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Other winter seasons:
Gulmarg '11/12
Gulmarg '10/11
Gulmarg '09/10
Gulmarg '08/09
Gulmarg '07/08

Go: Snow Conditions at Gulmarg
Go: Backcountry Advisory at Gulmarg

Photo credit: MHIP

KASHMIR TO KERALA

I begin the journey from Kashmir, the northernmost state in India, to Kerala, its most southerly state. The trip starts at SXR where (after the tightest airport security one has ever witnessed) I meet up with John, winner of the 1st Global Snowboard Marathon held at Gulmarg. Here he displays the trophy clinched by mostly straightlining Affarwat top-to-bottom to earn the fastest time. A little trophy goes a long way; John ended up as an honorary guest in the First Class lounge at SXR.
Photo credit: MHIP


Snowboarding was the sole reason I had come to India; I had no travel plans beyond Gulmarg in Kashmir when I bought flight tickets and set out from home. However, on my latest visit to Srinagar there was news that my dogged pursuit of compensation from Jet Airlines (for my missing baggage) had produced an additional bonus - a R/T ticket anywhere in the country from DEL. I chose Kerala, it was about as far as one could go. (Here I am, trying to see what a little trophy can do for me - with luck (lots) it will enhance my charms).
Photo credit: John Carolin

DOUBLE TROUBLE IN DELHI

Stuck again! Flights leaving DEL recommence as the fog abates, but another day of heavy snowfall in Kashmir prevents all flights into SXR, so again I chase and cajole airline staff for vital airport currency - the expense voucher.

The first cancellation leads me to The Ashok Hotel in Chanakyapuri, the diplomatic enclave of New Delhi. Surrounded by parks and embassies, there is not too much to see on my walks but long sidewalks, tall walls, and forbidding gates.


I had been content enough to be put up at the Ashok, and assumed to there I would return, but I'm sent to the Radisson Hotel for my second night in Delhi. It's an excellent business-class hotel popular with high-end tour operators. I won’t be seeing my new friends here – this hotel is for First Class passenger vouchers, and mine is the only board bag in the hotel luggage locker. The location near the the airport is uninspiring but the hotel was an excellent and lucky choice. A first-class restaurant and exceptional rooms made a stay here easy. I later learn the rates start at USD $350 per night!
Photo credit(s): MHIP

PREMIERE CLASS TO DELHI

A delay right out of the gate leaving Florida had me worried that the Jet Airways flight to DEL would leave without me, but similar problems at JFK allowed me the time to make that flight with a little time to spare. So I rested in the the comfort of the First Class lounge, and belted down my quota of complimentary drinks. The good folks at Jet Airways were waiting for me from the point of check-in onwards. At each and every encounter with the staff I was greeted by name and made welcome. My luggage was checked "Priority" and were the very first to come out the chutes at baggage claim. When Jet Airways rectifies an error they do it with style. Impressive.

The Boeing 777-300ER is an excellent aircraft; capable of cruising 1030 kmph it is the fastest plane in the Jet Airways fleet. The plane seats 274 persons in Economy Class, and 30 in Premiere Class, where I was among six happily seated. First Class consists of eight Ultra Cabins, similar to those on a train, but these were wholly unoccupied.

Seating in Premiere Class is banquette-style, with a fully reclining seat, kick-out ottoman, and a massage mechanism in the seat back. Of course, this comes with excellent, personal service and a few choices - drink the fine red wines, or opt for the Dom Perignon.
Photo credit: MHIP

JET AIRWAYS DELIVERS GOLD

Back in the USA, I clicked off the 40 days of chalai kalan (the coldest part of winter in India) in south Florida pursuing a single goal: a return to Kashmir with complimentary tickets from Jet Airways.

The final day of January marks the end of chalai kalan; it also stood as my deadline date for obtaining the return tickets from the airline. As the month passed in Florida, I made polite phone calls, wrote detailed emails, all the while missing freezing weather and water shortages in Gulmarg.

