The white beauty................

Snow.. it has always been my dream to live in a snow-covered area.... miles and miles of plain land covered in beatiful white, sun rays reflecting out of a snow-capped mountain, rolling down a snow hill, throwing snowballs at each other,walking on snow mountains dragging your leg out of soft snow....

Being in the southern part of India, i never got a chance to see snow... and somehow i could not make up time to visit kashmir during winters...

My first experience with snow was during my first visit to US. The week that i landed here, me and my friend went on a 36 hrs train journey to Colorado all the way from California. From there, we went to the rocky mountains. It was the beginning of september. So we were not actually dressed for any cold weather. A bus took up to the top of the mountains. We had to walk up for half an hour to reach a top view point. Half way through , the climate went really cold and hail storm started. Both of us dressed in T-Shirts were shivering and we ran back. It felt as though somone was throwing stones at us...The hail hurt real bad. The experience was awesome, but we could not stay there longer.

Since then , i have been in US for 2 winters but again i was caught up with work during those times. Now this is my second trip and i arrived here in mid january. Thanks to Martin Luther King, it was a long weekend. Off we went to Lake Tahoe., a 5 hr drive from Silicon valley.The place is about 7000 ft above sea level. We were sure to see some snow at this time of the year.

The trip was totally unplanned. I would say we were just following our instincts . The trip which was supposed to start early morning started only after lunch. We were near Tahoe by 7 in the evening. There were no signs of snowfall but the surroundings were covered with snow. We stopped by a subway for dinner. The place was damn cold and beautiful. It is a wonderful feast for your eyes to see moonlight flowing through the snow mountains. I touched snow for the first time. I was so thrilled. I could not prevent myself from jumping into the snow. My legs went down into the snow. I picked up a chunk and crumbled it with my hands....Wow..

We left from this place and since it was dark, carried on our journey to Reno. Stayed there over night. The next day afternoon we drove back to Tahoe.Half way through the journey, it started snowing.. This was something that we were waiting for.. We had not expected to see a snowfall. We stopped by an emergency stop area and stood there for some time feeling the gentle snow-flakes on our face. It was so soft.. we walked through a snow hill for some time. rolled over in snow.. Posed for some photos. I did not want to come back into the car..But it was really cold. We started shivering and then finally we continued our trip. There was nothing much that we wanted to see in Tahoe other than this..We were pretty satisfied. On the way back we stopped every hour and played in snow like kids.. We had snow fights.. it was an amazing experience , somthing which i saw only in movies....

Feeling worthy of the trip , we started our journey back. Frankly i would say, its a pleasure to visit snow covered areas during winters. But staying there for long .... nope.. its too difficult...

I will surely visit this place again sometime soon......