Six years of traveling can change a man. Freedom and life lessons that can not be experienced in any other way, led me to an understanding of how I am, how I like to be, and where I fit in.

I visited the Gulmarg ski resort for the first time in the year 2000. I had the best 3 months of my life! After I acknowledge this fact, I started to think how I could give back to a place and people who had made such a difference in my life.

I decided that I was ready for my final exam of these past six years of Freedom studies, which I so enjoyed attending. A final task in which I would put together all the skills I’ve been given: to make a difference, to make a change, to love without question, to create something pure. All though these things could be achieved by giving a beggar a dime, but I felt something bigger would be more appropriate.

The only snowboard for hire in Gulmarg at the time was a Burton Air, which was manufactured in the mid 80’s. My task was to show snowboarding in Kashmir, and to teach Kashmiris the proper way of riding the freshies!

I decided to return to Gulmarg with a bunch of boards and to conduct the first Kashmiri snowboarding course, free of charge for the local population.

150 kg.

That’s the weight of 14 snowboards, 16 bindings, 17 boots and a whole lot of wax, P-Tex, bolts, electric iron and other snowboarding maintenance gear. Thanks to Royal Jordanian Airlines, I was able to take 60 kg on the flight with me. The extra 110 kg I had to send by cargo.

I returned to Kashmir in the beginning of winter, 2003. Mr. Baktoo greeted me in Delhi’s airport on my arrival. He presented me with a good luck necklace made of yellow and orange flowers. He knew what I liked. It was great to meet him again after so long as he drove me to a hotel in New Delhi’s main bazaar and took care of all the customs logistics.

The next day we tied the 150 kg to a roof of an Indian-made jeep and swept off on a two-day journey to Kashmir.

After a very relaxing week on Mr. Baktoo’s houseboat outside of Srinagar, we started organizing the first Kashmiri snowboarding course.

The course was divided into 3 groups with 10 students in each group. Each group went through a 10-day snowboarding course in which the students practice snowboarding technique, switch riding, powder technique and the safety rules of both resort and backcountry riding.

It was a wonderful and fulfilling experience to teach this wonderful sport to such enthusiastic people. The students were between 20 to 34 years old, from a broad range of professions, such as the tourist industry, education, computer engineers, doctors, vets and my favorites… ski bums! The students were eager to finally experience this sport that was previously only available on through images on a TV. They were extremely excited to be a part of this first snowboarding introduction.

The media also found interest in this little project of mine. Besides articles in 7 local newspapers and one foreign magazine, I was interviewed 5 times for the Kashmiri TV news program. All of the snowboarding gear I brought with me was left in Gulmarg and is available for rent in the “Kashmir alpine ski shop”.

The idea was to conduct the course through the University of Kashmir. After a lengthy meeting with Dr. Tarzan and Mr. Mundo (Directors of Physical Education at the university) it was decided that due to lack of finance, the university could not conduct the course that year. However, I guess my enthusiasm to conduct the course moved them and the next day I received a phone call from Mr. Mundo, explaining that they had decided to establish the K.S.A (Kashmir Snowboard Association). In that way, we could reach a wider public audience and have snowboarding available to all of Kashmir.

The Himalayan region is a dream come true for every winter sport lover who is seeking unspoiled wilderness and long virgin runs. Local snowboarding pioneers exist in Himachal, Uttar Pradesh and how can I forget Mr. Meraj, Mr. Asif, and f’ Ferdos of Kashmir.

Gulmarg (the meadow of flowers) is an attraction for winter game extremists in winter. In summer it hosts the highest natural golf course in the world and its beautiful scenery of snowy peaks; endless green fields covered with carpets of flowers attract couples seeking the ideal romantic holiday. Gulmarg village is located on a ring-shaped mountain range at an altitude of 2600m. A gondola climbs from the village to the Peak of Kongdori Mountain, at an elevation of 4150m. It provides a ski area of 7.5 sq km, with runs of up to 7 km in virgin snow.

The resort also provides hotels and huts for hire, restaurants, snow mobile rides, ski rentals and now available, snowboards for hire.

This year for the first time, snowboarding was part of the Indian Winter Games championship as a demonstration event and will become a racing event in winter 2004. Foreign tourism is welcome in Gulmarg ski resort. The Indian-Pakistani conflict has no affect on this area of Kashmir and an unforgettable winter awaits those who will attend.

Thanks:

To “Mountain Wave” and “Lone Star” snowboard shops in Breckenridge Colorado, “Ski Pass” snowboard shop and Elon Celman in Israel for their kind donation of snowboarding equipment.

To Yusuf Baktoo, Yasin Kan and Hanid Dar for taking care of my every need throughout my stay in Kashmir.

To Yusuf Mundo of the Kashmiri University for fueling my spark and bringing snowboarding to the attention of every sole in Kashmir.

To the enthusiastic locals that took part in the course. That sparkle in their eyes will stay with me forever.

To Jack Burton, David Sims and the rest of snowboarding pioneers, for developing this wonderful sport to what it is today and giving us kids something to play with.