Finally, on the 29th January, within days of the deadline, I struck gold: The customer service division of Jet Airways, in a gesture of goodwill, offered an open-jawed, round-trip ticket from JFK-SXR, with an upgrade to First Class (subject to availability). The timing was excellent - I had no alternate plan, and had rented out my home in Vermont for the entire ski season.

My experience with First Class was mainly limited to barging their check-in line at terminals, and poaching drinks in their lounges. There was one time, though, when I flew First Class after being bumped from a flight, and it truly is different. Not just more comfortable, and with better service, but also because all the buttons and controls are in different locations than in coach. You know you're an amateur when you can't figure out how to turn on the TV or recline your seat. (I copied everything the businessman next to me did).

So, I'm off to India Monday, and if there is anything notable about First Class travel I will tell you all about it, but right now I just hope I make the flight.

Special thanks to Mr. Deepak O., Mr. Arun V., & Ms. Richa T. at Jet Airways, and Ms. Joyce F. at Expedia for their assistance.
Photo credit: MHIP

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

I had been infected, neglected, spat out, sent home - the initial trip to India was a total disaster. On the outbound flight major illness gripped me and my snowboard gear disappeared. I arrived in Srinagar without my health or my bags and had nothing to do but wait and endure. After a long week I raised the white flag, hopped a plane and headed home.

I had bounced from one strange place to another: south Florida during Christmas, or as they say there - the "holiday time". Sun-burnt Santas, plastic trees, and religious dogmatics arguing over public displays. My mind was made up on the fight home, but here it was cemented - my New Year resolution was to return to Srinagar & Gulmarg ASAP, and finish the trip I had started.

The challenge was how to do it without spending more money. Seeking a complimentary ticket from the airline as compensation was considered a long-shot, but I did it anyway, and so initiated a slow-motion wrestling match with Jet Airlines. I set a deadline for the end of January: Have an answer by then, or move along.
Photo credit: MHIP

FEDEX

The mishandled bag is delivered to me - 17 days later!

Look at all those effing tags - I'm sure my luggage collected more frequent flyer miles than I did on their way around the globe.






Photo credit(s): MHIP

MORE FUN WITH JET AIRWAYS

On the 25th December Jet Airways informs me the bag is located in DEL (Delhi) and will be shipped by air and ground for delivery on the 27th. On the 26th Jet Airways informs me the bag did not ship by air from DEL (no reason given). There will be a delay. The good news is I win 40 rupees betting against the bag being delivered as promised.
Photo credit: MHIP

JFK

An otherwise overly stressful, impossibly boring layover in Brussels is magnified when (post-boarding) the de-icing crew clips the right wing flap. It causes a two-hour delay on the tarmac. Worried passengers peer out the tiny windows at inspectors who take photographs of the damage and point fingers up into the falling snow. Major delay, no repair, we fly anyway.

The rest of the flight passes without incident, but when I arrive at JFK I get a huge kick in the nuts: the "mishandled" luggage is no longer in New York. It has been sent to the luggage office in DEL during the previous 24 hours. I am too tired to be angry or surprised. In fact, nothing could surprise me at this point concerning Jet Airways. It has been one long clusterf*ck since I left JFK, ten days earlier.

Apparently, when I visited the lost luggage office in DEL, I triggered some kind of karmic tripwire. Despite requesting that my luggage remain in JFK, it is sent to India, and no one is there to receive it.
Photo credit: MHIP

DELHI (DEL)

I arrive at DEL on a straight-shot from SXR, gather my one bag, re-check the stamped claim forms, and set off for the lost luggage office. The line is short; I ponder what I'll do if this office has my snowboards - will I return to Srinagar, or go ahead with the booking to JFK?

Once more I describe the enormous (185cm) snowboard bag and list the contents lost on my outbound flight - Jet Airways FL 229 (JFK-BRU-DEL-SXR) 11 December 2007. Again the story how only one bag arrived with me at SXR 13 December, when the initial lost luggage claim was filed.

