Customized Research

To put one's experiences into photos or films or words is to alter the most basic essence of reality. Or, if you prefer, to create a new reality which, if believed, is equally genuine. When one photographs, he chooses the exact portion of detail, the quantity of light, the range of subject to portray. The rest, he discards. When he films he edits the uninteresting, the banal. When he writes he makes words jitterbug in just a way that could come only from his particular understanding of that moment combined with a verbal adaptation of the aforementioned editing. Thus, to explain is to create anew through destruction of old.

Everything from the sun's position in the sky to the particular position of the muscles in his face to what his mindset was at that instant (and every instant preceding the birth of that very moment) to the beliefs he holds or has held interfere with an experience. So when I saw Teton Gravity Research's production about skiing in Gulmarg I could not shake the onslaught of annoyance and even anger that they failed to make steps toward altering misperceptions of the region that they themselves held prior to their trip. It is possible to perceive that their ideas evolved from fear of the "guns guns guns. I've never seen so many guns." to one of cultural understanding; yet without a true understanding of the place in question, the viewer would surely miss the point amidst all the jibbing. But then, maybe they were just as correct in their conclusions and portrayals as I.

The place in question: KASHMIR.

On our first day in the state of Jammu and Kashmir we played cricket with the Jammu and Kashmir police force. We ate lunch with them. We ate deserts in a bizarre revolving restaurant overlooking the city of Jammu. We met a Sikh man who explained a bit of his religion to us. We drank a bottle of whisky in the presence of a liquor store owner/Bombay advertising producer who doesn't drink due to alcoholism. We repeatedly mumbled our nationality to those who asked, prepared for openly hostile responses, only to find sheer joy and welcome - and the occasional question of why more Americans don't come through here.

Moving up to Srinagar, we toured the old city and were treated as kings in a mosque where we were poured tea, given bread, and warmly embraced. We saw beautiful lakes (sewage notwithstanding) and met amazing people. We walked the snow-covered streets without fear - either due to or despite the overabundance of bunkers, rifles, and armored cars lining the streets and highways as though ready for war (a stark contrast to Nepal's lackluster roadblocks - these guys actually have bullets in their guns). We relaxed in our houseboat, under the sheets with hot water bottles for warmth.

In Gulmarg, we found an absolutely absurd scene. A government-operated Gondola at a cost of 110 million ruppees has been added to this 77 year remnant of colonial days to open access to 4,000 vertical feet of ridable terrain in a nation where I'd venture not more than four people actually ski. I rented Seth Pistols that, among other gear, had been left by previous visitors as a donation to the Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop in a gesture of ski resort charity. I rode fresh tracks for two days, the second solo as Jenny's knee wasn't exactly up to the challenge.

We sat with 11 other foreigners at a party hosted by Yassim in the cottage where we were staying, while marveling that this hodgepodge group of ski bums and AK heli guides is here to teach 25 "ski patrollers" clad in various technicolor coats how to do a job that would require maybe 10 patrollers, tops (Indian Government run operation, remember). Not altogether ironically, it seems to us that the headman of this training "project" (which may or may not gain all of its legitimacy from the connotation of importance implied by the word "project" and other buzz words variously implemented) is an Israeli ski bum who lives in Whistler and might gain most of his influence via the color of his skin.

Throughout our time sliding down the white stuff, the overall ridiculousness of the place, the sheer irrationality of its existence and operation could not dispell the excitement instigated by the sentence: "We're skiing in Kashmir."

Likewise, the excitement of the sentence, "We've hitched a ride with the Kashmiri Army and are now handing out meal provisions to the troops stationed along the Gulmarg Highway," gains its romance from preconceptions....and maybe a little from the driver's gun, probably loaded, laid on the console such that it pointed directly at the soldier in the back's head; which he didn't seem to mind.

So as I sat there with the conglomerate of skiers turned charity-workers for a questionable cause, I allowed my mildly intoxicated mind to analyze the ignorance of sheltered white Jackson Hole Americans focused on nothing but white bliss and airborne adrenaline. Strikingly, I couldn't shake the fact that the fear I shared with them of this place while I sat in my sheltered white Jackson Hole American house last year still lingers in me. If only as the residue of the adventure danger mystery desire that a mention of my presence here will surely inspire in those still at home, the myth is still alive. The remnants of the misconceptions from the days joking ironically about walking through the streets here with an American flag T-shirt and an I Love Pakistan banner in hand live on even as I walk by stores here selling US flag paraphenalia and as I receive nothing but smiles, enthusiasm, and excitement at the mention that I am and American. The name Kashmir embodies the myth. It has become something entirely separate from the place. The ideas at home that are presented in media, myths, and the mind's selective memory.

So I conclude that my occasional homesickness, the random longing for a return to the comfortable, is unwarranted. For if I returned to ski Once, Twice or all the rest for another three months, I would still be living in ignorance of Kashmir. Of Hinduism. Of people and places that I now know. Movement, though draining at times, is beneficial.

But then, just as the muscles in my face determine experience of place, so too does time. My mind's conclusions at my experiences here may be flawed due to the continuum. Maybe the armada out our hotel door is more indicative of the sub-surface reality of Srinagar. Maybe if the building across the road, still barely standing after its semi-destruction in the 1991 "conflict," could play its story for me on the decayed or destroyed movie screens inside, my conclusions of misplaced fear would be different.

Either way, the thoughts provoked not in Jackson, Denver, or Kashmir, but in Rishikesh before that train ride live on - life is a risk. Some say that I may choose to take a few more than others, and they may have a point. I am willing to travel to Kashmir and risk the one in a million chance that I'll be in that random suicide attack in order to experience the world more genuinely. I'd much rather be here than on a train in London or in a dark alley in New York. So here I am, learning...