Radical ripping (well, radicals anyway) and indefatigable optimism at the most dangerous ski area on earth.
It’s 4:00 a.m., and outside the fog-shrouded windows of the Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop, the Indian village of Gulmarg sleeps in the shadow of a 13,576-foot ridge that looks directly into Pakistan. The door opens and Hamid blows in with a blast of cold night air, grabbing a seat near a tiny charcoal brazier that is the shop’s only source of heat. At the table is Hasid’s friend and business partner, Yaseen, surrounded by a pile of gear that looks like a cross between a vintage ski swap and a United Nations garage sale: some battered Vulkl Tour Extremes given to them in 1983 by a New Zealand trekker; worn Dynastar boots donated by a German climber in 1989; goggles, gloves, and gaiters left by guests from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and some safety straps I’ll apparently be using, which Yaseen is now jury-rigging from a roll of frayed Bengali baling twine. While I woof down toast and tea, Yaseen and Hamid exchange a remark in Kashmiri, which is followed by a rueful chuckle. I ask what they’re talking about.
"We are just remembering," Yaseen explains. "In the days before the fighting came to Kashmir, we used to start out all the time like this, at three or four in the morning. We are reminding each other how many foreigners used to come here from all over the world. Australia, America, Denmark, Switzerland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden, Japan, France, Norway?"
"Dutch," adds Hamid, helpfully. "Yes, Holland too." Yaseen glances at the disused skis stacked against the table, the snowboards languishing in the shelves on the back wall. "But look around. Now there’s nobody." He sighs and reaches for the nozzle of his hookaha Turkish-style tobacco pipe sometimes used for smoking hashish. I don’t know what’s in the hookah this morning, but Yaseen draws a deep, satisfying inhalation that burbles flatulently through the water in the bong, then emits a string of wet, hacking coughs. "This war has made me old," he declares, casting a hard look at his watch. Time to go. We clomp into the milky starlight, throw our skis over our shoulders, and begin a predawn, 4,592-foot climb through the snow-draped forests to the alpine heights above Gulmarg, gateway to the finest war-zone skiing on earth. Cupped in a meadow high above the Kashmir Valley, Gulmarg is dotted with small tin-roofed homes, tiny tea stalls, and elaborately carved wooden hotels, several of which have been abandoned by their owners and are now being remodeled by the winter wind. The village is a "hill station," a mountain sanctuary where India’s colonial rulers used to flee in order to escape the choking heat of the plains below. In the 19th century, British army officers and civil servants spent their summer vacations up here cavorting on the highest golf course in the world, while in winter they hired ponies to haul their wooden skis to the top of the beginners? runs (which are now served by a handful of modest lifts). More recently, Gulmarg has emerged as a honeymooners? haven, a place where besotted Indian newlyweds come to gaze at the mountains, fling snow at one another, and pay to get dragged through the slushy streets on blocky, wooden sleds pulled by under worked porters. All this is charming, to be sure? but it’s the three-mile ridgeline above Gulmarg that induced me to fly ten thousand miles to get here; that, and the fact that Himalayan snow typically falls in the form of dust-light powder. Beneath the northeast-facing ridge, the terrain consists of 35-degree rollovers that merge onto open slopes comparable to the Back Bowls at Vail. The bottom section flows through forests of widely spaced, 100-foot fir trees whose branches resound with the chatter of monkeys. The forest floor is laced with the tracks of leopard, deer, and black bear. Surrounding the village is nearly 10 square miles of skiable terrain that would rival some of the largest resorts in North America and Europe? that is, if Gulmarg actually had a lift to the top. The 10-square mile figure, however, applies just to the ridge above Gulmarg. To the southeast lies an adjacent 15,500-foot massif called Sunrise Peak, while between Gulmarg and the valley floor, an additional 2,000 feet of vertical drops steeply through yet another forest of conifers. This more than doubles the skiable area and makes Gulmarg perhaps the greatest untapped big-mountain resort in the world. The operative word here, of course, is "untapped," because Gulmarg also happens to sit in the middle of the most intractable military standoff in Asia. Just getting here from Kashmir’s capital city of Srinagar requires a two-hour drive into the mountains that runs a gauntlet of soldiers and machine-gun emplacements. The origins of the conflict date back to 1947, when, in a process referred to as Partition, Britain divided its South Asian empire into two new nations: the Hindu-majority republic of India and the Islamic state of Pakistan. Partition’s upheavals produced one of the largest migrations of refugees in history? some 10 million people? and the slaughter of nearly one million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. Another casualty was the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir in the mountainous north, which had a Muslim-majority population ruled by a Hindu maharaja. Two months after Partition, Pakistan invaded Kashmir. India at Kashmir’s request then airlifted in Sikh troops to meet them. When the fighting ended 14 months later, India controlled two-thirds of the state and Pakistan ruled the rest. The de facto border was the military ceasefire line, which started near the Indian city of Jammu and cut a diagonal, northeastward swath toward China. Along the way, it skirted the edge of the ridgeline just above Gulmarg. This border was dubbed the "Line of Control," a term that revealed wishful thinking on both sides: In 1965 and again in 1971, India and Pakistan fought two more wars in Kashmir (both of which Pakistan lost). It wasn’t until the mid 1980s that Delhi and Islamabad finally began taking tentative steps to iron out their problems. The prospect of peace encouraged tourists, and by 1988, 600,000 Indians and 60,000 foreigners were pouring into Kashmir annually. This, in turn, inspired Kashmir’s state government to begin building a gondola at Gulmarg in the hopes of transforming the place into a world-class ski resort. It was a heady time when people voiced serious speculation about Gulmarg making a bid to host the Asian Winter Games and, eventually, the Winter Olympics. One person who took particular interest in all this was a man named Mohmad Yaseen Khan. Yaseen, 48, grew up in a small village just below Gulmarg that is surrounded by apple and cherry orchards. His skin is leathery, his hands are impervious to cold, and he looks a bit like Paul Newman, if you can imagine Paul Newman addicted to smoking a hookah and missing two-thirds of his teeth. Having spent the winters of his boyhood working at the resort, Yaseen had dreamed for years of owning his own ski-industry enterprise but was hampered by the fact that he had never learned to read or write. Then in the spring of 1989, he decided to partner up with Abdul Hamid Dar, 35, a friend who possessed enough education to help manage the business, and whose family owns land in Gulmarg. Hamid has a soft voice that is offset by an impressive black mustache that seems to bristle when he negotiates ski and snowboard rental fees. Together, the two Muslim men bought a tiny studio near the center of Gulmarg and opened the resort’s first privately owned rental shop and guide service. The Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop doubled as their living quarters; there was no toilet and they had to bathe at a friend’s house. Their rental stock consisted of two sets of skis and two pairs of boots purchased from some cash-strapped Austrian tourists, which they leased for $5 a day. Two months after their grand opening, Kashmir’s latest war broke out a civil conflict that pitted more than 60 Islamic guerrilla groups against half a million Indian troops. In the ensuing mayhem, which consumed newspaper headlines all over the world, and which continues to this day, more than 36,000 Kashmiris have been kidnapped or killed. During the mid 1990s, the guerrillas also began targeting foreign visitors. In July 1995, six trekkers were taken hostage. One American escaped, but a 27-year-old Norwegian named Hans Christian Ostro was decapitated. The rest were never found. High in the mountains, Gulmarg remained relatively untouched, but down in Srinagar, hotels were surrounded by barbed wire and virtually every street corner was guarded by Indian soldiers in sandbagged gun emplacements. Tourist numbers plummeted by 98 percent, Gulmarg’s dozen-odd hotels were all but abandoned, and construction of the gondola, which could now transport visitors 1,320 vertical feet to a terminal halfway up the mountain, came to a halt. Then, on the night of March 17, 1999, an electrical fire started in the shop adjacent to Yaseen and Hasid’s store, and in 20 minutes their entire business burned to the ground. They lost their skis, their equipment, and all their personal belongings. Not even Yaseen’s socks were spared. "That was my biggest bad day," he recalls. "We had no money, and we had no resources." A month later, about 100 miles east of Gulmarg, more than 800 Pakistan-supported militants launched a surprise attack across the Line of Control and started shelling Indian army posts. By mid summer, each country was threatening to use nuclear weapons to wipe its rival off the face of the planet, provoking Bill Clinton to declare Kashmir "the most dangerous place on earth." At the time, the comment seemed to mark the final phase of Kashmir’s excruciating slide from paradise-on-earth to living hell. In fact, though, Clinton’s words evoked a violent paradox that has plagued Kashmir for centuries, and that is illustrated most chillingly by an incident that took place more than 1,400 years ago in the same mountains that encircle Gulmarg. The story is about an elephant belonging to a Hun warlord whose army was invading Kashmir via a pass high in the Pir Panjal range. Somewhere in the middle of the pass, the elephant lost its footing, stumbled off the path, and trumpeted in plaintive horror as it plunged to its death. Finding himself stimulated by the otherworldly shriek, the warlord immediately ordered that a second, then a third, and eventually 100 elephants be pushed over the precipice, so that he might savor the exquisite sound of their terror. The point of this story is that in Kashmir, beauty is gratuitous but so, too, are cruelty and pain. In the spring of 1999, the weight of this truth bore down crushingly on the owners of the Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop as they confronted bankruptcy and ruin. It was at this point, however, with a few dozen foreign skiers showing up over the course of a season and the lifts running only intermittently, that fate decided to cut these two beleaguered Muslim ski guides a break and dispatched an unusual emissary to lend them a hand. He arrived in the winter of 2000, a hash-smoking ex-commando from Israel, whose apparent mission was to become the Jewish snowboarding messiah of Kashmir.
