The night we arrived in Gulmarg, the cottage was already warm when we walked in. The fireplace had been lit thirty minutes before we got there. The host had left a flask of kahwa on the small wooden table by the window, and two clay mugs, and a plate with three pieces of girda (the local Kashmiri bread, soft and slightly sweet) covered with a cloth napkin. Karthik and I had been on a flight, a long taxi, and a snowy uphill drive for the better part of seven hours, and the smell that hit us at the door was woodsmoke and cardamom and that particular thin Kashmiri tea steam that I cannot describe properly to anybody who has not had it.
We had come for snow. We had come for the kind of trip where you spend long evenings indoors and the world outside is white and silent and there is nothing to do except sit close to a person you have chosen and watch a fire crackle. As a honeymoon coordinator I have helped many couples plan Gulmarg in winter, and I will tell you that nine out of ten of them list the cottage evenings as their favourite part of the trip, not the gondola or the skiing.
We went in the second week of January last year. Snowfall is most consistent late January to mid-February but the second week can be perfect timing because the resorts are less crowded than the peak Republic Day weekend. We had snow on two of our four mornings. Knee-deep in the village by day three. The gondola operating only on the better days.
Booking-wise, Gulmarg has two kinds of stays. The bigger hotels in Gulmarg village itself, which are walking distance to the gondola, have warmer rooms with central heating, and more reliable hot water. Eight to eighteen thousand a night. They are practical. They are not romantic. The other option is the boutique cottages and chalets in the surrounding villages, mainly Drung and Tangmarg, which give you privacy, in-room fireplaces, and a slightly inconvenient morning ride to the gondola. Six to fifteen thousand a night. For honeymoon mode, always the chalets.
Ours was a three-cottage property near Drung. A small drawing room, a bedroom, a tiny attached kitchenette where the staff would bring kahwa at any hour we asked, and a bathroom with a working geyser and a small radiator. The wood-burning fireplace was the centre of the room. There was a deep window seat covered in a hand-embroidered crewel-work cushion looking out onto a snow-covered pine forest. Eleven thousand a night with all meals. I have stayed in places much more expensive that did not give me the feeling that this small one did.
The first afternoon we did not plan anything. We landed in Srinagar at noon, drove two hours up, reached at three. The cottage was already warm. We had soup and bread by the fireplace, watched the snow start at four, played cards (he won), drank kahwa (I drank more of it), and went to bed at nine. The trip starts properly the next morning. The first half-day is for the cold to settle into your body and for you to stop being a city person.
The second day was the gondola. The Gulmarg Gondola is the longest cable car in India. Phase 1 takes you to Kongdoori at three thousand fifty metres. Phase 2 takes you from Kongdoori up to Apharwat Peak at three thousand nine hundred and fifty. Book online a day in advance. The counter queue is brutal. Phase 1 alone is around eight hundred per person return. Phase 2 is another thousand on top.
Phase 1 at Kongdoori is the destination most people stop at. Snow fields, distant Himalayan peaks coming and going in the cloud, a small dhaba serving instant Maggi and steaming tea. We spent two hours up there. Walked into a quiet stretch of snow, away from the photo-op crowds. Karthik built a small lopsided snowman. I lay flat on my back in the snow and made an angel because I had wanted to do this since I was a child and had never seen real snow until that morning. We took terrible photos of each other and then asked a kind elderly gentleman from Lucknow to take a slightly better one of the two of us together, which now sits framed on our bedroom dresser.
Phase 2 to Apharwat we did the next morning, on a clear day. The view from the peak was the closest thing to a postcard I have personally experienced. The Pir Panjal range stretching out, fold after fold, distant peaks named on a faded board at the gondola exit. On a cloudy day Phase 2 is a white-out and not worth the altitude. Wait for a clear morning. The gondola staff will tell you whether the upper station is operating that day.
The third day we did a ski lesson. Neither of us had skied before. We were not planning to become skiers. We just wanted the small joy of saying that we had done it, once, on our honeymoon trip. There are several ski schools at the gondola base. A group lesson runs around two thousand per person for two hours, and equipment rental is six hundred a day. The instructor was a young Kashmiri man called Mehraaj who had been on the Indian national ski team and had a patience that I think only comes from teaching ski to very nervous adults week after week.
By the end of two hours we could ski about fifty metres in a straight line without falling. I fell three times. Karthik fell twice. We did not break anything. We hugged each other at the end of the lesson with the awkwardness of two grown adults in ski boots, and Mehraaj took a picture of us looking like we had achieved something more significant than we actually had.
The fourth day was a slow morning, a last walk in the snow, fireplace time, late lunch, and the drive back to Srinagar for the evening flight.
The thing I want to write about most properly is one specific evening. The third evening, after the gondola and the ski lesson, the staff had built up a particularly good fire in the cottage. The snow outside had started around four in the afternoon. By six it was thick and slow, the big quiet flakes that you can see individually as they pass the window. I made Karthik put on his snow boots again. We took a small thermos of kahwa from the cottage kitchen. We walked maybe two hundred metres into the pine forest behind the property. We sat on a fallen log under a tree, the snow covering everything within thirty seconds of us sitting down. We drank kahwa. We did not say very much. He put his arm around me and we watched the snow fall in complete silence for what must have been forty minutes.
That was the best part of the trip. Not the gondola. Not the skiing. The forty minutes on the log.
Some practical things for the couples who are planning this and have not done a snow trip before. On layering, do not underestimate it. Layer one is a proper thermal innerwear set, top and bottom, merino wool if you can afford it and any thermal set if you cannot. Layer two is a fleece or a thick sweater. Layer three is a waterproof jacket, not a regular puffer, because the snow will land on you and a non-waterproof puffer will absorb the water and get heavy and cold. For pants, a waterproof outer layer over thermals. Jeans get wet, freeze, and stop being usable. For feet, two pairs of socks and snow boots, which you can rent in the Gulmarg market for two to four hundred rupees a day. For the head and hands, a beanie, waterproof gloves, and small pocket warmers (the little chemical packs you crack open, available everywhere for a hundred rupees) are surprisingly lovely.
The cottage will have heaters and blankets and the fireplace. The gondola top will be minus five to minus ten. Be ready.
Food, the village has small restaurants doing solid Kashmiri food. Rogan Josh, Yakhni, Goshtaba, Dum Aloo. Tabakh Maaz (fried mutton ribs) is a winter treat. For vegetarians, Dum Aloo, Nadru yakhni (lotus stem in a yoghurt curry), Haakh (the local collard greens). All reliably good. Carry a small flask of warm water everywhere, your body uses surprising amounts of water in dry cold.
Cost. Four nights for two, mid-range cottage, all activities, flights from Bangalore via Srinagar, came in around one lakh thirty thousand. The skiing lessons and the Phase 2 gondola add another five to eight.
Summer Gulmarg is pleasant but crowded and bright and not what a Kashmir honeymoon should be. Winter Gulmarg is quiet and slow and the kind of place where you spend hours doing very little and feel like you have done a great deal. As a couples' trip, the second one is the one to do.