Snow Day

And now for something completely different!
(A blog post with no gutter-talk and a lot more candy sweetness).

I had a most excellent ski day not too long ago. You know ski days... throw on your warm gear, ride the gondola, hit a few mogul runs, fall down a couple of times, sip hot chocolate for lunch and then retire to the warm confines of your swanky lodge at night while wearing a turtleneck?

Well in India they do things a little differently. Let's talk about the hill first.

The resort, if you can call it that, is called Solang Nala and is situated in the Himalaya range just North of Manali. When you think Himalayas you envision Everest and K2, so I'm sure you're all imagining an imposing mountain with hundreds of challenging slopes. Not so much. In fact, this resort has one run, maybe 500m in length. No moguls, no trees, no rocky ledges, and no lift. That's right, no lift. You have to walk up the hill in order to ski down.

Seven of us - all Canadians, all experienced skiers - decided to go up together. Lift tickets, ski and boot rental and all the necessary warm clothing were to be provided as part of the $15 fee we paid at a travel agent in town. As usual, when we arrived at the office for our taxi to the hill on the day of, things began to unravel. But this time it was in a delightfully funny way.

Our warm clothing: one-piece ski suits, straight out of the 80s, in a variety of colours that didn't fail to include neon pink and electric green. I myself was clad in a bronze-toned number that made me look a little like a statue, though perhaps not one of David or Atlas - more like Ronald McDonald. The outfitter also had a wide selection of yak-fur coats for rent, but the guy working there didn't seem too keen on letting us have them. Perhaps they're for Indians only.

Our ski equipment: my Lord, it could hardly have been worse. I got boots that were at least 3 sizes too big for me, and when I put them on I discovered that they were pre-packed with snow. The skis were a bit short, but that was a Godsend considering that some of the others received mis-matched pairs of skis of differing lengths. One guy even got a pair of boots that had no interlock mechanism to attach to the bindings. Needless to say he didn't stay on his feet too long.

So... clad in our Nordic astronaut suits, with completely overused and unsafe equipment slung over our shoulders, we hiked up the hill. When we got to the top we realized that this was probably the only run we would do for the day, so we sat taking pictures and enjoying the sunshine for nearly 45 minutes. Then those of us who were able to skied down. The guy with the boot/binding problem walked.

Was this disappointing? Not really. After our one and only run things just got funnier. We tried to access the bunny hill adjacent to the principal one, since it had a small tow rope that seemed to be operating, but we were kicked out by the Indian military who were using it as a training ground. Back at the bottom of the main bowl, a few of us were nearly decapitated by a parachuter who was crashing into the melee of people who were milling about. There was a paragliding school running from the top of a nearby slope, and they would pretty much just land wherever the Hell they wanted - usually on top of a few innocent bystanders.

There were also yaks! Real yaks, and for a few hundred rupees you could climb on the back of one of them and be led around in a giant circle for 15 minutes. The resort is popular with many Indian honeymooners, and quite a few elected to give it a go. But not me. The yaks smelled terrible. So later in the day I bought a yak-wool blanket back in the town. The yak experience without the odiferousness.

Even though we only did one run, we managed to spend nearly 5 hours at the hill. We sipped chai tea, threw a lot of snowballs (the Indians were astonished at how quickly and accurately we could all do this), ran up the side of the mountain and slid down on our butts, and climbed to a nearby peak to watch the sun crash down over the Himalayas. Late in the afternoon it began to get cold, so we jumped back in our jeep, returned our zany outfits and retired to the confines of our swanky lodge.

Er, sorry. Dingy hostel.

Skiing the Himalayas: all the fun of skiing back home, without the skiing.