Love & Longing In Narkanda

There is a reason, my handsome friends of Narkanda tell me, for their madcap love of snow. "There are no good chicks in town. We ex-pend our energies in skiing."

A Santana number is playing in Mahamaya Palace restaurant which serves as the unofficial Boy's Club where local lads argue between the passions of love, and of skiing. "I don't like women. I have my music, my job, and I ski," says Rinkoo. "No, there's actually a lot of repressed feeling but no one wants to admit it," chips in Anit, making some gesticulatory motions with his hands around the heart.

 

This strikes me as somewhat odd. Far more than any other hill station I know, Narkanda, a small highway town 65 km off Shimla, seems to have everything that's required for romance. Snow, hills, and plenty of young hearts. In the skiing months between January and March, it sees the biggest convergence of under-21ers. Batches of students keep arriving from as far as Bangalore and Cuttack, booking up for skiing classes months in advance, bringing with them the atmosphere of a youth festival. Girls, arms linked, and in monkey caps, stroll the market, and boys in skiboots moonwalk with their skirunners on their shoulder up to Dhomli, a football-sized beginners' slope a kilometre away from the bus stop. There are all types. A group from NIIT has come all the way from Delhi to climb the 12,000 feet Hatu peak above Narkanda and to "experience" the snow. On the other hand, so many say: "Skiing isn't up my street _ we've come to see the snow."

The main Narkanda town isn't exactly picturesque, but the previous day's snowfall transforms the landscape into a Chagal painting. The snow-laden forest glistens magically as the low-slung sun beams its dim rays softly through the trees. Under four feet of snow, the road link with the rest of world is totally cut off, blocking the flow of traffic and goods. The main town resembles a huge, snowy courtyard. With temperature dropping to a bitter -3 at night, people rise late here and shops don't draw up their shutters until 10.30. Even the furry, hill dogs are laidback: they walk carefully, pawing only the treaded paths of pulverised snow to avoid getting wet. The only stirring of life in the morning is the newspaper delivery van from Shimla that arrives spewing great puffs of grey smoke, carrying the daily fodder of news and picking up stranded passengers on its way to Rampur, up north. The buses don't roll either, at least until they get a clearance signal from the highway snowcutters, an incredibly slow process.

And in the warmth of the interiors, the finer points of Alpine and Nordic skiing are discussed. Talks revolve around half-ploughs and full-ploughs, the skills of skiing on soft and hard snow, the nitty-gritties of water and dry ice. Locals pray for snow _ the more there is, the better it is for the potato and apple crop, and the more revenue from ski buffs.

Love apart, the personalities of this bunch of misogynists, women-haters, love-piners, whatever, alter on the slopes as they let go.

Like an organised army of ants with awkwardly long legs, they sidestep on their skis in a neat row up the snowy slope before disappearing into the forest. A chorus of wild `yeeoooows' follow. The Korak calls echoing down the hillside are a warning to clear off the high-speed zone. Gangly boys fly down like gulls as they carve their course downhill, spinning to a halt where the clearing ends. Runny-nosed kids swish around them with aplomb. Young boys like Giri, Rinkoo and Negi who have turned professional skiiers and instructors, began their adventures on the slope chiselling their own ski-runners out of wood, using pieces of rubber tyres as heel and toe blockers. As the idiom goes, I too had `ants in my pants'. With my rusty skiing skill, I wove around the trees, and between the experts and beginners, at controlled speed. "Don't walk up this way, only from that side," shouts a child, waving his ski sticks at me. Narkandians are possessive about their slopes.

The facilities in Narkanda, which began developing in the late '80s after insurgency hit Gulmarg in Kashmir, is pretty basic. There are no T-bars or chair-cars as in Auli in Uttar Pradesh to lift you up the slope, and second-hand skis sold by foreigners find their way here as in Manali and other ski slopes. There are two hotels, a total of 26 rooms. Hotel Hatu, where I stayed, has a view of the Hatu peak to the northeast and the famed Kotgarh apple orchards below to the north. "But the snow quality is finest here as it faces north and doesn't get slushy by noon," assures Devender Singh, former skiing instructor. On a snowy morning, the boys leave me. They take a long snow trek up the hill forests for that final thrill of skiing down first the forest, then the highway, again and again over a good stretch of 5 km while I am left to contend with a 1 km stretch between Hotel Hatu and the main town. Later, Sunil from Bangalore, gives me one of those Bob Marley ones: "No woman, no cry, eh?"