Goodness gracious ski

Arctic conditions (indoors), avalanche danger, no pistes and the total absence of après as we know it didn’t stop James Wallman getting high in the Indian Himalayas.

The Hotel Royal Park in India’s premier ski resort, Gulmarg, at the southern edge of the Himalayas, did indeed have central heating. But for the whole of the five days I was there, as snow fell and winds howled outside, they didn’t switch it on once. No one would tell me why. They just stood there, wearing woolly hats and wrapped up in rugs indoors, and smiled awkwardly. By way of compensation, the hotel’s one gas heater was continually wheeled about in my wake, from reception to room to dining room. But it was still see-your-breath cold indoors. To dinner I wore full ski kit including hat and one glove – on the non-fork-holding hand – and bedtime demanded an extra layer.

None of the other guests seemed to mind. Like the staff, they wandered about in rugs and woolly hats. Amid the elaborate Kashmiri carpets, wood carvings and steaming tureens of fantastic curries, this Himalayan Fawlty Towers looked like a swanky refugee camp.

A second Indian gift was the ‘wonderful mountain view from your room, Mr James,’ which the manager promised me, beaming from beneath his woolly hat. He wasn’t wrong, exactly. Outside, all around were snow-covered Himalayan peaks. But between them and my view was the local brand of double-glazing, a murky sheet of polythene. Which I set fire to one night. Not out of frustration with the lack of a view, of course, nor even to keep warm. I’d just borrowed the hotel’s only working heat source to dry out my very sodden ski kit, forgetting that gas heaters and plastic sheeting are an even worse combination than my feet and wet ski socks in the morning.

Along with the central heating, avalanche transceivers (those little mobile devices that help rescuers find you when you’re trapped under ten tonnes of snow) were also guaranteed. ‘Yes, there will be transceivers. No need to worry, Mr James,’ Mohammad had told me, in the sort of reassuring tone a farmer uses when coaxing a lamb to the slaughterhouse. And so, on my first lift ride with my ski guide – a padded-out, middle-aged Borat-a-like who wished to be known only as Mr Dar – I looked down over a 350m avalanche scar and asked about the transceivers. Mr Dar twitched his bushy black  ‘tache and smiled at me. Clearly, there were none. Still, at least I had the locals’ goodwill on my side: ‘I hope that while you’re here you won’t face any turmoil,’ the local tourism officer Rashid had said to me reassuringly. ‘No bombing, no hand grenade or any attack.’

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