Flip it!
We left Budapest airport around SUN noon and were looking forward to a funny air time. I have to admit the further east we go, the better the pilots. The Russian pilot to Moscow and also his colleague to New Delhi did incredible landings. It was that smooth, we did not even feel the plane had landed. Or maybe it was because of the machines? Well, these local Russian birds are quite comfortable. In Moscow we spent some money on a couple bottles of Vodka and took the flight to Delhi and enjoyed the huge cozy seats. After landing in Delhi, we had to get on the transfer bus to the national terminal where we did a quick avalanche training. As we had to wait 6 hours for the flight to Srinagar and the lovely Indian stewardesses did not want to talk to us, we had to occupy all chairs and banks and sleep a bit in the middle of a terminal, that was currently under construction…Around 2PM local time finally our flight to Kashmir with King Fisher airlines took off, we hardly could finish our last international food: Mc.Chicken and chips..Landing in Srinagar was quite interesting; the plane flew over the Himalayas and landed in a green valley with hills of white tops all around. Reaching the terminal happened on foot…this is where the adventure started. Everybody was very friendly and wanted to take us anywhere we wanted to go, but finally after finding our luggage we saw the banner with my friend’s name and where happy to see the two drivers, who were native Kashmiri people with huge beard and 2 huge SUVs of the local brand: TATA. Did you know Tata is willing to buy Jaguar? Local people call this reverse colonization :). It is hard to describe our ride from Srinagar to Gulmarg. We nearly died at least 250 times. It was just mad. These people do not follow any traffic rules. You look out of the window and see that HUGE colorful truck overtaking the other, whilst your own driver is overtaking another truck, this on a dual lane highway in the middle of the crowded Srinagar suburbs! The rule is simple: the stronger survives. Luckily we did.On the road: everywhere mud and incredible pollution! The living standard is incredible low here, slums on both sides of the street, houses rarely finished and most of the population living just couple of meters away from the traffic right on the street. I have never seen such poverty before and had quite a bad feeling about it.After 2,5 hours we reached “heaven on earth” this is how local people call the town of Gulmarg, which indeed is a very nice, calm resort area protected by the local army (everywhere soldiers with huge AK 47s) and only to enter with special permit. After a couple of hours we forgot the crazy things we saw in Srinagar and were focused on finding out a bit more about the place, local people and snow conditions. It was already dark by that time and we were looking forward to our first local dinner with mixed feelings. Fortunately Indian food is superb and very tasty here, a fresh vegetable soup and spicy chicken or fine lamb was the choice with rise and some boiled cauliflower and other green stuff, we even got pudding as desert, we just simply called it “Indian pannacotta”. The day was over and we slept at least 11 hours till the next morning. The heating, power, hot water is up and down all day, but the whole thing is reaching my minimum standards. Some people definitely would not survive here, but we like it! TUE morning we woke up and looked outside: everything was covered with fresh white snow and it was still falling!!! What else could we wish? We had two local Indian ski-guides we paid for and they showed us the terrain during the morning. I have to admit Indian people fully dressed in skiwear look quite funny…Unfortunately the top section of the gondola was closed in the morning due to bad visibility and risk of avalanches, so we had to live with shorter runs and quite wet snow, it is pretty spring alike here already! We thought the bottom section was quite boring, so decided looking for some natural obstacles in the pine wood, to use for some 3styling. We were happy with a fallen tree full of snow and jumped over it for a couple of times and did some photo shooting, while the rest of the group had lunch at middle station. AND THEN, the miracle happened: sun came out, the sky cleared suddenly and the top section of the gondola opened!!!The mountain was full of fresh, untouched snow and we were within the first 10 people to ride down from the top of 4000 metres. It is hard to describe the feeling of snowboarding down from this height to 3000metres in powder!!! Some photos should help your imagination though, so hopefully you can understand why we came here and how good it is being in Gulmarg, far away from Western civilization and emails, Blackberries, phone calls (no cell network here..) and other very important things of our workaholic life.So we flipped it around totally and are enjoying it pretty much! Hope the dial up internet connection will work this time…. To be continued!
