I’ve always found that while the ocean has always moved me tremendously, the mountains left me cold — almost a little let down.
Even the otherwise breathtaking view of the snow-capped Mount Everest in Nepal many years ago left me wondering, “Okay, that’s great. But, what next?” So I undertook my journey to the Canadian Rockies with a great deal of trepidation. What if I thought they
were overrated? What if it did absolutely nothing for me? My concerns couldn’t have been more misplaced.
Jasper and Banff, our windows to the magnificence of the Rockies over the next few days, were originally little mining towns. They were declared national parks by the Canadian government in 1885 and are Unesco World Heritage Sites today.
The drive from Edmonton to Jasper is a four-hour journey on a jaw-droppingly beautiful highway lined with fir and spruce trees and dotted with glacial lakes in varied hues of blue, green and sparkling white. Each lake (and there are many in Jasper and Banff) strangely has a different tint, a completely different colour and wholly independent quality. The colour each lake takes on, I am told, is a product of glacial run-off,accumulation of silt and the dance of light and shadows.
Our first stop was at the Jasper Park Stables. A rather old but stern gentleman in full cowboy gear asked me “Have you ridden a horse before this?” The answer he was expecting was clearly, “Yes, I have. Bring it on.” I have been horse-back riding before this. But never by myself. I expressed my fears to him. He wasn’t impressed. “What do you mean, never alone?” he admonished, “You have your horse with you.” Very comforting. Thank you.
I requested for a gentle horse. “Horses are always gentle. You have to make them listen to you,” he said. Mine clearly had a mind of its own and I failed miserably in making it listen to me. It charted its own route while I safeguarded my back, my head, my eyes and every other part of my body as my “gentle” horse decided to only follow routes that had sufficient trees to gouge my eyeballs out. Struggling with indiscipline issues, the trees to my right suddenly cleared out and what I saw took my breath away. An assortment of the most majestic mountains, two lakes – the Edith and the Annette lying right next to each other and the Athabasca river cutting across. The two lakes glimmered in their sparkling turquoise while the Athabasca sprawled itself across in a sort of chalky white. Suddenly the chatter of the other riders, the whimsicalities of my petulant horse, the fear of falling
off – everything, absolutely everything – ceased to exist. I was all alone in the crowd.
The second day was a day to get a closer look at the lakes. Our first stop was at the kidney-shaped Pyramid Lake - a glorious lake to canoe, kayak and paddle. The lake is quiet, green and pristine. It appears out of nowhere and is nestled by the stunning Pyramid mountains. We chose our canoes and for the next one hour lost ourselves in the silence broken only occasionally by the click of our cameras.
Our route to the next destination – the much-talked about Columbia Icefields took us along the lovely Athabasca. Interestingly, the glacial run-off from this river goes to both the Pacific as well as the Atlantic oceans. The Columbia Icefields are considered the jewel in the crown of the Icefields Parkway and is guarded by 11 of the 22 highest peaks of the Rockies. We took a trip on the specially designed Brewster Icefield Explorer (the tyres of which were as tall as I was).
Once on the glacier, there is a sea of humankind. But, for someone who rarely gets to see any form of snow or ice, I could have rolled on the ice with glee. But I started off by trying to drink some fresh glacial water and thought I was going to have to come back and defreeze my fingers. I then gave up on my impulsive suicide plans.
Our drive towards Banff was needless to say unbelievably picturesque – like everything else in Alberta. On the way lies the Bow Lake with the Bow Glacier in the background and Crowfoot glacier to the left. Spectacular, we thought. “Wait till you see Lake Louise,” our guide told us. And this was pretty much everyone’s refrain. “How can it get prettier than this?” I thought, incorrectly once again. The next day Lake Louise – the mother of them all – showed me exactly how.
It is impossible to not be stunned into silence when you see Lake Louise for the first time and it’s even tougher to not resort to clichés when describing it. The alpine lake sits placidly like a glorious amphitheatre nursed by mountains. The glaciers, the trees and then the lake placed like a glistening emerald between them leaves even those completely unaffected by nature in a state of wonderment.
I remember pinching myself back then to see if it was for real. Today, two months later I can only conclude that it must have been a mirage – some sort of exotic optical illusion that I can only recreate in my mind’s eye but never reproduce in words or images.
How to get there:
Lufthansa flights to Calgary via Frankfurt from Mumbai or British Airways flights to Calgary from Delhi. Lake Louise is approximately a two-hour drive from there.
Alternatively, you could fly into Edmonton and drive to Jasper.