I slipped off my precarious bouncing seat I would land beneath a hundred furiously spinning spikes and be ground up like sausage meat.

A neighbour in the relative safety of the pen noticed my predicament and linked arms to keep me from falling to this bloody doom. Then, as we reversed round at the top, an over-eager Indian passenger jumped off early and was rewarded by getting his leg run over by the caterpillar track. A collective cry went up from the crowd, prompting the driver to stick the machine in first gear and run over his leg the other way! By some miracle his limb was only pushed down into the deep snow and he survived with just a bit of a bruise.

What was strange about visiting Gulmarg the way outrageous incidents like this were mixed in with a kind of mundane holiday routine. We’d get up in the morning, eat the same omlette and soggy toast, take the first of many rushed trips to the toilet and set out riding. Then, in the evening, we’d return to the hotel and chill out in the room watching international cricket matches on the TV, or take a scalding hot bath next door (hot water was switched on for such limited periods three or four of us would share the same mysteriously brown water. Nelson claimed after one hard day’s hiking he’d never had a better soak in his life).

“We were passed by a group of soldiers carrying – for no apparent reason – various small animals in wooden cages”

In this respect – bar the curry-induced diarrhoea – it was as easy as any other snowboard trip. But interspersed with this daily pattern were moments of sheer weirdness, like asking to make a phone call and being led to a small room lined with cigarettes on the far side of town. Sitting at a makeshift desk beneath a bare lightbulb were two guys operating an ancient phone attached to a printer. This was supposed to print out a receipt of the call cost, but unfortunately on our visit the phone line proved about as reliable as the gondola.

Another time were hiking to a kicker spot when we were passed by a group of soldiers carrying – for no apparent reason – various small animals in wooden cages. Indeed, seeing soldiers became so common we stopped even commenting on them. They were everywhere: watching your every move at the lift station, walking around the slopes or just chatting to the manager at reception. Someone from one of the other groups wandered down to take a look at the High Altitude Warfare School at Sonamarg, and came back telling us he’d seen a sign labelled ‘Dagger Training Field’. By this point though, nothing surprised us.

Exploring a few lines in the woods beside the road one day, we met a young guy called Arun who was up from Bombay on holiday. Arun was one of those chirpy Indians that are thrilled to meet people from other countries (“You are from Yorkshire? Wonderful! I have friends in Bradford.”) He immediately whipped out a camcorder and began recording our meeting for posterity. “You look like a cool guy,” he said to me earnestly. “You look like Rajesh Khanna, he is a famous Bollywood star.”

It turned out Arun worked in one of those giant call centres that companies in the UK have shifted to India. “They teach us to find out the weather in England,” he said, “That way we can make small talk with the customers. And my email name is ‘Sam Jacobs’, because it sounds more western.”

I asked him why he had come to this troubled corner of the country on holiday. “Kashmir has suffered from conflict but normally it is… heaven on earth.” He said ‘heaven on earth’ like he was describing a delicious mouthful of food. “The Kashmiri people treat you like brothers – they are very welcoming to their home. You will not find this in other parts of India.”

As if to prove his point a man in a long Kashmiri coat appeared with a tray of spiced tea and biscuits and shyly invited us to sit with them at their coffee shop. “You see these long coats?” said Arun. “They are called pheran. Underneath they carry baskets of hot coals to keep themselves warm, which we call ‘winter wives’. Sometimes they fall asleep holding these baskets!”

Sure enough each of the men had a small basket of charcoal, like a portable barbecue, hidden under the folds of their coats. Arun asked Natalie to take some portraits of him posing beside a tree in his sunglasses, which he would be using as headshots to try to launch a career in modelling. “Wow! Thank you!” he gushed, “in Mumbai they ask 2000 rupees for pictures like this.”

Srinigar

It snowed before we left the resort, a beautiful blanket on the trees and roads that saw tourists like Arun being towed around the resort on crude wooden sledges. People told us this was the worst season for snow ever, but next to the winter we’d been having back in Europe it was like Narnia.

The fabled leopards had thankfully failed make an appearance (although we did see some giant paw prints in the snow) then finally it was time to leave. Before departing the hotel we spent an awkward half hour sorting out reasonable tips for all the expectant staff, but in the end it was a well-thumbed copy of FHM that made the biggest impression of all. We’d left it on one of the beds, and when Natalie dashed back in to grab something she found a crowd of grinning bell boys gathered around an interview with Jenna Jameson. At the sight of Nat they jumped about a mile and the ringleader sheepishly thrust the magazine behind his back. God knows what kind of impression we’d given them of western women! At last we jumped back in another 4×4 with horrendously bald tyres for the nervy journey back to Srinigar, where we would be staying the night on one of the famous houseboats.

