Dr. V and I spent Valentine’s week in the Green Mountains. Clean slopes, functioning lifts, small towns organised around winter.
It is hard not to compare that with the Himalaya–Hindu Kush arc. The Karakoram, western Himalayas and Hindu Kush contain some of the highest and most snow-reliable terrain in the world. Peaks above 7,000–8,000 metres. Glaciated valleys. Long vertical drops that exceed most Alpine resorts. Gulmarg in Kashmir already has one of the highest gondolas on earth, reaching nearly 4,000 metres. Parts of northern Pakistan and Ladakh receive heavy winter snowfall and have multi-month seasons.
In purely geographic terms, the region has the ingredients for a major winter sports economy. Yet large stretches of this highland are militarised or politically contested. Infrastructure is thin. Insurance is expensive. Foreign tourism is episodic. Investment flows elsewhere; to the Alps, to the Rockies, to Japan. The comparison is not moral; it is structural. Geography offers potential. Institutions determine whether that potential becomes an industry. That contrast stayed with me on the drive back.