Ido Neiger was raised just south of the Sea of Galilee and learned to snowboard at Mount Hermon, the highest peak in Israel, where a tiny ski resort looks into Syria and the slopes are occasionally shelled by Hezbollah. In 1994, Ido (pronounced EE-doe) was drafted into the Israeli Army, earning a spot in an elite commando squad. For the past six years, Ido, 28, has traveled almost constantly, earning money working for land-mine-defusing projects run by the United Nations, and snowboarding in New Zealand, Slovenia, the Dolomites, and Breckenridge. When he’s not riding his Air Burton or unscrewing the detonators on tank-busting land mines with his Leatherman, he can often be found attending full-moon backpacker raves in places like Australia or Thailand, where he dances to trance music and consumes prodigious amounts of psychotropic drugs. In February 2000, Ido’s quest for untracked powder took him to Gulmarg, where he met Yaseen and Hamid and decided to stay for the winter, bunking down in the attic above their rebuilt ski shop. He was maddened by Gulmarg’s many problems, which included a lack of well-maintained slopes (Gulmarg does not even publish a trail map) and the fact that the gondola which, thanks to rampant Indian nepotism, has 150 people working for it can’t manage to open up at the same time every morning. Ido also understood, though, that such glitches were, in a backhanded way, part of the charm of a place where a one-day lift ticket costs five dollars. "Because there are virtually no skiers here, you feel like you have your own private resort," he said. "It doesn’t even matter what time you wake up in the morning you will always have the first run, and you will always have the fresh snow. Plus it costs only 15 dollars a day to ski, survive, and smoke the best hash on earth. Tell me where else you can get away with that?" When he left in March, 2001, promising to return, Yaseen and Hamid weren’t sure they’d ever see Ido again. a suspicion that grew stronger when they didn’t hear from the guy for nearly two years. Unbeknownst to them, however, Ido was working on a bold plan. First, he got a lucrative mine- defusing job in Croatia that enabled him to save more than $5,000. With the extra cash, he started buying up used snowboarding gear, eventually amassing 14 boards, 17 pairs of boots, and 16 pairs of bindings, as well as a formidable stash of wax, goggles, gloves, and P-tex, plus an old laundry iron. He assembled everything in Tel Aviv, bundled it into a 500-pound package, then sweet-talked Royal Jordanian Airlines into flying the whole thing to India for free. After landing in Delhi early last January, he rammed the shipment through customs with the aid of a few bribes, rented a jeep, and hauled the gear 600 miles up to Gulmarg. He appeared at the door of the ski shop with no warning, dumped his gift at the feet of a flabbergasted Yaseen and Hamid, and told them that it was time to get down to some serious business. Meanwhile, the government of Kashmir, apparently infected with the same viral strain of rabid optimism that is driving the Kashmiri Alpine Ski Shop, decided to restart construction of the final phase of the lift. When the cableway is complete supposedly in November Gulmarg will boast the third-highest gondola (12,990 feet) in the world. The fact that this is all taking place in an active combat zone, and would thus seem to qualify as the most asinine business venture in the history of industrialized snow sports, doesn’t appear to have had the slightest effect on anyone. I spent four days in Gulmarg, and never quite managed to escape the feeling that I’d blundered into a place that has been cruelly and perhaps irrevocably screwed up. The war is now in its 14th year, which means that the resort long ago slipped off the radar of the international adventure-travel set. Yet nearly everyone connected with Gulmarg clings ferociously to an irrational mixture of hope and denial. "The government is not giving proper information to foreign tourists," groused Hamid one afternoon as we walked down the road. "Here there are no guns. Here there is no danger." He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was making these remarks within direct sight of a heavily armed Indian military convoy. "See our mountains so much potential!" Yaseen exclaimed during a backcountry climb the next day. "You can ski anywhere you like." Fifteen minutes later, we were kicked off our traverse by a platoon from India’s High Altitude Warfare School, which was training for winter combat along the Line of Control. On my final day, as I was preparing to write Yaseen, Hamid, and Ido off as victims of their own propaganda, we made our predawn climb to the ridge to preview what skiers and boarders will see next season when they disembark from the completed gondola. It was a surreal moment. There was Yaseen pointing out Pakistan and warning me not to drift too far right, lest I be spotted by an Indian army patrol and arrested. And there, too, smack in front of us, was one of the most stunning views of any ski resort in the world. Crowning the vista was the sweep of the eastern Karakoram, dominated by 26,658-foot-high Nanga Parbat and dozens of 20,000-plus-foot peaks. Directly at my feet stretched a deliciously steep, alabaster mantle of powder broken only by our own boot tracks and the paw prints of a contouring fox. It was a half mile to the first tree, a quarter mile from there to the gondola, three miles to Gulmarg itself. And from there, if we wished, we could continue over the lip and plunge another two miles to the village of Tangmarg: an unbroken descent of nearly 7,000 feet. As I pushed off, it occurred to me for the first time that maybe these guys weren’t suffering from delusional blindness, but from something quite a bit more treacherous, and infinitely more forgivable. They had simply fallen in love with Gulmarg. And in that moment, I think I understood why. Launching into my first turn, I failed to experience any grand epiphanies regarding the cosmic connection between skiing and the Oneness of the Universe. Instead, I found myself just concentrating on how to link turns through snow that had the consistency of spackling compound. More to the point, though, for the first time in four days, I wasn’t thinking about kidnappings, hand grenades, or Hans Christian Ostro’s missing head. For a moment I was completely liberated a state of mind encompassing just about everything that poor, shackled, benighted Kashmir dreams of touching, and that remains tragically beyond its grasp. Something about this was both dreadfully sad and, at the same time, incorrigibly human. Who could fail to be seduced by such magic? The questionable ethics of inducing others to come to a place like this, however, remained. The next morning, I was walking through the village with Ido to catch my taxi back to Srinagar just as one of the Cheetah helicopters that the Indian army uses for high-altitude warfare clattered overhead. Shouting to make myself heard, I demanded to know how he, Yaseen, and Hamid could, in good faith, propose to bring tourists into a war zone. "Maybe I’m a bit extreme when it comes to danger," Ido replied. "My line of work deals with death all the time. Also, I’m an Israeli, and right now Israel is the most dangerous place in the world. But because of these things, I know that death and terrorism can catch me anywhere, at any time. I know that no place is truly safe, because these days the entire world is a dangerous place. And I also realize that this knowledge can actually make you free. If you realize that death can reach you anywhere, you can go wherever you want. You can do whatever you want. That’s why I’ve had such a wonderful time here. And that’s why I want other people to come to Gulmarg." In recent months there have been some encouraging developments in Kashmir. In May, India and Pakistan announced plans to restore diplomatic relations and hold their first talks in two years. If all goes well, the ski dreamers at Gulmarg might eventually see their hopes vindicated. It’s worth noting, though, that India and Pakistan have cycled through similar phases in the past, and each time, hope was shattered when somebody decided to push an elephant off a cliff just for the sake of hearing it scream. I was afforded a glimpse into how this works when, on the return flight from Srinagar, I found myself sitting next to Arun Joshi, an Indian public relations executive returning home to Delhi from a holiday. As the plane skirted the snowy crest of the Pir Panjal and soared out over the hot, green plains to the south, Mr. Joshi affably explained that he and his wife had been staying with a close family friend in Srinagar who also happens to be the Lieutenant General in charge of the entire Kashmir Valley, one of the most important posts in the Indian Army. "So how does the commander feel about the situation?" I asked. "Oh, he is extremely pleased," Mr. Joshi replied. "Things were very bad, it’s true. But now they are much better. Stability has returned to Kashmir."
The next morning in Delhi, I picked up the newspaper and learned that around midnight on the day I had left Srinagar, eight Islamic militants dressed in olive-green fatigues and pretending to be Indian soldiers entered a small village called Nadimarg, about 70 miles from Gulmarg. The militants had ordered every Hindu in the village to line up for identification, and then proceeded to gun them down with automatic weapons. Of the 24 unarmed civilians who were murdered that night in Nadimarg, 11 were women, and two were infants, shot to death in their mothers? arms

