My trip in India
Breakfast here at the Hotel Heevan Resort starts at 7:30. So most of us are up and moving at that time… Thanks to a little thing called jet lag! Breakfast in Kashmir usually consists of plain corn flakes, some oatmeal type goop, and lots and lots of toast. My bag still hasn’t shown up at all so I had to borrow a bunch of clothes and accessories from the rest of the posse.We all got ready to roll as we thought we might have a very nice day of partly cloudy weather. But as we all waited to take the second part of the gondola to the top, everything milked over and the sun was gone by the time we got to the top.
This was by far the worst vertigo I’ve ever experienced! All 7 of us had to ride together so we didn’t get lost on the way down. We also had a guide named Dave Watson, who works for Ski Himalaya, which is the company we booked the trip through. So it was super cool to have a guide who knows the area very well, help us out down the mountain. I’m sure we would have had major problems if it weren’t for him. So we made our way down the mountain slowly and stopped for a game plan pow wow at the mid station. The chi tea here is pretty much the best on the planet! These Kasmiri folk know how to brew that tea right!
By the time we left the restaurant the snow was coming down harder than I’ve ever seen. Trying to motivate to get some shots we proceeded down the lower portion of the mountain in search of a jump spot. Dave, our guide again hooked us up with a great sport for some mellow jump action. We built one jump, which was pretty small, but fun for being on a main run of Gulmarg. Then James found another jump already built through some trees off the side of the run, which was really fun to hit. All four of us shred pros hit it a bunch and landed some all right tricks. Now the snow is dumping even harder than when I thought it was snowing the hardest it could. It was pretty much falling an inch per minute. Since it was snowing so hard, which isn’t that great for photos, we decided to pack it in for the day.
We got back to the hotel around 4:00pm and all crashed hard. Dinner starts at 7 so we all tried to fight taking a nap before then, but pretty much all failed big time. I only fell asleep for a little while, and managed to get up around 7 for dinner. Dinners here at the Heevan are buffet style and pretty delicious. No butter chicken, or tikka masala yet, but hopefully one of the next nights.
I’m not exactly sure what was served, because we didn’t have any menus. The food was just labeled as veggie or meat, with plain rice and naan. Naan is the Indian flat bread, which is AWESOME! Dinner was great and after everyone hit their beds hard. We all fell asleep at about eight o’clock and slept very well that first night in Gulmarg.