Skiing in HP has an Indian pioneer

Raaja Bhasin

“These are heavy,” I said and held the bag up.

The bag swung on its own, as bags held by eight-year olds often do, and hit my teeth. I lost one. Fortunately, it was still a milk-tooth. That was my first skiing casualty without ever having been near the slopes. The cotton bag held my father’s old-fashioned ski boots with a heavy plate of solid steel along their length and the toes and heels were ribbed with steel too. The tongues were thick wads of rubber and leather. These were strapped onto wooden skis with all sorts of straps and buckles. And if you faltered on the slope, the less said about the state of one’s limbs the better — for there were no automatic releases and the skis hung onto those boots and could well twist that ankle or knee away.

Kufri (2,500 m), 16 km from Shimla, is one of the oldest places to be associated with skiing in the country. Oddly enough, skiing at Kufri does not owe its origin to the European presence in Shimla, but started two years after Independence, in 1949, when Mr ‘Panchi’ Sen, who had spent some time in Switzerland, came as the manager of the local branch of now-defunct Grindlays Bank. He introduced skiing to the town’s novices on what is now a busy thoroughfare — the slope that leads down from Lakkar Bazaar to the gates of Auckland House School. After spending a while dodging or ramming shoppers and commuters, the skiers shifted to Kufri and in no time at all, skiing had established itself as a popular winter sport. Over mildly sloping fields, over what claimed to be the highway, and over what were fertile grazing slopes through the summer, Kufri provided a series of different runs.

A ski club of sorts took shape. The winter-sports aficionados of Shimla and all others, who would join them, would ice-skate in the town in the morning walk the ten miles to Kufri, ski for a few hours and then walk back to be able to skate again in the evening. And yes, there was no ski lift or winch to take them back up the slope. They plodded back with skis still strapped on their feet and needless to say, no comments are necessary on their level of fitness. Those with a more devil may care attitude would race down through the cedar and spruce woods over snow-covered narrow paths, the few miles down to the village of Fagu that lies on the Hindustan-Tibet Road. The story is told of one straggler who did not reach down and the search party that had to circle the hill found him hanging upside down in a mass of brambles held in position by a solitary ski. Cut loose, he skied the rest of the way in the moonlight. And yes, all this was in the days when safety meant what you could manage on your own and when a slight mishap could prove to be fatal.

Altering global weather patterns and changes in the micro-climate have pushed skiers away from Kufri to Narkanda that lies higher up. The slopes at Narkanda are not very long, but their couple of hundred metres are adequate to set off that surge of adrenalin. It’s a heady feeling as you set off with the icy wind brushing your face and in the winter-swept silence the only sound is of your breath and the hiss of skis on snow. Every part of the body is on high alert, the mind sending and responding to messages from distant muscles, nerves taut and prepared for split-second decisions.

While it has been years since I’ve been anyway near a ski slope, Narkanda holds a beginner’s run, a slalom slope and a slope for a surer foot. The setting is picturesque with spruce trees all around. From time to time, the HPTDC offers courses and ski-packages at Narkanda. The sport has given tiny Narkanda a level of entrepreneurial openings and several shops have equipment on hire and they also provide assistance from local boys, who can ski.

In Himachal Pradesh, skiing is available at both Narkanda and the Manali area — Manali also offers heli-skiing on some of the best ‘powder’ in the world.

In Manali, Himachal Tourism in collaboration with the Directorate of Mountaineering and Allied Sports also conducts courses along the Solang valley. Heli-skiing, that rare high-thrill high-end sport is also available in Manali. One of the unique features of this privately-run operation in the Manali area is the compactness of the skiing arena; the area bounded by Deo Tibba and Hanuman Tibba. A sortie of a few minutes takes skiers thousands of feet up slopes that hold some of the finest ‘re-crystallised powder’ in the world. A deep snow-pack, low moisture content in the snow and the wilderness effect have made this a quite a getaway for serious skiers. As has been remarked, “Powder snow skiing is not fun. Its life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality”.

(The writer is an author, historian and journalist)