I hope that the bag will be found (if the bag were deemed stolen my loss would eclipse the standard compensation) but I'm not prepared for what I'm told: Instead of SXR, the missing bag was initially sent to SEA – Seattle, WA. It was discovered there and returned to Jet Airways on 13 December, where it remained the entire time I was at the Grand Hotel, resting in JFK, awaiting direction.

The bag is found but I'm torn - I want to blow a stack.
Photo credit: MHIP

SXR-DEL, PT. TWO

Departing SXR is an airport dance unlike any other: It begins as you show an onward ticket and join a long line of honking cars at the airport gate. (We skip this line, maybe because of Mr. Hassan). Next, in between the gate and the departure terminal, the taxi, the bags, the passengers and the driver are thoroughly screened. One-hundred yards further the taxi stops at the departure terminal where the entrance requires an additional screening and an onward ticket.

From there I proceed to the airline counter to check-in luggage and get a seat on the plane to Delhi (DEL). The agent finds a seat on an earlier SXR-DEL flight, and I take it. Despite that it is still too early to enter the departure lounge, so passengers must mill around in this forward lobby area. Eventually we mob up only to enter a bottleneck for screening into the departure lounge. My carry-on gets inspected well here, and immediately again thirty feet away, on the other side of the bottleneck.

All of this comes as no surprise - I had done it all 24 hours earlier and then fog cancelled the departing flight. I had also spent an hour or two in the SXR office of Mr. Vijay and his great staff, sorting out all of the official paperwork and stamps I would need to pursue my lost luggage claim in DEL. Marginal weather delayed this flight too, but it finally breaks and then (after each passenger identifies each checked bag) the luggage is loaded up, the passengers buckled in, and the plane is taxiing down the runway to Delhi.
Photo credit: MHIP

THE HOTEL GRAND MUMTAZ, SRINAGAR

As the taxi pulled away from the Grand Hotel & Restaurant, I believed I had not seen the last of Srinagar. It turned out I was right.

At 1130 I was handed a boarding pass for SXR to DEL from the good offices at Jet Airways. It was just the beginning: Check-out time is 1200 and the departure flight leaves at 1430. I still had to pay and tip the Grand, arrange a cab and skip to SXR, and go through the airport dance - getting processed, screened, stamped, and patted down - several times over.

We hadn't travelled twenty yards from the Grand when the cabbie was out the door and engaged in a shouting match with another driver who looked ready to slap his beard right off. I was mulling about some other way to the airport when the argument suddenly ended and we were rolling out. I stared at the cabbie and my gaze was returned by goggling saucers of magnified iris. Could glasses be that thick? He told me not to worry about anything - he had been driving a taxi for the past 55 years. (I hope he started at age 10).

We made record time to the airport. Some pedestrians in or near our path almost didn't survive. We went window-to-window with another vehicle, quickly narrowing the distance between us and a huge bull on the center line. It cooperated by staying put and we were past it and on.

There was no need to hurry - after the pat-downs, after the waiting, after five hours it was announced that all flights out of SXR were downgraded from "DELAYED" to "CANCELLED". We would all see one another at SXR again tomorrow, but for now it was back to Srinagar, to the Hotel Grand Mumtaz.
Photo credit: MHIP

SICKNESS IN SRINAGAR

Maybe I wasn't thinking right - I had been ill four straight days, and hadn't seen my snowboard gear in six days. It was clear no one at Jet Airways had any idea where my luggage was, and no one was going to be so rude as to say it was lost. I could be at the Grand for weeks (at my expense) waiting for a bag that wouldn't arrive. I began thinking about pulling the pin.

Sunday was a down day as the Jet Airways office was closed and I wouldn't be going there. My hope was the office manager would realize I had no job and could go to his office every day pursuing my luggage, and that this would motivate him extra. So instead of that errand, and at the urging of my friends at the Grand, I took a two stroke over to the private hospital to attend and diagnose the illness, but of course doctors take the day off on Sunday at this facility. I returned to the Grand.

