If there is no such thing as karma—if the happenings of circumstance are really and truly nothing more than swirling eddies in the river Chance—then at the very least I can say that it seems perfectly reasonable to me that we should be so easily deceived. For weeks I have been saying: this is it, I am going to have an entire winter with no snow. With two days left before my escape to tropical refuge, the universe saw fit to notice me, smug smile and all. The ground went white, today.
But, my cynicism is really only for play. The weather here is nothing like that of home; where Nova Scotia is an indecisive prankster, India's mountains are a tenacious wizard. The weather, when there is any—and for weeks or months on end, there might not be—is always a performance. Up here, we are in the clouds; they move so quickly that, in the span of five or ten minutes, the valley can shift from utter opacity (sometimes you actually can't see across the street) to pristine clarity, especially since the wetness of the air briefly cleans away the blanket of pollution. Today, I watched spires of cloud go shooting up the face of a mountain, swirling up a kilometre or two of vertical slope in a matter of seconds. It's completely surreal. But with the clouds comes the rain.
For three days (so far) is has rained more or less without pause. I've just never seen anything like it; in Halifax eight consecutive hours of rain is like an eternity. Here, three days is a joke—soon, it will be three months. But, in the mountains where the air and earth are always cold, only direct sunlight brings warmth. And so, as the days of continuous cloud advance, the temperature drops steadily. For two days we've been watching the snow slip down the mountain slope, coming for us. This morning at 6:30am, at last, it arrived. By Canadian standards, there wasn't much to speak of; two or three inches of hail-born snow that's really only crushed ice. It was bizarre, to my coastal eyes, because all of this was happening during the loudest and more impressive display of thunder and lightning I have ever seen. Up here, the lightning is born a hell of a lot closer to you than it is at home, and the way it sunders the sky is straight out of a Jerry Bruckheimer flick. But today, at least, the snow was the interesting bit.
First, understand that the majority of vehicles here are both front-wheel drive and European; they're designed to be fuel and space efficient. So, if you take them four kilometres into the sky and place them on roads with disturbingly lethal outer edges, you're in a tricky spot. But if you then erase all visible traces of treading from their tires, and fold the roads into waves like a flapping bed sheet, what you then have is a lot of very, very dangerous opportunities to look very, very silly. I watched a car try to ascend an incline of about fifteen degrees this morning; after travelling about ten meters in roughly three minutes, he gave up. Which is good, because moments later a van came swimming down the hill in reverse—a make-shift version of rear-wheel drive that did precious little to reduce the number of snow angels the front (back) made as it flopped about like a dying shark.
But the real thrill of snow, up here, is the ridiculously festive atmosphere it generates. The entire town lost power about an hour into the snow day, which means that all the shop keeps and not an insignificant number of school children took to the streets to make the best of the snow. However, in truth what they made of the snow was simply quite a lot of mess and this is primarily because they spent most of the day throwing it around.
I believe that, as a consequence of having so damn much of it, Canadian's have lost the understanding of how to properly fight with snow. I wouldn't dream of throwing snow at, say, some old lady I saw passing me by. Here, however, every street becomes a gauntlet, and everyone in it a target. Tourists fought locals, locals fought Tourists and each other both. Indians fought Tibetans, Tibetans fought back. Friends fought strangers, and strangers fought eachother. Hell, they even fought the dogs (which I thought was a bit unfair, actually!). In short, most of the snow that fell today did this at least twice. Lined by Indian and Tibetans, I could hardly get twenty steps without assault. From rooftops, from the street, from windows; it was like Black Hawk Down but with frozen water instead of smelted lead (err… ok, well, to be fair their were no smouldering helicopters either, but I'm confident there would have been if any had flown low enough to get caught in the crossfire). I saw more Indians than Tibetans doing this, however, and I think novelty is at least partially the explanation. It was really interesting to discovering the extent to which successfully being amongst snow requires technique. To my absolute delight I found that Indians who are not from Kashmir or Himichal (which get snow annually) are adorably incompetent at negotiating a frozen landscape. Walking up a hill, I sped past a man walking unsteadily forward in what I believe were meant to be steps. He looked at me, effectively running past him, and frowned in puzzlement at my lack of impediment. I did the obvious thing; I shrugged and said, "I'm Canadian." This was a phrase I had a number of occasions to use today, and I confess I was utterly gratified when he looked at me and knowingly went "ooh…". Fellow Canucks, our reputation precedes us. But the better anecdote is forthcoming.
I know, by now, quite a number of the local shopkeeps and usually enjoy a half dozen congenial pauses on my way to and from anywhere. Today, as I was passing a group of them, one in particular, Suzon, was grinning at me devilishly. He asked:
Suzon: Jon! How you like snow?
Me: I'm Canadian. I loathe it.
Everyone: He's Canadian!
Five simultaneous blasts of icy snow pummelled me from every direction. They roared with laughter, and then they waited to catch my reaction. I stood up, and I feigned indignation. For a second, their bonhomie wavered, but then I broke into a grin and said, "Ahhhh. It's good to be home." The joke went over well.
Before I retired to my room to hide beneath the blankets and await the return of electricity, I made one last stop; at my most favourite of convenience stores, Sanjay-ji's Confectionary. Sanjay himself was absent—his vehicle quite literally couldn't rise to the task of surmounting the local hills (ba-dum). The two fellows who were running the shop today were in good spirits, but underdressed for the weather, especially since their only heat source would have been electric. Neither of them wore a hat, and I asked if they were cold. They shrugged, presumably to say "yah, but… deal with it?". I told them they were better Canadians than I, we laughed, and I left. Little did they know my plan! Next door is Suzon's shop, which sells hand-made knitted clothing. A toque with ear flaps and an inner lining is about 100Rs, or approximately $2.40. I scooped up two, snuck into Sanjay's, and threw the hats at them, whereupon I made for the exit at a dead run. You have to understand: this was the only possible way they would have "accepted" my gift. I left with voices shouting a worried "sir, sir!" in my wake, but I made good my escape and they were forced, I presume, to be warm. If anything interesting comes of this, I'll keep you posted. But I leave for Delhi in two days, and Thailand in a week, so in all likelihood the next time I write will be from Khao San Road in balmy Bangkok. So long, winter, hello Southeast Asia!
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