http://www.kashmiralpine.com/L_05Revolution.pdf

 If it's India, Korea or Russia we're talking about, the answer is yes. DOUGLAS ROGERS drops in on five unlikely ski destinations

UP here, the world looks very Swiss. The landscape is a white expanse of towering, snow-covered peaks and endless white valleys dotted with pine trees. A helicopter drops off a heli-skier on an adjacent slope.
 
Suddenly, an Indian woman in an Afghan hat comes shooting by on wooden skis, a sudden reminder that this slope is nowhere near the Alps. These are the slopes of Gulmarg, a popular ski resort in the strife-torn province of Kashmir. Yes, they ski in India. And they ski in other parts of the world that seem, on the surface, ill-suited to the sport. In Mexico, for example, there are plans to develop an $11 million resort on the 17,338-foot-high Iztaccihuatl volcano, which would make it the highest ski slope in the world. In southern Russia, President Putin has promised to turn the Caucasus Mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana into Russia's Davos - investing a reported $1 billion in the project.
So why ski at the same old same old?

The ski resort of Gulmarg would be made an all season tourist destination with the Jammu and Kashmir government making efforts to improve tourism related infrastructure.
"Efforts will be made to improve tourists related infrastructure so that more and more tourists visit Gulmarg not only in summer but also in winter months," Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said at a prize distribution ceremony at the first Chief Minister's ski championship here last evening.
Attention would be paid to develop infrastructure especially hotel accommodation at Gulmarg so that more and more tourists enjoy their visit to this famous tourist resort, Azad said adding steps would be taken in this regard in the coming summer.
The Chief Minister also asked the media to play a role in promoting tourism in the state.

