Pass to the high life!
Welcome
back friends! So you’re a keen powder hound; looking to do a ‘cheap’ season.
You’ve got your accommodation dialled. You are well fed and getting the
hook-ups for this and that. You’ll be going mental though because I
haven’t covered the two most important things; how to shred on the cheap and
what the hell to do at night! Well let’s go with the day time activity first.
Seeing why it’s actually why we are all going to go there! The question is
season pass or no season pass? In Gulamarg you have two daily choices, buy a
day pass or pay per ride. Now, I’ve rarely bought a day pass as it forces you
to shred more laps than, perhaps, your body would like. Also, one run can
sometimes take in excess of an hour. Realistically, not many people manage 5
big laps in a day, by ‘big lap’ I mean top of Mt Apherwat down to the first
gondy station, which is approximately 1600m of vert! The problem with buying
tickets is the whole farce that you must go through to get your ride to the top
of ‘Paradise on Earth’
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| The reason for going to Gulmarg...G4 |
The
ticketing system in Gulmarg is ridiculous to the nth degree! My first season
you bought paper tickets by joining a melee style queue, which grew to fervour
on powder days. With backdoor selling to Kashmiri ‘guides’ and no real interest
by some of the staff, to satisfy the salivating western powder junkies, who are
champing at the bit to get their fix, passion would boil over and the argy-bargee
could get a little too heated. See the folly of the whole process is they
didn’t pre-sell tickets or even sell the tickets next to the Gondola. This
meant dual queues and lots of pushing and shoving. Yes I’ve lost my temper and
let the white beast take control of me. But when you get up at 7am, in the
freezing cold, wait over 4 hours, which can happen, to get one of the first
rides of the day, only to have some ‘local’ cut line with his group, claiming
as this is his birth place, it allows him the right to do so, I’m going to lose
it. I’m 6’4”, Scottish and usually very well-mannered but my first season
definitely saw a rage boil over, on occasion!
In an
effort to streamline and modernise this process at the end of that season they
introduced a new printed system. Let us put dodgy electricity, with a person
who has a basic understanding of computers; together with a slow printer and
the need to take a name for every ticket, did it work? Nope! Luckily it was
only trialled for a couple of weeks and then the season was done. Role on
season two; thankfully the modernisation of the ticketing wasn’t up and running
so it was back to the old paper system. This suited me fine as I was still
sceptical of the season pass value for money aspect. About half way through the
boarding pass system came back into effect. This allowed me days of amusement
as I gave a variety of differing names and titles to myself and friends. But
still the queues were long and the temperatures rose. I made a promise at the
end of that season to just suck it up and get a season pass the next year,
regardless of the risk you take shelling out a fair whack of cash.
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| and access to this^^ click to enlarge |
Not that
having a season pass gives you any special privilege. If the gondy breaks,
you’re screwed! If the weather is brutal and the gondy shuts, you’re losing
money and boot packing the alternate lines same as everyone else. If 30 people
show up before you in the line then you ain’t got any line jumping privilege.
Then there’s the cost; it’s about 25000 rupees to get one. The whole idea of
this season is to make it as cheap as possible. I know people that swear by the
single tickets and have been going there longer than me. The questions are; how
your patience is and will you be able to shred enough days to make it worth
your while? I can answer both those questions now. Guess you’ll just have to
come out and figure it out for yourself!
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| A good view whilst you wait for the Gondola to open click to enlarge |
