India blog - Day 1
It’s 7:30am and I’m waiting around for my friend James to show up at my house in Breckenridge, CO. He’s running late of course, and we have an 11:30am flight out of Denver. We’re on our way to India for a feature story with Transworld Snowboarding Magazine. The crew we’re running with is James Frederick, Chad Otterstrom, Ryan Thompson, and myself. Those are the riders, and the rest of the people are from Transworld. Jen Sherowski is writing the story, Eric Bergeri is the photographer, and Joe Carlino is filming for the TWS movie.
9:45 — James and I get to DIA with plenty of time to kill before our flight. We checked our bags and headed off to our gate. After grabbing a light breakfast we ran in to Chad who had been at the airport for an hour already. He may have been the most excited about this trip, though it was I who put the whole thing together. Anyway, the three of us chilled out until it was time for boarding. Our flight pattern was a little crazy considering how far we were traveling. From Denver we headed to Minneapolis for a quick 40-minute layover. From Minneapolis we stopped in Amsterdam for a mellow six-hour layover before the flight to Delhi.
Chad, James, and I decided it would be a great idea to take a little side trip to downtown Amsterdam while we waited for our next excursion to our final destination. We almost got lost on the train, completely missing our stop and not transferring when we were supposed to. Luckily there was a guy on the train nice enough to let us know we weren’t on the right train. Then we switched trains and landed in the city center. Game on…. or so we thought. Apparently things even in Amsterdam close at a certain time. Which was exactly when we got there. We did find one coffee shop open for our biz. James and I got coffees, and Chad got a coffee with a huge doobie to smoke with it. After our little break and Chad’s joint session, we decided it was probably a good idea to make our way back to the airport for the next leg of our long trip. We got back to the Amsterdam airport without any problems with trains or anything at all. We met up with Jen and Joe from TWS and checked in and waited for the flight to board.
The last leg of the journey went smooth enough and we were finally in INDIA! Let me tell you, there’s nothing as exciting as being in a totally new place, not having any idea what to expect! The airport in Delhi was crazy; people everywhere, pretty much just a terminal for planes and baggage claim. Which SUCKS by the way. KLM thought it would be a great idea to just not put one of my bags on the flight! SWEET! Don’t ever fly KLM, they are the worst airline EVER! So I’m in Delhi with everyone, who all got all of their luggage, and I’m missing one bag. Did I mention that we only had 10 hours before our next flight to the actual final destination of Srinagar, Kashmir. Kashmir is the northwestern portion of India where Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China all border the region. This specific area is currently at war over the territory. This war has been the longest outstanding land dispute in the entire world. So needless to say this area is extremely SKETCHY!
The drive from the Srinagar airport to Gulmarg was not that far distance, but took a very long time due to a massive winter storm. We had to get out and push several times heading up the mountain, because the drivers we had didn’t believe in putting their chains on. So that was a great experience, stopping and pushing every 20 minutes or so. After a couple of hours of pushing and running to get back in the car, we finally made it to the hotel. Hotel Heevan Resort is where we’re staying and it, seems to be under construction, but nobody’s working on anything. James and I paired up as roomies, and our room is pretty awesome. Two big beds, decent bathroom, and a working TV… Which only shows Indian channels. Pretty sweet if you ask me.