riot

whoops, what happen now?

pajje 2009 Gulmarg, India , , , , , 0 Comment

What a day! Im not sure where or how to start. Anyway, we woke up to blue sky and around 0 degrees. A little bit to warm but the snow was still cold, light and fluffy and our guide Rajad as we used yesterday gave us another tour through the forest, this time towards Barbareshi. This was even better than yesterday with long nice runs together with natural obstacles which made it look like a fun park, but all natural, really awesome!

Somewhere around lunch we had our first contact with the monkeys, we found a family of snow monkeys sitting in a tree, not really interested in us. After lunch which was another day with chicken soup which may be the best chicken soup I ever had but yikes, I’m starting to get tired of it now we decided to different ways. Max and our newly found friend William headed towards Tannmarg while me, Martin and Mats headed out to find some new lines. Took some pictures of some really bad as birds (eagles I guess) and tried to check how deep the snow is. The last one failed though since our probes are only 265cm long and the snow is much deeper than that.

After random walked around we met two soldiers which we started to talk with and it all ends up with we get invited to the regiment. A guided tour which ends with the classic cup of tea together with the man who invited us and once inside I notice the three golden stars on his collar, that he has his own butler and yea…I guess he was a hot shot. We never got to shoot any AK but still this is odd, at least.

Back home at the hotel neither Max or Williams was back from their run but since they were two and had a guide we never got worried until our hotel manager came up to our room and told us that there was a riot in Tennmarg. Our friends had in some sort of weird way escaped from the mob and hided back at their guides place. We were of course glad that they were safe and laughed about it but it was not until they got back home we heard the full story.

Some stupid tourist had put a sticker on his snowboard with a quote from the koran. Someone saw this and took a picture of it with his cell phone and it started to get spread around the area, of course it ended up with some fanatics who decided that it a sticker on a snowboard is the same as stamping on the koran. Of course that means that they should kill all the tourists. I cant really say that I understand their logic or anything but a riot is a riot and the police has now arrested and expelled the guy with the sticker, more for his own security but I think its also a way to calm down the people. For our security the military has given us the recommendation to not leave our hotel.

We are living in a weird world but even if I’m right now is only a few clicks from a full scale riot and have somewhere around 1500 hardcore soldiers everything feels good and I feel both safe and secure.

 

“If you need anything in Kashmir you talk to me, except girls”
-Hotell manager, Zagheer Continental

Riot…again

pajje 2009 Gulmarg, India , , , , , 0 Comment

With big expectations after the heavy snowfall during the night I strapped my snowboard and dropped in but what a…
The sun is shining and we are pretty long south so its really warm, even if it snowed the whole night the snow becomes wet and heavy. The good part with this is that the different layers melt together but the boring part beside that its really heavy to ride in is that the snow gets so heavy that the risk for block avalanches rises big time. To ski on the sun side during the afternoon is out of the question and I actually had a experience earlier today which I never had before while snowboarding;
On my way to turn down into a tiny canyon I had to do a sharp turn and then straight line through the canyon, this sharp turn throw up alot of snow and that snow chased me down the canyon and normally thats not a problem. However this time it was like someone added a couple of kg cement on my board and it just went to heavy to turn around, however then we snow stopped I stopped and it was digging hard time to be able to get free so i could continue to ride. I am really glad it happen while I was riding in the forest where the snow kind a binds to the tree and it was no real danger for me, imaging this in the high zone where you get much bigger block of snow, you are screwed!

We also tried the community service today, in classic indian style we took the bus and since the bus was full we were referred to sit on the roof. We were sitting on the roof, people were hanging on the side of the bus and it was chaotic and just like in the movies. It was crazy but at the same time really fun to say that we done it and we can check it from my bucket list.

In Srinigar it was another riot today. We starts to get used to burning cars, stone throwing people and really didn’t care much but at least it wasn’t a tourist who started it this time. Instead it was two youngsters who were members in the kashmir independence guerrilla who open fired towards soldiers. They returned fire of course and it ended with two dead 17 year old guerrilla members and a full scale riot about police brutality.

 

“It doesn’t matter what you do here, everything is an adventure”
-Martin  on the bus