Winter in the Himalayas should mean blanketing snow, and for Gulmarg in Indian-administered Kashmir, one of the highest ski resorts in the world, that usually means thousands of tourists.
This year, the deep powder once taken for granted is gone. The slopes are brown and bare, a stark example of the impact of the extreme weather caused by the rapidly heating planet, experts said.
The lack of snow is not only hammering the ski industry but has a worrying impact on agriculture, the mainstay of Kashmir’s economy.
Photo: AFP
“Seeing this snowless Gulmarg, I feel like crying every day,” said adventure tour operator Mubashir Khan, who has put wedding plans on hold with his business teetering near collapse.
“In the 20 years of my working here, this is the first time I see no snow in Gulmarg in January,” said Majeed Bakshi, whose heliskiing service for high-spending tourists stands idle.
A lone helicopter waits for the few tourists who have still come, offering flights over higher peaks that have a dusting of snow.
“Our guests are mainly skiers, and they have all canceled their bookings,” said hotel manager Hamid Masoodi. “Those who come despite no snow are also disappointed.”
Ski lifts are closed, rental shops are shut and a newly constructed ice rink is a pool of dank water.
“The current dry spell is an extreme weather event — which are predicted to become more intense and frequent in the future,” said climate scientist Shakil Romshoo, from Kashmir’s Islamic University of Science and Technology.
For decades, an insurgency seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan — and military operations to crush that movement — has seen tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels killed in Kashmir.
The rebellion has lost much of its former strength, and India has been heavily promoting domestic tourism in the region, home to spectacular mountain scenery
However, in Gulmarg, hotel bookings have plunged by as much as three-quarters, tourism professionals said, as hundreds of guides and scooter drivers sit waiting in the sunshine, praying for snow.
“Most foreigners who mainly come for skiing on the deep powder slopes have canceled,” Bakshi said. “I have lost about 70 percent of bookings so far.”
Perched at 2,650m, the Himalayan resort is also home to the Indian army’s High Altitude Warfare School, located close to the highly militarized Line of Control, the de facto border that divides contested Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Kashmir has recorded little rain, and temperatures are about 6°C higher than normal since autumn last year, meteorology officials said.
Last month, precipitation across Kashmir was down 80 percent from past years.
Gulmarg received a few snow showers, but that soon melted.
The Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences in a 2020 report said that they expected the Himalayas and Kashmir would be “particularly subject” to warming temperatures.
Earlier this month, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said last year’s annual average global temperature was 1.45°C above preindustrial levels — the warmest year on record.
The nine hottest individual years on record were the last nine.
In Kashmir, the impact is clear. Gulmarg’s bowl-shaped landscape, beloved by tourists for the snow in winter and meadows of flowers in spring, is brown and bleak.
Scientists warn rising global temperatures are unleashing a cascade of extreme weather events.
Beyond the collapse of the skiing industry, many in the ecologically fragile region are worried about impending water shortages that would have a dire potential impact on agriculture.
Romshoo, the climate scientist, said research indicates Kashmir “will experience more frequent and prolonged dry spells,” worsening in the decades ahead.
Changing weather patterns have already altered farming practices.
Snow melt usually helps refresh the usually full rivers, but this week, authorities in Kashmir warned of water shortages and the risk of forest fires, with many wooded areas tinder dry.
Rice farmers needing plentiful water for their paddy fields have begun switching to fruit.
However, that crop is also at risk, with the dry spell and sunshine meaning some trees are already flowering, blossoming more than two months early.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS