We took a short excursion to some scenic points near Gulmarg Market to kill time. However our taxi had gotten stuck in the snow. Other drives came down to help push or shovel the snow. When none of that worked, a set of chains for the tyres came out. However, the drive had only one set, so it had to be installed at the worst stuck tyre.
After being snowed in, we were dissuaded from attempting to go up to the Gulmarg ski resort area. But we persisted and went anyway, and this was as far as the road would take us. The road ahead had been blocked by felled trees the night before when the heavy snowfall came. Still, this was better than having given up and stayed back at the hotel.
Supposedly a once-in-20-years occurrence, 1.5 ft of snow came down in the middle of spring around the whole area. It was -6 degrees Celsius, and we had no heating. The cold snow lands on the surface of Dal Lake and evaporates into fog because the water in the lake was still much warmer than the air and snow. Pretty much the same view as the night before, the background disappears into whiteness due to low visibility.
Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh, is a 3 km² rainfed lake, created by Le Corbusier and the Chief Engineer P L Verma in 1958 by damming the Sukhna Choe, a seasonal stream coming down from the Shivalik hills of the Himalayas.
Sukhna is an inseparable part of Chandigarh. The city planners were deeply attached to the lake, so much so that Pierre Jeanneret’s ashes were immersed in the lake in 1970 at his niece’s request. [citation]