I wished for it and it happened..Heavy Snowfall In Chamba Himachal Pradesh

14th January 2011, I reached my last destination by bus from where I had to trek steep climb of 6 KM to reach home. I was welcomed with cloudy weather and as I started walking up, it started drizzling and soon it got converted into a decent rain. I took shelter somewhere in the middle of my way. The cold breeze hitting hard of ears and face made me realize that anytime rain can get converted into snowfall. And then I started walking in rain. I could see the snowfall starting on the peaks of mountains around me. By the time I reached home the weather was normal with no rains. The steep trek of 6 KM took me one and half hours.

First morning of my stay at home

After hectic journey of more than 25 hours, It was obvious that I will get up late in morning. My day started at 8:30 AM. As I got out of the room, what I saw was like a dream. No noise, a calm dark view outside and a thick layer of snow everywhere and Snowfall was fully on.

I was full of joy because I wished for it and it happened, as if God did this for me only. I went out in Snowfall and spent sometime capturing these memories for ever.

The Snowfall continued for 13 hours. It started early morning at 5:00 AM and went on till 6:00 PM. The snow on our house was stacked up to two and half feet thick and there were places where it was as high as 4 feet. The peak of the mountain had around 6 feet snow.

Life in Snow

It might look super cool in pictures and blogs but believe me the life comes to halt in Snow. People stick to bonfire inside houses and danger of flood due to heavy snow makes everyone worried.

It is quite common to live without electricity for months. Kerosene Lamps becomes the only way to fill lifes with light.

Water can not be seen anywhere as it gets converted into snow due to low temperature. The only source for water is to melt the snow on fire.

Woods stored for bonfire becomes wet and low oxygen made it almost difficult task to ignite fire.

Feeding cattle in this weather remains a challenge, the blessed are the one who has some space to store grass for their cattle.

People living in old house always sleeps under danger, you never know when the roof of old house gives up in front of thick blanket of snow on it.

Walking in Snow takes much more time than normal walk. Extremely Low Oxygen due to snow on plants and trees adds more challenge into it.

Keeping the mobile phones alive becomes an important agenda for people now a days. So all efforts to optimize battery. If someone has an inverter at home, you will see lot of people lining up for charging their mobile phones.

Apart from all this, challenges like daily needs, lack of source of entertainment like TV, Music etc makes life more difficult.

A Week in Snow

The day after snowfall, everything looked fresh and new. The sun rays makes it difficult to open eyes. Everywhere only white  and no black. I think this is the only time when one color dominates so much as far as nature is concerned.

Making a way on Snow where no one has made a way is what I liked the most and leave a trail. I spent hours and hours capturing delicate views of snow and carried it with me forever.

The same snow gets harder and  harder day by day, and then walking on it on narrow pedestrians becomes more challenging.

I loved to go from one village to another without any agenda. 

I tried climbing up till the peak of the mountain but after one point it became almost impossible to find out the way. Moreover as I climbed up the height of the snow also kept increasing. And it was more than 6 feet on the peak which is few inches higher than my height. So it was prudent to not to conquer that adventure.

My plan to come back to Delhi got delayed by two days as we were disconnected from rest of the world for a week. There was no road connectivity untill 20th Jan 2011 when I was able to start my journey back to Delhi.