As ski resorts go, Kashmir’s Gulmarg must rank as the most militarised on earth. The mountain road is peppered with security checkpoints and a High Altitude Warfare School lies nearby. Troops squeeze into a cable car with rifles between their legs. On the slopes, some tourists openly worry if mines are buried under the snow.
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/ 22 February 2007
Laurie Bowles, a dreadlocked 24-year-old Englishman, clipped his boots to his snowboard and lunged from the roof of the world into a gaping narrow gully of ice, sugar and powder. His 2 000m vertical descent to Gulmarg, a village in revolt-hit India-administered Kashmir, is what many ski devotees rank as among the best skiing on the planet. Just ignore the travel warnings.