Experts from across the globe can be seen on the slopes of Gulmarg, attempting to train members of the Kashmir Ski Patrol for the 2010 Commonwealth Winter Games.
Peter and Kip are two ski coaches who have come all the way from Canada and the US to train the team in avalanche awareness, ski mountaineering and mountain rescue.
A ski patrol team is the need of the hour since the safety of skiers, who come every year in large numbers, is a prime concern.
"Lot of concepts are new. Technical aspects of rescue and first aid are doing well. We are having a lot of fun in our courses. We are very excited and it is a pleasure to be with them and they are enthusiastic towards the project," said Peter Spricenieks, Canadian coach.
The members also said they were being given important lessons in techniques.
"They are teaching us rescue, avalanche safety, first aid and some good skiing techniques so that we are ready for 2010 Commonwealth Games. We are taking care of the skiers on these slopes," said Mohammed Anwar, Ski Patrol member.
Gulmarg has been a big revenue earner as a holiday destination, which is why the state government is planning to revamp the slopes and add more facilities like cable cars.
"All the international ski resorts have some basic rules and regulations. Keeping those in view, we are making efforts to provide all facilities which an international ski resort has," said G M Dar, Team Captain.
If everything goes well and Gulmarg hosts 2010 international ski event, it will give a big boost to the Kashmir tourist industry.

While this beautiful hill-station in known for skiing and Gondola ride, paraglidingthe art of flying in skyis attracting kids and tourists with equal enthusiasm.
All eyes were set upon a foreign paraglider flying in the deep blue skies of Gulmarg. Hovering like an eagle, the paraglider took sharp turns and flights as if skiing in the sky, attracting the attention of kids and many foreigners undergoing skiing training at Kangdori slopes. And the drill excited tourists too.
Sania Farooq, 11, and her friends who undergoes advanced skiing training course, said, "We too want to do paragliding and see how the huts and people look from sky."
"Its a bonus to see paragliding in Gulmarg. We had only come to see worlds highest ski-resort and Gondola," said an excited Mahesh Anand of Maharashtra who is accompanied by his family.
Finally, the fluorescent paraglide landed on the soft snow on a slope leaving the audience standstill. The pilot of the paraglide emerged beneath the strings and cloth and took a deep breath. "It was a smooth and soothing ride," Ptor Spricenieksi, 38, a renowned ski-patrol instructor and paraglider from Canada told Greater Kashmir.
"Man has the potential to fly thats why everybody is interested in learning the art," Ptor said as he pointed towards a large crowd who cheered him from "sky to earth."
Praising the beauty of Gulmarg, Ptor believes that it has the potential to become one of the best paragliding spot in World. "Gulmarg has all the ingredients to facilitate paragliding on commercial basis. In summer, we can take long flights due to hot air currents and in winter too the paraglide can fly using thermals," said Ptor, who has about 20-year experience in the paragliding.
"The aspiring local skiers whom I teach skiing are enthused to learn paragliding. And I see a bright future for them in this field too. They are sharp and learn the nuances of the art quickly."
However, the flights in the sky come at a heavy price. "The paraglide gear is very expensive. A new one costs around 5,000 US dollars. It is better to get a secondhand, which is available between 2,000-3,000 dollars," Ptor informed, adding paraglide can be used for reconnaissance, weather forecasts and rescue operations.
Ptor who has traveled extensively around the globe had some advice for the State Government. "Dont overdevelop Gulmarg to the extent that it would loose its natural beauty. Break the jinx of restricting the skiing to be a rich mans game. Throw skiing open for local kids and people who cant afford it. And explore the possibility to introduce adventure sports like paragliding in Gulmarg."
Ptor plans to visit Gulmarg again next year with a "surprise." "Ill get Tandem (Biplace) paraglider on my next visit, which has a capacity of two persons and is driven by a pilot. Itll be exciting to fly on snow," he said.
"Why fear earthquakes and fall from paraglide and skiing. Life and death is already written in our destiny," Ptor said.
"By the way I am going to Pakistan for mountain expedition next month," he said.

With the ski season off to a wonderfully snowy start, European resorts like Meribel, St. Moritz and Val d'Is are already full to bursting. But if you're ready for some real off-the-beaten-piste action this year consider our crop of less predictable ski destinations.

LEBANON: There are six resorts, of varying degrees of difficulty, on Mount Lebanon all within a two-hour drive of Beirut. The best equipped is Faraya-Mzaar, with 42 slopes, 15 lifts and almost unlimited off-piste potential.
MOROCCO: Oukeimeden boasts Africa's highest ski lift, at 3,261 m. Just 74 km from Marrakech, it has one chair and a few draglifts as well as donkeys to take you up to terrain not served by technology.

IRAN: In the Alborz Mountains north of Tehran, Dizin has a reputation for excellent snow and is often compared with the high alpine resorts of Europe. The views from all 23 slopes are spectacular.

KOREA: Muju, with its 30 runs, is three hours south of Seoul and hopes to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

INDIA: In war-torn Kashmir, Gulmarg has the world's highest golf course, at 2,650 m, and one of the world's highest lifts, at 4,138 m. It may also be the cheapest: $6 a day covers lift rides and equipment rental, but not the chairlift hookah pictured here.

From the Feb. 16, 2004 issue of TIME Global Advisor.

 San Francisco Times

It's not just the altitude that hijacks my breath as I alight from the world's highest gondola. The majestic Himalayan scene is equally complicit. From 14,000 feet, Kashmir appears to be a haven of peace and tranquility. Looks are sometimes deceiving.

I am standing on the summit of Mount Apharwat in India gazing over precipitous valleys and jagged peaks, into Pakistan, just 3 miles to the west. The two Kashmirs are divided by a no-man's land straddled by the dubiously titled Line of Control, a de facto border that has been a source of rage and violence for almost 60 years.

But this area and the mountain ranges around it have some of the most magnificent back country ski terrain in the world, say excited skiers who have gathered in the Himalayan resort of Gulmarg this winter.

"My group has skied off peaks in Russia, Norway, Lebanon and Sicily," says John Faulkner, an Australian guide based in Verbier, France, who is accompanying 17 skiers who've flown in from Britain, France and Italy. "And they're coming off the mountain here saying they've had possibly the best runs of their life."

