Gulmarg: the war-torn Muslim village that's become a ski spot for Westerners

Cassie de Colling was determined not to give up on Kashmir. She knew she could find a story waiting to be told.

The Australian director had come to Gulmarg, a snow-swept town in the western Himalayas, to film a not-for-profit project.

But that plan fell apart when the organiser disappeared without explanation.
“I had a load of camera equipment and thought, ‘I’m not leaving until I shoot something,’” says Cassie, laughing.

That’s when a chance encounter inspired a different story. While trying to capture scenic shots of Gulmarg’s skyline, a snowboarding brother and sister invited her to meet their family.

Over tea, the complexity of life in Kashmir quickly became clear.
Prolonged border disputes between India and Pakistan have resulted in as many as many as 70,000 deaths since 1989.

In July, the killing of a popular rebel commander triggered some of the largest protests against Indian rule in years. Kashmir has been under a security lockdown ever since.

Yet despite warnings by Western governments not to travel to Gulmarg, skiers and snowboarders from around the world are drawn to the ‘line of control’ it straddles between India and Pakistan.
On one side, Asia’s highest cable-car ferries tourists 13,000ft up Mount Apharwat. In the near distance, armed forces watch their every move.

That divide between civil unrest and backcountry hotspot inspired Cassie to make Gulmarg: Paradise on Earth.

As she and co-producer Tamie Wexler explain, packing that fractious mix of despair and optimism into a documentary short proved challenging.

What were your expectations going in and how did your experiences contrast with that?

Cassie: I felt like I was going to quite an uncharted place but I didn’t expect to see Westerners there drinking and partying. I expected it to be more pristine, in a sense.

That became one of the things I wanted to explore in the film: the blending of Western society into a once-undiscovered Muslim village that’s now a ski town.

Tamie: I knew it would be crazy. Luckily, Cassie painted the picture that anything goes in Kashmir. You can’t really put it into words. You just adapt by melting into the environment and learning to laugh at things that just don’t go your way.

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