The sled pullers of Gulmarg

The sled pullers offer their services to pull you, your skis, and your luggage for rupees. 

Their base is in the market place.  I don’t know how it operates but it appears the business is either privately run or government owned and each day the sled pullers turn up and grab a sled and go off for the day to earn money.

The normal haunts are outside the gondola station, near the bus stop, the corner of our street, the poma slopes and outside hotels when an there is an influx of Indian tourists.

The Indian day tourists arrive on buses from Tang Mang.  They are all geared up in big furry coats and gum shoes (as they call them) hired from rental shops in Tang Mang.  The sled pullers approach the tourists and they haggle on a price to be pulled from the market, down the road and across the golf course to the poma slopes.  That is the norm!

Over at the golf course you can also pay for a ride on the sled down the slopes.  The Indians laugh and cackle, it is very funny to watch. 

Rental shops

The first few weeks of the winter I was tempted to pay for a sled to carry my skis back to the hotel (when you couldn’t ski back).  It was hard and tiring work either climbing up the hills and down the road back to the hotel or walk the long way round.  No matter how tempting it was I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I think it has something to do with our Australian psyche.  I would rather just give the sled pullers rupees for nothing but that is the wrong thing to do, it would promote begging.  There are no beggars in Gulmarg. 

The sled pullers are multi skilled, they become horse wallahs in the summer months.