Hazy Shade Of Winter

AS DELICATE FLAKES GRACEFULLY FALL FROM A SOMBRE SKY, ROSHNI SUBRAMANIAN RECOUNTS HER TIME AT SKYVIEW PATNITOP, INDIA’S LATEST ADVENTURE TOURISM HOTSPOT

- Roshni Subramanian

John Steinbeck once said, “what good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness”. The idea is true to a certain extent. Winter sure does wonders for a writer’s soul. But as someone who’s spent a fair share of time dealing with the national capital’s bitter temperature, in addition to tackling eye-burning smog every year, I, unfortunately, have a love-hate relationship with the season.

A week before Christmas I found myself en route to Jammu. It didn’t matter that the place I was heading to was colder than Delhi, covered in a blanket of snow and had recently experienced massive landslides.

The destination was about 100 kilometers from Jammu airport. I was headed to what many call ‘poor man’s Gulmarg’—Patnitop, a small hilltop town in the Udhampur district of Jammu. Set atop a charming plateau in the Shivalik belt, it rests at an altitude of 2,024 meters. As per folklore, Patnitop is a distortion of ‘Patan Da Talab’, which loosely translates to ‘Pond of the Princess’. The legend goes that a pond once existed in the lush meadows of the region, and the princess of the ruling kingdom back then bathed in it.