The following spot in our itinerary was Gulmarg, located
in a western direction from Srinagar and takes approximately 2 hours to reach.
Now again we drove across certain locales where we could see the open hostility
of the denizens and defiance to the Indian army and Indian administration-
spray paintings, slogans like "India Go Back", "Azadi",
"We Want Freedom" and so much more along these lines. We tried
scrutinizing why there is such unrest amongst the people here, why are they
hell bent in destroying such a beautiful place- a place which God indeed has
moulded with all the time in his hands. Anyway after driving on Srinagar
Baramulla road for nearly 1 hour we reached the bifurcation where going left
would take us to Gulmarg while the right goes to Baramulla (another disturbed
region which came into limelight again a few months back when the army of our
respected neighboring country Pakistan attacked the villagers at Uri and killed
many). We continued on the Srinagar Gulmarg road for another 1 hour approx. and
finally reached the foothills of Gulmarg- a place named Tangmarg where our
Kashmiri guide Ghulam made a deal with one his known people (who owns horses)
to give all of us a ride to the end of the cable car stoppage and back to the
base. We were unfortunate enough to miss the cable car ride as a few weeks earlier there had been an ill-fated mishap where a whole
family from Delhi lost their lives when their cable car crashed into the deep
valleys in Gulmarg. Hence the cable car services had been stopped.
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| On Srinagar Gulmarg Road |
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| Gulmarg from Tangmarg |
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| On the way to Gulmarg |
We reached Gulmarg by our Innova but during winter, travelers need to climb up on horses only as the road from Tangmarg till Gulmarg is heavily covered with snow. There, mules (NOT horses) were waiting for us to take us to the top point where the cable car too goes. |