When Faulkner first came here 16 years ago, skiers had to climb for six to eight hours to reach Apharwat's summit. It's a view that only a privileged few foreigners have seen, made possible by the completion of the second phase gondola in May. The ski lift now climbs to a height of 13,057 feet, beginning some 4,364 feet below in Gulmarg, a pristine village resort tucked neatly at the nape of the Pir Panjal mountain range.

It remains to be seen whether tourism and its attendant economic benefits can sustain the latest cease-fire between India and Pakistan, but if peace and snow go together, then the gods will be showering both in abundance on Gulmarg.

Sultan Yusuf Shah christened the village "Gulmarg," translated literally as "meadow of flowers," in the 16th century. Shah and many Mughal leaders after him migrated to Gulmarg in the summer to escape the stifling heat of the Harayana and Punjabi plains below. This was a ritual embraced in the 19th century by the British Raj, whose officials in time introduced the fashionable pursuits of golf and skiing.

It was the British, or rather their retreat in 1947, that pulverized the tranquility of Kashmir. The Indo-Pakistani partition created a 14-month conflict that left India with a two-thirds stake in Kashmir and forced the creation of a cease-fire line, the Line of Control.

Hostilities erupted again in 1965 and 1971. Adventurous hippies poured through Kashmir, but by 1989 the streets in the capital, Srinagar, were burning again. That conflict simmered for nearly 15 years, claiming as many as 80,000 lives. At the height of the war in 1999, both sides made presentations of nuclear bravado with several tests of weapons, causing great alarm across the world. Tentative steps toward peace began in 2004 with resumption of a dialogue between India and Pakistan that continues to this day.

This winter, much to the delight of local residents, a trickle of amateur and pro skiers and snowboarders from all over the world has arrived in Gulmarg, inspired by news of the gondola's opening and folkloric rumors of dry powder that never freezes and mountain terrain as spectacular as the Back Bowls of Vail. Such rumors have long circulated on the ''glisse hippy'' snow circuit.

The 35-mile trip from Srinagar to Gulmarg winds through quaint villages with entrances marked by vacant machine gun nests and rows of poplars at either end. In summer, the surrounding fields glow green and gold, interspersed by rice paddy fields and crops of mustard flower. Winter dumps snow and ice on them, churning the ground to a muddy slush and rendering the countryside with an eerie patina reminiscent of the Somme battlefields.

Climbing the last 9-mile stretch, I ask my escort from the Srinagar tourist office if he likes to ski.

"I used to," Sikander Malik chuckles ruefully. "Before I got shot."

As I ruminate on the appropriateness of asking Malik if he was shot while on skis, we plough over the lip of a hill and headlong into a Brother's Grimm fairy tale. At least that's how Gulmarg appears when seen for the first time. Set around a wide bowl lined with sweeping crests of white snow are intricately carved wooden tourist hotels and wind-hollowed huts.

A sweep of the hand across the delicate mantle of snow, piled 8 feet high, reveals a tantalizing dry, feather light consistency.

"Pugh," says Gulum Mohmad Dar, Gulmarg's tourism manager, triumphantly. "It's only January. In February we have twice as much."

An army truck swings around a bend offering passers-by a ride back to their lodge, while farther on, armed sentries loll about. Occasional bursts of gunfire bounce across the basin as military exercises are performed somewhere out of sight -- curious perversions in this otherwise pristine wilderness.

Seemingly unmoved by the poorly camouflaged military presence, skiers and boarders crunch past, jubilant after their final runs of the day. Glancing at their flushed faces, I wonder if they perceive any imminent danger from militants or errant soldiers, as they plunge down the surrounding valleys. I suspect I'd be laughed off the mountain at the very suggestion. There is frisson in the air, but this isn't a war zone.

Foreigners have rarely been the target of terrorist activities in Kashmir -- with one notable and grisly exception. In 1995, six trekkers were snatched by guerrillas from a trail leading out of Gulmarg. One man, an American, was fortunate enough to escape his captors. The remains of his 27-year-old Norwegian companion, Hans Christian Ostro, were eventually recovered. He had been decapitated. The bodies of their other four friends were never discovered.

Speak to any of the professionals who gather at the altar of Mount Apharwat and you soon learn that the most immediate threat to skiers comes from not from militants but from avalanches. Many have witnessed enormous falls of ice and snow roaring down the mountain, some with slide paths of more than 2 miles.

Ido Neiger, a 30-year-old Israeli-Canadian, first arrived on the mountain six years ago. For the past two years he has spearheaded Mission Gulmarg, a project assisting locals in promoting the resort potential of the region.

He arrived this season, his fourth, with 1,824 pounds of second-hand equipment -- a donation from the Whistler Mountain authority in Canada -- and a 16-person international team of mountain rescue professionals who volunteered to train Gulmarg's mountain rescue team.

Risks aside, Neiger is clearly smitten with Gulmarg. On my final morning, I meet him at the top of the gondola. We stand there in silence for a while, drinking up the majestic skyline.

"Everywhere I've been I have to hike to find fresh powder, and here I've got a whole mountain of it," he says. "For snowboarders this is heaven."

Grinning, he drops away, beginning a blissful 3-mile descent to Gulmarg, gently contouring wide arcs across the silken virgin slope, creating the first, maybe only, lines of the day.

It's a fantastic advertisement for peace, but it may be a long time before Gulmarg's reputation for heavenly powder can supersede the region's hellish history.

