What began as a scenic cable car ride over the snow-covered peaks of Jammu and Kashmir's Gulmarg turned into a terrifying ordeal for nearly 300 tourists on Sunday after the famed Gulmarg Gondola service suffered a sudden technical breakdown, leaving visitors stranded mid-air for hours. A massive multi-agency rescue operation involving the Army, Jammu and Kashmir Police, paramilitary forces and Civil Defence teams was launched immediately to evacuate tourists trapped inside multiple chair cars suspended above the mountainous terrain. Officials said the technical snag occurred around 1 pm, disrupting operations in the first phase of the Gulmarg Gondola service in north Kashmir's premier tourist resort. "A sudden technical fault hit the operations in the first phase of the Gulmarg cable car," a senior official of the Gulmarg Development Authority said. The first phase of the Gondola runs from the Gulmarg bowl to Kangdori, while the second phase extends up to Apha...
By moving from a rented house into a hotel, a US couple claims they are now saving $12,000 (approximately Rs 10 lakh) every year. Maranda Bowers, 47, and her husband John, 40, were previously paying $2,300 a month for a three-bedroom home in Pensacola, Florida, but after a serious workplace incident in 2023 left John unable to work, the couple was forced to rethink their financial decisions.
With Bowers struggling to pay the rent as the sole provider, the couple decided to move out of their home and stay with family for two weeks before moving into a hotel.
“It was too hard with what I was making to pay the rent on my own," Bowers was quoted as saying by the New York Post. “By the time John's compensation kicked in, we could not afford the inconsistency to see whether or not we have money to pay the rent."
The couple finally moved into a hotel in November 2023, where they pay $307 a week for a one-bedroom accommodation. Bowers said she books a hotel room for up to six months in advance, adding that the total savings amount to $12,000 a year.
“The biggest positive about hotel life is you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on rent. You don't need to put together a security deposit or pay a month's rent in advance,” she said.
Bowers explained that she liked the convenience of staying in a hotel as she did not have to worry about running the water or turning on the air conditioning, in addition to making weekly payments.
“A lot of people also think living in a hotel room means we have to spend lots of money eating out, but that is not the case. I cook all the time. I cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas for half the hotel.”
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The couple said they were hoping to save the money and eventually buy a plot of land and a tiny home to own. Bowers said since the 'kids were grown', they didn't need a big place to stay. The small house would allow them to go on vacations rather than be forced into a mortgage.
“We want to live simply, go on vacations and live our life rather than put all our money into a huge home. I would love a tiny home. We no longer want a big house; we like the simplicity of living simply.”
from NDTV News- Special https://ift.tt/9hZOXGg
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