On the way down, without the jetlag, the scenery passed in less of a daze. We saw ramshackle houses, horse-drawn carts and children playing cricket in rough fields. To be honest the winter landscape down in the valley was pretty bleak compared to Gulmarg.

At one point we got stuck behind three truckloads of soldiers, and Peter’s wise words were ringing in my ears. “Srinigar’s pretty safe really,” he’d said, “Just don’t hang around near any army trucks ‘cos that’s what they tend to chuck grenades at.” Never had I been so glad for one of the driver’s insane overtaking maneuvres! Amongst the muddy streets and higgledy piggeldy shops were dozens of newer houses with massive satellite dishes, and everywhere were billboards advertising cement companies.

Later I asked our tourist liaison whether this was a sign of rebuilding after the huge earthquake that had struck the region in 2005, but apparently the quake hadn’t really affected this part of Kashmir. Instead, the castle-like new homes were just status symbols for the well-off. “In Kashmir we care about two things in life: A house, and marriage. And we spend a lot on both these things. When a man has a house with ten bedrooms people will look at it and say ‘Yes, he is wealthy.’”

Srinigar sits on the banks of a number of rivers and lakes. We drove to a pier beside the most famous stretch of water, Lake Dal, and had our board bags loaded onto a precarious little boat. Then we paddled across to the centre of the lake clutching a ‘winter wife’ each, where a long line of houseboats twinkled in the darkness.

We’d been expecting something like a glorified canal barge, but as we stepped off and were greeted by the owner it became clear his vessel was far more spectacular than that. The boat was a huge floating hostel, intricately carved from wood and decorated within with chandeliers, thick red carpets and polished furniture. A China teapot and sponge cake was waiting for us on a silver tray, while in the dining room a table had been covered in linen and laid for dinner. The whole place felt like a throwback to the days of the Raj, and actually this wasn’t far from the truth – Srinigar’s houseboats were first introduced in colonial times when British ex-pats would come to fish and play golf in the summer. The tradition has since survived 60 years of isolation and war.

Over a dinner of ‘mutton yoghurt’, the tourist guide that had met us at the pier hung around making chit chat. He was upset that people had been scared away from visiting Kashmir and experiencing this kind of hospitality. “Kashmir is like a beautiful woman with two lovers. For years Pakistan has been brainwashing kids into fighting the Indian occupation but these days people realize neither country is good for Kashmir. They want independence. And finally people like yourselves are starting to come back.”

The rest of our evening was spent lounging around the wood stove feeling like royalty. Occasionally salesmen would appear in boats and come onboard to show off their wares – everything from rubies to cans of Pepsi. It was obvious they’d been tipped off by someone that we were staying there, but with so few western tourists to squeeze some income from you couldn’t blame them. The next morning we awoke as the call to prayer wafted over the lake, and stepped outside to a breathtaking view of Lake Dal, stretching like a millpond towards the hazy mountains.

One more taxi ride awaited us, with perhaps the craziest driver yet. This old dude drove like he was in a police chase, and when he got held up in traffic he just repeatedly rammed the car in front. Even madder, the guy in front just kept chatting on his mobile phone!

“’Srinigar’s pretty safe really,’ he said, ‘Just don’t hang around near any army trucks ‘cos that’s what they tend to chuck grenades at’”

Zig-zagging through barbed wire checkpoints on the approach to the airport terminal, I was suddenly reminded of Alex Garland’s book The Beach. In case you missed it (or the dodgy film version) it’s about a group of hardcore backpackers that discover a hidden paradise off the coast of Thailand. Sheltered from the relentless march of the tourism by its position in a national marine park and a well-guarded marijuana plantation on the other side of the island, the travellers establish a utopian community in this so-called ‘Eden’, but in the end the secret leaks out and like any other beach the tourist invasion begins.

Here in Gulmarg we’d stumbled upon a kind of winter version of that beach. It was remote and largely undeveloped, and as in the book there were Kalashnikov-wielding soldiers nearby to put off all but the most determined travellers. Was all this about to change as magazines like us put the place on the map? Peter from Ski Himalaya had spoken to me about trying to develop Gulmarg into a proper resort, with better grooming, efficient ticket administration and more lifts. They even had aspirations to hold the 2010 Commonwealth Winter Games.

Yet Peter admitted that negotiating the labyrinthine world of Indian politics and dealing with local big-wigs was an uphill struggle, and I couldn’t help thinking that progress would be a long time coming. As long as the FCO keeps issuing its negative travel advisory, and as long as the high profile military presence remains, it seems unlikely Gulmarg will ever attract the regular hordes away from places like Chamonix. And perhaps, from a selfish freerider’s point of view, that’s for the best.