Katie Hamann is a freelance writer based in India. Contact us at

Gulmarg,: The snow-clad slopes of Gulmarg are these days home to a large number of professional skiers, including many from Europe and United States.
A high profile six-member team of mountain and skiing experts from Sweden is presently on "Mission Gulmarg" to enable smooth conduct of ski events on Apharwath.
"Were here to teach the in-service skiers rescue operations during skiing," Jorgen Karstrain, an expert in mountain guiding and member of the team told Greater Kashmir.
Having been to various ski-resorts around the Globe, Jorgen was all praise for the mountains of Gulmarg, often called Switzerland of Kashmir for its stunning beauty.
"The mountains are ready made for skiing. They are unique in a sense that there are long ridges and slopes, and they provide ample opportunities for conduct of skiing and other snow activities," says Jorgen as he glanced up a mountain.
"Due to Gulmarg, Kashmir has the potential to become one of the best ski-resorts of World," Jorgen asserted.
Federation of International Skiing, after survey of the mountains has already given green signal in its report for conducting skiing on Apharwat.
"Were able to conduct cross-country ski racing last year, and preparations are on to host national and international ski events," said G.M Dar, incharge Tourism department Gulmarg and Mountaineering and Skiing instructor.
Dar said enquires about the new skiing spots in Gulmarg were pouring in from across the globe.
Nina Garmen, a professional skier from US was "inspired" to ski on the mountains of Kashmir. Garmen says she could not resist coming here, after seeing mountains of Kashmir and the ski opportunities they offer, in a video on extreme skiing Tangerine Dream produced by the US-based Teton Gravity Research.
"It seems like the mountains have been carved out for skiing. I visited in summer here to see the slopes closely and eagerly waited for the snow. And now Im here enjoying while skiing," an elated Garmen said.
Mari Van, a skier from Holland said "I feel safe and at peace here. Gulmarg has soul-healing power."
Many local kids and students of various Srinagar schools are also participating in the ski-training program amidst ski-experts.
Shiekh Burhan, 11, a student of Tyndale Biscoe School was skiing with impeccable skill. "I want to represent my state in international ski events. Every Kashmiri should know skiing, as it can prove helpful in rescue and relief operations in winters," Burhan said as his instructor shouted at him to ride down the slope.
"All the students have donated Rs 100 for the program and well have fun," two girls said.
Savita Koul, an ace ski instructor said 43 students are participating in the training program. "The local students are picking the art of skiing very fast. You would be amazed to know that a student of kindergarten, Madeha has already outshined others in skiing and shes doing it according to the book," Savita said while pointing

towards Madeha far away on the slope.
A team of Indian Institute of Skiing and Mountaineering (IISM) is also camping in Gulmarg to oversee the ongoing skiing training program and up gradation of ski infrastructure.
"Were planning to introduce para-ski gliding, ice hockey and skiing on snowboards courses in our training programs. Lets hope for more snowfall," said B.S Bajwa a member of IISM.

Even as most people in Kashmir valley are loathe over the heavy snowfall due to hardships caused by it, people around this world famous ski resort are happy as 'white flakes' from the skies have attracted adventure tourists to support their livelihood.
Nearly 70 foreign tourists have arrived here after the heavy snowfall on the New Year day, Assistant Director Tourism Abid Ahmad Bhat told PTI.

He said the number was a significant increase from just five foreign tourists on December 28 last year. Asked about the activities of the tourists, he said they were mostly into skiing and snow-boarding from high altitudes of Apharwat and Kongdori.
The snowfall has also boosted the arrival of domestic tourists to the snow-bound valley with nearly 300 of them visiting everyday. However, most of the local tourists prefer to return to Srinagar after enjoying here during the day, Bhat said.
The tourist arrivals have brought smiles on the faces of the residents of villages around Gulmarg like Tangmarg, Kunzer, Chandiloora, Ferozpora and Baba Reshi.
"The arrival of tourists means livelihood for us. We act as guides or ski instructors to the tourists, which supports our families," Farooq Ahmad Bhat, a resident of nearby Tangmarg village, said.
He said a ski instructor can earn anything between Rs 200 to Rs 500 per day depending on the type of services sought by the tourists.
"Besides Rs 150 for the skiing equipment, we charge Rs 350 for the whole day to teach the tourists basics of skiing.
However, an hourly service at the rate of Rs 100 is also available for those who just want to get the thrills without any seriousness about learning the sport," Bhat said.
The sledge pullers are also doing brisk business as they charge Rs 130 per hour from the tourists to show them around the Gulmarg valley.
The main route for the sledge tour starts from Gondola cable car and passes through the church, golf course, club house and back to the cable car. The tourists then take a ride in the Gondola to Kongdoori or Afferwat, Mohammad Yaseen Khan, a sledge puller said. |
Khan said most of the sledge pullers turn ponnywallas during summer which meets much of their monetary needs but the tourism in Gulmarg should be year round so that people associated with the trade can think about turning it into a full time job.
"We are not demanding government jobs or any concessions from the government but it should ensure that tourists keep thronging this place so that we don't have to worry about our future," Ghulam Rasool, another sledge puller, said.
The hotel owners also agree that Gulmarg had the potential to develop as an all year tourist destination but the state government needs to promote it more aggressively within and outside the country.
"The guests have started turning up as per their schedule and we expect a bumber winter tourism season," Abdul Rashid, General Manager of Hotel Hill Top, said.

IT'S not just the altitude that hijacks my breath as I alight from the world's highest gondola: the majestic Himalayan scene stretching across the horizon is equally complicit. From 4124m, Kashmir looks like a haven of peace and tranquillity, but appearances are sometimes deceptive.

I am standing on the summit of India's Mount Apharwat, gazing over precipitous valleys and jagged peaks into Pakistan, 5km to the west. The two Kashmirs are divided by a no man's land straddled by the dubiously titled Line of Control, an often violent de facto border in existence for almost 60 years.

The sweeping view was made possible by the completion of Gulmarg's second-phase gondola in May last year. The ski lift now climbs to 3980m, beginning about 1330m below in Gulmarg, a village resort tucked neatly at the nape of the Pir Panjal mountain range.

My feet are strapped to narrow planks of precisely calibrated wood and fibreglass. Taking my cue from Nanga Parbat, towering above dozens of 6000m peaks to the north, I turn my back on Pakistan and drop back over the ridgeline, beginning a 4.5km descent into Gulmarg.

Hopes of arcing gracefully across the silken slopes evaporate as my skis are rapidly engulfed by diaphanous powder snow; it's like nothing I've experienced while skiing elsewhere. At least it makes for a soft landing as I lurch and tumble.

