Gulmarg Hindi translation: “Meadow of Flowers” is a hill station and a notified area committee in district Baramula of Jammu and Kashmir. It is located at an average.height of 2690 meters. Gulmarg is known for having one of the worlds highest Gondola (cable car).

Journey to gulmarg takes 2.5-3 hours. Getting around Gulmarg is done mostly by foot. There is only one road which loops around the whole whole hill station.

The main attraction here is the Gondola. Finished in 2004, it runs up to 3995 meters. Daily passes are available for the skiers and the nature lovers. The hills visible from the top are said to be a part of LOC and Pakistan administered Kashmir.

Major Tourist Attractions of Gulmarg are Alpather Lake, Baba Reshi Shrine, Gondola Cable Car to Kongdor, Gold Golf , Khilanmarg, St Marys church, horse riding, skiing and sledging.

Temperatures in Gulmarg remain well below zero for major part of the year. It is necessary for the tourists to wear heavy woolen clothing, gloves, boots and overcoats to prevent frostbite.

Gulmarg has long been famous for golfing. The 18-hole Gulmarg Golf Club has been in existence since the British raj. Golf is popular in the summer season. Membership is given on a daily basis on the payment of a daily fee.

Other interesting activities during the summers are horse riding and trekking. Some of the most famous treks are- trek to khilanmarg (4km), and on the same route apherwat trek (7 km). From Aprerwat there is an uphill trek to Alpather lake which is frozen for most part of the year (about 13 km from Gulmarg by foot). Khilanmarg is a small valley about 6 km away from Gulmarg. Its breath taking beauty in summers when the valley is laden with a carpet of flowers cannot be missed.

In winters Gulmarg’s slopes turn into an ideal ski resort. You need not necessarily be a ski lover to come here in winters. Many tourists come just to enjoy the snow and take a ride on the snow sledges.Snow scooters also available. A few slopes even have a ski lift to cater to the needs of the ski lovers. Most of the ski activities are concentrated in these slopes. Services of Instructors can be availed of on payment, from the ski equipment shops run by the State Government’s tourism department. Skiing in Gulmarg is cheaper than any other country.

Ziarat of Baba Reshi : Shrine of saint Baba payam-Din is situated near Alpather Lake, about 13 kilometers from Gulmarg. Baba Reshi is a well-known Muslim saint and was a courtier of the Kashmir King Zain-ul-Abidin. This shrine was built in his memory in the year 1480. The baba is known to have spent his days here, in prayer and meditation after renunciation. The cover of the grave is an exquisite piece of craftsmanship. Thousands of devotees visit the shrine through the year.

Gulmarg is known for its beauty both in the summer season and in the winter season. During the month of May local strawberries are available at reasonable prices anywhere and everywhere in Gulmarg. However it is important to bargain with the traders to get the best possible price.

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Paragliding is a tremendous flying activity that lets a pilot to steer his or her way through the air using a tiny airplane. Many people paraglide as a leisure activity, while others practice paragliding as a great aggressive sport. Basically, a pilot will sit in a harness while perched below a vast fabric wing. Shape is given to the wing by deferment lines and air pressure. After years and years of progress, paragliders are now sleeker and do better than ever before.

Free-flyers are out to a multiplicity of dangers, coming from different portions of the situation. By recognizing where the greatest risk for the day lies, you can make an effort to take precautions by increasing your safety margins in each of the other aspects. The thought is to lessen the number of risk elements that can reach you at one time.

Initially divide the dangers into six classes: Weather, Wing, Site, Gear, Ability, and Knowledge. Try to attain a ‘green-light’ state in each area. The more ‘red light’ cautions are lit, the more careful you should be within the other danger classes. When too many elements are impacting the pilot, a misfortune is expected – a complete failure of risk management. You can usually handle one risk at a time, but when two or three risks compete, things get confused.

Weather

No matter your stage of knowledge, this is the most significant danger to handle. Watch the weather estimate, it provides you a thought of what to suppose. If the weather is extensively different to the forecast, the risk is high, because it is unreliable. Put up a windsock on the hill. If it’s ranging from left to right, the wind is changeable, which boosts the risk of confusion. If the wind is gusting the risk of confusion is again higher. The straighter the wind is onto the hill, the higher the danger is of an increase in speed because you’ll be pushed over the edge sooner than if it was sloping. But if the wind is skewed to one side, the danger of instability raises. Finally, the wind power is essential – the stronger it is, the fewer other risks you can abide, because things go wrong really quick in strong wind. It’s the most ordinary reason of mishaps in our sport.

Wing

Until you have attended a maneuvers clinic and you are recognizable with the restrictions of your existing glider, you’re flying with a higher glider-risk than you need to. Try to select a wing you will be happy on all the time, not only in the smooth conditions. Although manufacturers like to advertise their glider’s top speed, maximum useable speed is lower and deteriorates with the presence of instability, especially on high-performance models. A daily gear inspection and bi-annual factory verification will help to keep your ‘wing’ risk in the green.

Site

Visualize all five of your other risk classes ‘red-lining’ for a minute. You have a cold and a hangover, and you have borrowed an old competition glider for the first time. It only has an old canvas harness. You have no shoes or helmet. You don’t know what weather was predicted, but someone mentioned odd situations. The wind is strong, gusty, and crossed on launch. Consider yourself flying only half the wing, poorly, and being thrown around randomly. Uneven, rocky terrain boosts the risk of instability, and limits your emergency landing areas. Small landing fields with serious approaches raise the risk again. If there is no observable wind indicators (lakes, fires, airborne gliders) the site risk is yet again even higher.

Gear

Anything you can put between you and the ground lessens your danger here. Protect yourself with a full-face helmet, boots with ankle support, thick foam in the harness (especially at the base of the spine). Store parachutes are a very good idea, but they do not lessen your risk just by buying them. You must learn how to apply them, and check your system frequently. Finally, a GPS is a helpful tool for XC flying, giving you a stable update on your speed over the ground, which lessens your risk of being blown over an edge in wind you didn’t distinguish.

Ability

Unluckily, it is human nature to think we are in the first group until we stuff it up. There’s a simple way around this drawback. Even if you think you’re great, follow in the footsteps of the hard-learner. Aerobatics are best begun in an exercises clinic, but thereafter you can build your capability by practice, practice, practice – up high. The knowledge and understanding you build up with your wing is very useful. Professional launching does wonders for risk administration. The higher your overall risk profile is, the further away from the ground or compression zones you need to be. When you’re new to the activity your capability to identify danger is limited, so you only notice that you’re in difficulty when things are very bad, so you should be out in front of the ridge, in a safer zone than the skilled ridge-huggers.

Knowledge

Knowledge is built from airtime, so if you’re not a local at the site you’ve selected to fly, know that your risk is high. There are websites on flying, email forums, and even the war-stories in the flyer’s pub contain a particle of practical truth. XC courses, SIV courses and competitions round off the picture. The more concerned you become, the more your growing knowledge assists to decrease your risk.

Conclusion:

You’ve bought a latest glider, one class up from the one you’re used to. So your WING segment is red-lining. What can you do to decrease your risk? Select your elements cautiously – go to the safest site you can for the day, be less tolerant of dangerous weather than normal, pretend that you have less capability than you know you have and fly consequently, seek out as much knowledge as you can about the wing, its DHV rating, and the site you’re flying, put some extra GEAR between you and the ground.

It’s all about making definite you have sufficient other ‘green lights’ on your panel at all times, so you’ve got that margin of safety.

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