Like most places the seventh day is a market day and in Srinagar the sidewalks from Zero Bridge to Poloview were teeming with merchants and browsers. It was fascinating, and a great opportunity for photographs, but I didn't take it - the flu had me gripped. And in my mind I was already packing; on the ride back up Residency Road I decided to find my bag or leave town during the next week.
Photo credit: MHIP

HAVING FUN WITH JET AIRWAYS

On arrival at Delhi International (DEL) the transfer to the domestic terminal requires one to pick up checked bags - doesn't matter if they are checked through onward, usually. I sat by the belt until every last bag was gone and all the passengers too. Neither of my two bags appeared. But I was not worried, as I was ignorant of the facts and was only sitting there as a precaution. After all, my bags were checked through to Srinagar (SXR); I didn't know I had to pick up my bags at that point.

After check in (of your bags) at the domestic terminal all checked bags are subsequently screened and laid out on the tarmac. Passengers have to then individually identify each bag or it will not be loaded on the domestic flight. This is exactly when trouble started, when I first learned that my snowboard bag, and all my snowboard equipment, was missing. My other checked bag was there, and after being ID'd it was loaded for the flight to SXR. (I actually forfeited my connecting flight and took the next flight three hours later on the suggestion that it would give the crew time to find the missing bag).

During this bonus layover I learned that not only was my bag missing, but that the bag I did have should not have made it to the domestic terminal in any case - transfers to the domestic terminal requires the pick up of checked bags - doesn't matter if they are checked through onward. Usually. But nonetheless one of my bags was sitting there, on the tarmac. This remains a mystery that no one can explain.

I arrived in SXR on the 13th December, and I have repeatedly (every business day in Srinagar) visited the offices of Jet Airlines to inquire about my luggage. Between the parties in that office, and the Jet Airlines officials at SXR, and the Jet Airlines officials at DEL, no one can determine the whereabouts of the bag containing all of the gear I need for Gulmarg.

Sh*t! F*ck! Repeat!
Photo credit: MHIP

ARRIVAL IN SRINAGAR

West Palm Beach - New York City (JFK): 3 hour flight, 6 hour layover.
New York City - Brussels (BRU): 7 hour flight, 3 hour layover.
Brussels - Delhi (DEL): 7 hour flight, 14 hour layover.
Delhi - Jammu - Srinagar (SXR): 2 hour flight.

Arrive in Srinagar to discover Jet Airlines has lost my snowboard bag - 3 boards, 2 prs. boots, 2 pairs binding, snowshoes, poles, avy kit, socks - all gone for now. Keeping fingers crossed.

Heavy snow closed only road into Srinagar days ago stranding 1100 trucks on pass, which opened today for one-way traffic north. 4 feet of snowfall reported at summit of Mt. Affarwat, 1 foot at bottom station of gondola.

Heavy fog closes Delhi airport today halting all flights, so even if bag is located it will be a while before delivery. Turns out my flight to SXR was last one out.

Dinner last night a smallish cockroach crawled out from under my veg cutlet halfway through. End of meal.

Woke up today with a bronchial tic to a cacophony of traffic below caused as 1100 trucks merge with daytime commuters. Insane! But it is sunny, so I'm off for a walk. By the way I have not seen one other foreign tourist.
Photo credit: MHIP

GETTING TO GULMARG

Many countries require a visa in order to visit and India is no exception. The Embassy of India sends this business to Travisa Visa Outsourcing, an outstandingly quick service that turned my passport and visa around in a week flat. A 10-year, multiple-entry visa costs about USD$150 compared to a 6-month, multiple-entry visa for about USD$75, so I opted for the longer visa.

With visa in hand it was time to spend real money and commit to the voyage by purchasing airline tickets. Browsing ticket brokers like Cheap Tickets and Travelocity gave me a rough idea of prices but eventually Expedia was the service selling me the tickets for about USD$2000 R/T on Jet Airways from JFK to SXR through BRU. All I know about this airline is that it is not an American carrier and for that, sadly, I feel safer.

This may be the best explanation of "How To Get to Gulmarg" from Srinagar. Thanks to Gulmarg.org.

It costs 40 rupees to buy a dollar, so this 100INR bank note represents USD$2.50 (at time of posting).
Photo credit: MHIP