Snow-capped mountains turn adventure hotspots, India’s warming up to winter sports

At the age of five, when Aanchal Thakur started skiing, she used wooden planks made from a walnut tree for skis. With no equipment available in India, it was only at the age of seven that Aanchal — the first Indian woman to have won six medals at FIS (The Fédération Internationale de Ski) alpine ski competitions — was introduced to actual gear in 2003, brought by her father from a trip to Japan. “I got discarded equipment for her and others,” says former general secretary of Winter Games Federation of India, Roshan Lal Thakur, who is also one of the few ski equipment importers in India.

Aanchal Thakur
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A lot has changed. Cut to 2023. The mighty, snow-clad peaks of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are playing host to an increasing number of tourists and professionals wanting to hone their skills in skiing, snowboarding, ice skating and snowshoeing. Professionally too, winter games have gained popularity, with the first edition of national-level Khelo India Winter Sports being held in 2020.

Winter sports kept Kashmir tourism afloat to some extent in the pandemic year. Shabir Ahmad Dar, who has been running the Gulmarg Snow School since 2016, says his company received the highest number of tourists for skiing and snowboarding this season. Enrollments rose from 187 in 2019 to 310 in 2022, he says. “Most tourists have shown interest in alpine skiing. People from Mumbai contribute to a significant chunk of tourists,” Dar adds. According to government data, Kashmir got a record number of 1.62 crore tourists this season.

Shabir Ahmad Dar
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As per Uttarakhand’s Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam report on ‘Progress of Ski Training Program’, 286 tourists enrolled for ski courses during January, February and March of 2015-16. The number rose to 346 in December, January, February and March of 2019-20. Col Ashwin Pundir, additional chief executive officer (adventure tourism), Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board, says, “Last year, the first snowshoeing competition was held in Auli, even tourists took part in it.” 

Jyothi Purohit (@gullytrotter), a solo traveller and digital content creator from Hyderabad, tried skiing for the first time on her visit to Gulmarg a couple of weeks ago. “To begin with, trying an activity on snow is exciting. I would love do it again,” she says. Jyothi did a one day class as she was short on time. “I have promised myself to go back and learn both skiing and snowboarding,” she says.

Apart from private companies, government institutes — like The Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports (JIM&WS), Pahalgam, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute Of Mountaineering And Allied Sports, Manali, Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM), Uttarkashi, and Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI), Darjeeling — also train tourists.

Bhavani Tekkada Nanjunda
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Bhavani Thekkada Nanjunda, who hails from Kodagu in Karnataka, became India’s first woman to have won an international medal in cross-country skiing last month. She won a silver medal at Raiffeisen Langlauf Cup in Italy and qualified for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, which will be held in Slovenia in February this year.

In Kashmir, Col JS Dhillon is consultant at the state-run Indian Institute of Skiing and Mountaineering, Gulmarg. During his 13 years at the institute, Col Dhillon started seeing a shift in the number of skiing enthusiasts two to three years ago. “People are now not scared to set foot in Kashmir. We offer six skiing courses spread over three levels — beginner, intermediate and advance. All of them are full this year too. There are 70 people in each course. The cost of training is subsidised by the government and starts at ₹10,000 for students. It is twice the price for those aged above 25,” he adds.

Most private and government institutes provide equipment to trainees. For those who are not enrolled in such courses, equipment is available for rent at all popular destinations. “In Auli, untill 2007, people would use wooden planks. Then we started getting second-hand ski boards in the market. Most of them were imported,” says Uttarakhand-based Santosh Panwar, skiing instructor at a private skiing and snowboarding company, Auli Skiing.

A skier himself, Roshan says the situation was worse when he started. “I had to borrow skis to participate in the second national winter sports games in 1989, when I won a gold medal. Skiing was famous in our village, but all would use the makeshift wooden skis. Some would even add plastic from water pipes to make them go faster,” he says. 

Michael Kors x ellesse ski capsule
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Even though India doesn’t manufacture skiing (or snowboarding) equipment, it first flirted with the sport under the colonial rulers in early 1920s. The Ski Club of India was established in Gulmarg in 1927. “They say, after Japan, Kashmir has the best powder snow. It is home to Asia’s only heliskiing resort. We have the highest gondola, at the height of 4,200 mts,” says Farhat Naik, general secretary, Winter Games Association of Jammu and Kashmir,

The skiers stand on top of a snow covered mount before boarding the helicopter after the three-day long Airbus International Heli-Ski competition, organized by Airbus Helicopters in collaboration with Kashmir Heli-Ski, was kicked off at the world famous ski resort Gulmarg at Kongdoori , 60km (37 miles) from Srinagar on February 21, 2014.
Photo: Nissar Ahmad
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Nissar Ahmad

“In Manali too, skiing was introduced during 1960s by the Europeans who settled in the valley. People are chasing it because it’s an Olympic sport,” shares Anurag Thakur, who founded adventure sports company Climb The Himalayas in 2008. In the past five years, he has trained about 300 people in skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing and ice climbing, he says. “In 2020 and 2021, I had no business. Last year, I made close to what I was making in 2019, about ₹3 lakh. I haven’t had as many enrollemts in the last decade as I have had in the past four-five years.”

Anurag Thakur
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In Burwa, a quaint village near Himachal Pradesh’s Manali, Aanchal and her brother, Himanshu Thakur, who competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics, started an adventure sports company, Aanchal Snow Sports, last year. This month, they announced seven-day skiing and snowboarding courses priced upwards of ₹19,500. Says Aanchal, “I started this company to share my journey with people and encourage them to take up adventure sports too.”