Squamish & Environs: February 2010: India and the Olympics

Three weeks in India made for an action-packed February 2010. Although my blog focuses more on the Squamish area, I thought I might as well throw in a few words about India since it’s a pretty incredible place you don’t get to visit all that often. Quest joined a 10-day Education Tour, which involved visiting schools in Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi. We had a successful recruiting trip visiting a wide range of schools and meeting some wonderful students along the way. I was also fortunate enough to visit the beautiful Mahindra United World College just outside of Pune.

A very warm welcome at Starex International School, New Delhi

What a beautiful country! I wish I had more time to explore the different cities, but instead, decided to finish off the trip with a vacation up in Northern India – in Kashmir of all places. Vacationing in Kashmir does indeed sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but that is indeed how I decided to spend my time off. My husband and I joined a group of friends who were spending the entire winter in Kashmir at a tiny resort called Gulmarg, documenting the skiing in the area along with life in Kashmir (www.b4apres.com). Unfortunately, an enormous avalanche had just come down a few days prior to my arrival killing 17 army men at an army base nearby leaving me a little frantic upon arrival in Srinigar. Luckily they had just cleared the roads the morning I had flown in, making my trip from Srinigar to Gulmarg fairly seamless. The drive up the mountain pass did however involve a few tea stops, a car tune-up and a chain-up stop, but that’s really about as seamless as you can get in this area!

Gulmarg, India

Gulmarg is a small Himalayan ski resort that lies on the border of India and Pakistan. It was just recently developed in the late 90’s and only has one gondola, which is divided in two stages: Stage 1 was completed back in 1998 and takes you up to an elevation of 2600 meters, while Stage 2 was only completed in 2005, bringing you to an elevation of 4000m (13,000ft) – making it the highest gondola in the world as far as I understand. Stage 2 was unfortunately closed for the entire length of my stay, with the exception of one day. The line-ups were of course a little hectic with everybody wanting to get at the untouched powder, but I finally made it up to the top, bringing myself to the highest elevation I have ever experienced. I couldn’t tell if my breath was short due to the altitude or due to the breathtaking views at the top! The skiing was incredible and well-worth the wait. With the alpine not being open the rest of our trip, we instead earned our turns in the backcountry hiking up to nearby hills, and then skiing down to various villages, running into monkeys and army men along the way. In the villages, we would stop for tea and then work our way on finding a ride back to Gulmarg which always turned into an adventure in itself (and often took longer than the actual skiing did). Every night we looked forward to our never-ending dinners of daal, paneer, butter chicken, korma, garlic naan, gulab jamun, just to name a few of my favourites. Mmmm, take me back to India for the food alone!

Phase 2, Gulmarg Gondola

Before flying out of Srinigar, we decided to explore the city a little and stayed on a houseboat for a night on Dal Lake. After checking into our floating hotel for the night, we enjoyed a late afternoon shikara boat tour which took us out onto the open lake looking straight up at the Himalayas, and continued through to the floating markets. Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited and I feel blessed having had the chance to experience it. With the Kashmir conflict still present, it may still be some time until the flocks of tourists come to explore this area. But in due time it will happen – no doubt.

Shikara on Dal Lake, Srinigar

After an action-packed three weeks in India and looking forward to some quiet time back in Canada, we instead returned to the madness of the Olympics! We jumped right into the action and attended a number of hockey games in Vancouver as well as 4-man bobsled up at Whistler. Having lived in Vancouver my entire life, I have never experienced the city so alive. People had come from the entire world to check out the Games. Admittedly, I was not all that excited about the Games after they had made the bid a few years back, especially since I had to deal with the never-ending construction on the Sea-to-Sky Highway almost on a daily basis. But now looking back at it, it was definitely worth it.

February was anything but a month lacking boredom (and people)!