Gulmarg Diary, August 14-18, on John ki Jaan

About 10 kilometers outside Gulmarg, you begin the ascent up the mountainside. You climb at least 2,000 feet up a winding road of loose hairpin turns. During the climb, you drive through an immense forest of pine trees.

Eventually, you reach a step in the mountainside and arrive at the valley that cradles Gulmarg. You enter the valley at its northeastern end, and the sight of the grasslands stretching toward the base of the distant mountain is spectacular, especially with the vast blue sky overhead.

But even in this beautiful spot, the military presence is obvious. Small army compounds occupy various corners of the valley, and two large camouflage-painted satellite dishes face the snowy mountaintops.

If you look closely, you might see some signs for the High Altitude Warfare School or the Dagger Environment Park. Even if you miss the signs, you can’t miss the military conveys ferrying along the narrow roads at high speed.

On our first day in Gulmarg, we only went for a short walk up the hill behind our hotel (mostly because everyone warned us not to overexert ourselves to avoid altitude sickness, which I believe is something similar in sensation to motion sickness).

Stairway to nowhere

On top of the hill, we discovered two quaint chai stalls. (They’re literally side by side, so how they survive is a complete mystery.) We ordered chai from one and paid a whopping Rs. 4 (10 cents) per cup! (How they make any money at these prices is a bigger mystery.)

We then hitched a ride to our uncle’s “hut” for dinner, where we met up with everyone who had come to Gulmarg early. (His actual birthday is August 17, but people started arriving on the 14th to begin the party early, and the “hut” is actually a four-bedroom cabin with a dining room, drawing room, and kitchen.)

Because Gulmarg is at such a high altitude and at the foothills of the Himalayas (we could see the snow-capped Himalayas from the plane when we arrived), the temperatures are quite chilly, even in August.

Dueling chai stalls

The daytime temps reach 70º F, when it’s not raining, and the sun is extremely warm. (My face and hands got nicely sunburned.) The nighttime temps go down to about 45º F, which wouldn’t be so bad if the buildings had indoor heating.

The sheets and quilts weighed at least 40 pounds, and they were so heavy they pinned us to the mattress. Once we crawled under the sheets, we couldn’t move. (I have been told in Kashmir they sell the sheets by weight, not size; i.e., you specify that you want a cotton sheet that weighs x pounds.)

Our hotel room came equipped with a small electric space heater (that looked like a tabletop fan with a heating element in place of the rotor) that wasn’t terribly effect. But we kept fairly warm the first two nights because the bed was stacked with heavy blankets and quilts.

The bed of weighty blankets

Of course, the room was unbelievably cold in the morning, even after running the space heater all night long. The chilly morning air also made washing an unpleasant experience; we didn’t even consider taking a full shower. The nice thing was that at 7:30 in the morning, the porter brought us hot chai, which helped warm us up.

On our first full day, after having a delicious breakfast in the hotel dining room (Gitanjali had the scrambled eggs, while I had the masala omelet—do you even need to ask which dish was better?), we set out for a trek up the mountain. We met up with four other “youngies”—who were adventurous enough to walk up the mountain—at the “Gulmarg Gondola.”

The gondola is actually a cable car that runs up the mountainside. The first section goes from the valley floor at 8,200 feet to a step at 10,050 feet. The second section goes from the step to just above the snowline at 11,900 feet. The gondola is rumored to be the highest cable car in the world (built by the French), and supposedly, you can see Pakistan-held Kashmir from the peak.

A trekking trail conveniently follows the path of the cable car, meandering around its support towers.

Gondola Car

Gondola Path

(We could’ve taken a few other routes, but this was the most direct and most well traveled, even if it was the steepest route.)