Andras(om)
We left Budapest airport around SUN noon and were looking forward to a funny air time. I have to admit the further east we go, the better the pilots. The Russian pilot to Moscow and also his colleague to New Delhi did incredible landings. It was that smooth, we did not even feel the plane had landed. Or maybe it was because of the machines? Well, these local Russian birds are quite comfortable. In Moscow we spent some money on a couple bottles of Vodka and took the flight to Delhi and enjoyed the huge cozy seats. After landing in Delhi, we had to get on the transfer bus to the national terminal where we did a quick avalanche training. As we had to wait 6 hours for the flight to Srinagar and the lovely Indian stewardesses did not want to talk to us, we had to occupy all chairs and banks and sleep a bit in the middle of a terminal, that was currently under construction…Around 2PM local time finally our flight to Kashmir with King Fisher airlines took off, we hardly could finish our last international food: Mc.Chicken and chips..Landing in Srinagar was quite interesting; the plane flew over the Himalayas and landed in a green valley with hills of white tops all around. Reaching the terminal happened on foot…this is where the adventure started. Everybody was very friendly and wanted to take us anywhere we wanted to go, but finally after finding our luggage we saw the banner with my friend’s name and where happy to see the two drivers, who were native Kashmiri people with huge beard and 2 huge SUVs of the local brand: TATA. Did you know Tata is willing to buy Jaguar? Local people call this reverse colonization :). It is hard to describe our ride from Srinagar to Gulmarg. We nearly died at least 250 times. It was just mad. These people do not follow any traffic rules. You look out of the window and see that HUGE colorful truck overtaking the other, whilst your own driver is overtaking another truck, this on a dual lane highway in the middle of the crowded Srinagar suburbs! The rule is simple: the stronger survives. Luckily we did.On the road: everywhere mud and incredible pollution! The living standard is incredible low here, slums on both sides of the street, houses rarely finished and most of the population living just couple of meters away from the traffic right on the street. I have never seen such poverty before and had quite a bad feeling about it.After 2,5 hours we reached “heaven on earth” this is how local people call the town of Gulmarg, which indeed is a very nice, calm resort area protected by the local army (everywhere soldiers with huge AK 47s) and only to enter with special permit. After a couple of hours we forgot the crazy things we saw in Srinagar and were focused on finding out a bit more about the place, local people and snow conditions. It was already dark by that time and we were looking forward to our first local dinner with mixed feelings. Fortunately Indian food is superb and very tasty here, a fresh vegetable soup and spicy chicken or fine lamb was the choice with rise and some boiled cauliflower and other green stuff, we even got pudding as desert, we just simply called it “Indian pannacotta”. The day was over and we slept at least 11 hours till the next morning. The heating, power, hot water is up and down all day, but the whole thing is reaching my minimum standards. Some people definitely would not survive here, but we like it! TUE morning we woke up and looked outside: everything was covered with fresh white snow and it was still falling!!! What else could we wish? We had two local Indian ski-guides we paid for and they showed us the terrain during the morning. I have to admit Indian people fully dressed in skiwear look quite funny…Unfortunately the top section of the gondola was closed in the morning due to bad visibility and risk of avalanches, so we had to live with shorter runs and quite wet snow, it is pretty spring alike here already! We thought the bottom section was quite boring, so decided looking for some natural obstacles in the pine wood, to use for some 3styling. We were happy with a fallen tree full of snow and jumped over it for a couple of times and did some photo shooting, while the rest of the group had lunch at middle station. AND THEN, the miracle happened: sun came out, the sky cleared suddenly and the top section of the gondola opened!!!The mountain was full of fresh, untouched snow and we were within the first 10 people to ride down from the top of 4000 metres. It is hard to describe the feeling of snowboarding down from this height to 3000metres in powder!!! Some photos should help your imagination though, so hopefully you can understand why we came here and how good it is being in Gulmarg, far away from Western civilization and emails, Blackberries, phone calls (no cell network here..) and other very important things of our workaholic life.So we flipped it around totally and are enjoying it pretty much! Hope the dial up internet connection will work this time…. To be continued!
Andras(om)
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