The Indian Himalayas is a place of spirituality and the home of Tibetan Buddhism.
It is also a massive playground of snow and despite me being in the mountains to meditate,
how could I resist not slapping some skis on and getting into those mountains?
Our journey into the mountains took us along winding narrow roads and cliff edges, often
covered in recent landslides.
The snow covered roads became thicker and soon became impossible and we had to wait
for hours until the army woke up that morning to come and clear the roads.
Day one of our Himalayan ski touring expedition and the conditions are absolutely perfect.
We dumped about 20cm of snow yesterday and today it's blue skies, sun and buffet.
In a five star kind of way and one which I have never experienced before, the porters
set up our camp and all we had to do is continue to climb the mountain.
We were just three of us on this trip, Federick, our Franco-Swiss guide, a Canadian and myself.
We are approaching 4,000m and you can really feel the altitude here, but it's absolutely
gorgeous.
Bloody hell I can't even move, alright let's catch them up shall we?
So we made it to 4,000m from base camp at 3,000m and a quick little lunch break before
the descent, it's tough to breathe here.
And now it's gonna be our first
Wait.
And whilst it took us the entire day to climb the mountain, it took us only one hour of
gorgeous downhill skiing to get back down to the base camp.
And that's pretty much what we did each day. We climbed higher each day, pushing from 4,000
metres to 4,200 metres, and finally to 4,400 metres, and ski back down each day to end
up in our base camp at 3,000 metres for the evening time.
It's definitely gonna be bombastic.
Your servant, I take you to the bottom.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
The snow lower down the mountain was really difficult to ski on. It melted during the
heat of the day to an almost liquid state. I was quite relieved to find that our guide
struggled with these conditions too.
This is what we get when we come back from 4,300 meters.
Look at that. That's amazing. We just skied down from 4,200 meters and what's waiting for us
when we get down here from the mountain? A pizza. Fabulous. It's better than the French Alps here.
When we got down off the mountain, all we had to do was sit back and relax. Our two can coordinators
cooked fresh Indian food each night.
We were even given hot water bottles when we went to bed each evening.
And that was pretty much our trip for amazing days on the mountain. Mediocre skiing at times, but just to be alone on that mountain was phenomenal.
And just two days after I came off this expedition, I entered while I came to Himalayas 4 in the first place.
A silent 10 days meditation course. Find out how I got along on my website www.pjshar.info.