The residents of Gulmarg have long cast an eye to the heavens, seeking answers to their problems. Thus far, the gods for Hindus it might be Brahma the creator; for Muslims, Allah have supplied few solutions. They still hope, however, that salvation may yet descend from on high, via a more terrestrial incarnation: powder snow.

Travelling by Jeep along the 56km of road that connects Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, with Gulmarg, takes between two and three hours, depending on the flow of traffic and the mood of Indian soldiers manning checkpoints that dot the city and roads leading west towards Pakistan.

We pass through quaint villages, book-ended by vacant machinegun nests and rows of poplar trees. Groups of Kashmiris gather around steaming cauldrons of masala chai, peeking curiously from within their traditional ferins (ankle-grazing woollen ponchos) at our passing Jeep.

In summer, the surrounding fields glow green and gold, padded with crops of rice and mustard flower. Winter dumps snow and ice, churning the ground to a muddy slush and covering the countryside in an eerie patina reminiscent of the Somme battlefields.

The last 14km climb is punctuated by frequent stops. Drivers alight to arbitrate the passage of buses, Jeeps and trucks along the single-lane road. Exchanging their glowing kangris earthenware pots with burning charcoal encased in wicker baskets for cigarettes, they gesticulate and shout over one another for 10 minutes before deciding the only solution is to reverse the cavalcade 100m back down the road.

We are travelling on Indian time but the good humour of these hardy mountain dwellers sends a thaw through the cold traffic. I ask my escort from the Srinagar tourist office if he likes to ski.

"I used to," Sikander Malik chuckles ruefully. "Before I got shot."

As I ruminate on the appropriateness of asking Malik if he was shot while on skis, we plough over the lip of a hill and headlong into the set of a Brothers Grimm fairytale. We pull up in front of a gingerbread lodge that looks on to undulating crests of white lining the basin around which Gulmarg is constructed.

Intricately carved wooden tourist hotels and wind-hollowed huts perch on either side of the bowl, buttressed by towering conifers offering sanctuary to capricious bandar (monkeys) rattling snow from the branches.

Hibernating black bears, I am told, are slumbering in caves beneath the white blanket, embroidered with the tracks of foxes, deer and snow leopards. A sweep of the hand across the delicate mantle of snow, piled up to 3m, reveals a dry, feather-light consistency.

Gulum Mohmad Dar, Gulmarg's tourism manager, tells me: "It is only January. In February we have twice as much."

An army truck swings around a bend offering passers-by a ride back to their lodge, while further on, armed sentries loll about. Occasional bursts of gunfire bounce across the basin as military exercises are performed somewhere out of sight, curious perversions in this otherwise pristine wilderness.

Seemingly unmoved by the poorly camouflaged military presence, skiers and boarders crunch past, jubilant after their final runs of the day.

Glancing at their flushed faces, I wonder if they perceive any imminent danger from militants or errant soldiers as they plunge down into the surrounding valleys. I suspect that I would be laughed off the mountain at the suggestion.

"There are army blokes everywhere, but they don't seem to do a lot," says Lachlan Lynch, a snowboarder from Sydney who has returned for his second season.

Sultan Yusuf Shah named Gulmarg "meadow of flowers" in the 16th century, starting a summer migration to escape the stifling heat of the Haryana and Punjab plains below. This was a ritual that was embraced in the 19th century by British Raj officials, who brought with them the fashionable pursuits of golf and skiing.

Gulmarg has long been a favourite with honeymooning Indians. In summer, they flock to ride horses, hike mountain trails and play 18 holes on the world's highest natural golf course. In winter, there are sleigh rides and ice-skating at night beneath a canopy of stars. But this winter, international skiers and boarders have been trickling into Gulmarg, inspired by news of the gondola's opening and rumours of dry powder that never ices over and mountain terrain as spectacular and expansive as the Back Bowls of Vail.

"My group has skied off peaks in Russia, Norway, Lebanon and Sicily," says John Faulkner, an Australian guide based in Verbier, France, who is accompanying 17 skiers from Britain, France and Italy. "And they're coming off the mountain here saying they've had possibly the best runs of their life."

Rarely have foreigners been the target of terrorist activities in Kashmir with one grisly exception. In 1995, six trekkers were snatched from a trail by guerillas. One American man was fortunate to escape his captors and a brutal death; the remains of his Norwegian companion were later found. He had been decapitated. The bodies of the other four have never been discovered.

Speak to any of the professionals who gather at the altar of Mount Apharwat and you soon learn that the most immediate threat to skiers comes not from war or terrorism but from avalanches. Several of them have witnessed enormous falls of ice and snow roaring down the mountain, some with slide paths of up to 4km.

For the past two years, Ido Neiger, an Israeli-Canadian, has spearheaded Mission Gulmarg, a project assisting locals in promoting the skiing potential of the region. He returned this season, his fourth, with 850kg of second-hand equipment (donated by the Whistler Mountain Authority) and 16 international volunteers, including a couple from Mount Hotham in Victoria who are spending the season training the Gulmarg mountain rescue team.

When Neiger arrived for the first time six years ago with a friend from Scotland, the pair were the only tourists on the mountain. They ended up staying the season.

"The attendants from the gondola used to come to our room to wake us, to see if we wanted to go up that day ... otherwise they could go home," he recalls.

Mohmad Yaseen Khan has been waiting a long time for a season like this. With his childhood friend Abdul Hamid Dar, he opened the Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop in 1989, two months before the conflict turned serious and 500,000 Indian troops were deployed along the border, scattering their few brave skiing customers.

Sixteen years later, it seems the pair's entrepreneurial streak may finally be rewarded. "It has been my dream to see more foreigners here," Yaseen says. In his workshop, he seals the slashed underbelly of a snowboard using an electric iron. "Gulmarg is a piece of heaven. We don't have fighting, we don't have terrorists. You can go wherever you want, night and day."

As the sun slips behind Apharwat and into Pakistan and apres-ski activities begin at the Highland Park Hotel, it's obvious this is a message the Kashmir tourism authorities are carefully cultivating, hopeful the heavens will deliver equal bounties of snow and peace.

  Katie Hamann was a guest of Jammu and Kashmir Tourism and the Hilltops Lodge, Gulmarg.