Gulmarg means “Meadow of Flowers.” This is a charmingly poetic name that fails to mention several other notable features of the place: military checkpoints, photographers hiding behind every pine tree, and the urgent need for electrolytes.
We started from Srinagar with what has become our standard India travel checklist:
✓ Change currency
✓ Get local SIM cards
✓ Buy electrolytes
Two days in India is apparently all it takes for the body to decide that water alone is no longer sufficient and that it now requires a chemistry experiment.
The drive to Gulmarg took about two hours and wound steadily upward into the Himalayas. By the time we reached the foothills, we were only about 25 kilometers from Pakistan. The military presence was impossible to miss. Armed personnel were everywhere, and entering the area felt less like arriving at a hill station and more like checking into the world’s most scenic military base.
On the way, we stopped at Drung Waterfalls, where my husband made a fateful decision.
“Let’s get some photos.”
The photographer accepted this challenge with the enthusiasm of a man who had been waiting his entire life for cooperative tourists. For the next twenty minutes, we posed facing left, facing right, looking at the waterfall, looking away from it, pretending not to notice it, and gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance as though contemplating the mysteries of existence. At one point, I found myself obediently following instructions, and I remembered a time when I got paid for posing, not the other way around. After surviving the photoshoot, we rewarded ourselves with a cup of Kashmiri tea and continued to Gulmarg. Later that afternoon, refreshed and oxygen-deprived in equal measure, we set out to explore the town. Most importantly, we finally acquired an English-speaking guide. He introduced himself as something that sounded vaguely like “Sir.” Since I never quite caught the first part, I simply called him Sir for the rest of the day.
Sir turned out to be excellent. He showed us sweeping meadows framed by mountains that looked as though they had been painted by someone who found reality insufficiently dramatic.
The scenery was spectacular. The itinerary, however, was uniquely ours. Most visitors to Gulmarg spend their day admiring nature. We spent ours visiting a military museum, a Shiva temple, a pharmacy for more electrolytes, and a supermarket to purchase club soda and mangoes. In hindsight, it was less of a sightseeing tour and more of a supply-chain operation.
The highlight of the day was the famous Gulmarg Gondola, one of the highest cable cars in the world. As we ascended, the mountains grew larger, the air grew thinner, and our sense of judgment steadily disappeared.
With our heads literally in the clouds, we encountered another photographer. Under normal atmospheric conditions, we would have politely declined. Instead, we handed over all decision-making authority and agreed to star in a professionally edited reel complete with dramatic music, cinematic transitions, and enough slow-motion footage to suggest we were either celebrities or migrating eagles. The photographer directed us to walk, turn, smile, look mysterious, look romantic, and stare into the distance as though we had just signed a major peace treaty. We complied with every instruction. The rarefied air must have affected our brains. There is no other explanation.
By evening, we returned to our hotel carrying mangoes, club soda, and a video reel in which we appeared considerably more glamorous than at any point in our actual lives.
By the end of the day, the only things thinner than the mountain air were our powers of judgment.
The mountains were magnificent, the meadows enchanting, and the air wonderfully crisp. Whether any of that fully justifies the existence of a slow-motion reel featuring us striding purposefully through the clouds to dramatic music remains a question for future historians.
Fortunately, the views were spectacular, the tea was excellent, and any questionable decisions had already been professionally edited into what appears to be a luxury travel advertisement.
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