The Shifting Sands

Have I caught the bug?  A few weeks after Wadi Bih 50km run, I noticed that there was a half-marathon in the hills around Hatta, a town in a UAE enclave to the east of Dubai which is surrounded by Oman on three sides. I suddenly keen but would doing this mean that I would be drifting into the darks side of concentrating on running to the exclusion of all else? Did it mean more early morning starts with thousands of others only to pound my way along some mind numbing road/ The run was on the roads through the town with some stiff climbing past two dam walls (25% max garde and about 360m of climbing overall) and some running on trails in the hills behind the town.  I hadn't been to Hatta since we did a visa run for Kate and the girls just after we arrived and it was an area that I was keen to revisit. Paddy, my neighbour and running partner from Wadi Bih, was out of town but Ana was keen to do the half-marathon.  Ana is from Kazakhstan and gave me some great advice before our ski

Tommy looking good on the off-piste serviced by the Sadzele lift. While sitting in the airport in Almaty for our return flight to Dubai, I double checked with Tom to ensure that he had applied for his Indian Visa on arrival. He had checked the website and was sure that he could arrive in Delhi and pick up the visa without prior approval. Unfortunately, the website is a little confusing and you need to have applied four days before arrival.  We had a problem. We had a 10 hour turnaround in Dubai so we applied for his Indian visa on arrival hoping that it would be approved before we had to change plans. In short, if we didn't fly that night, our ski days in Gulmarg would be cut from three to two due to the middle of the day timings for arrivals and departures of flights from the Indian Airforce Base in Srinagar. While considering our options. I checked the avalanche conditions in Gulmarg.  Luke Smithwick, who I know from the Gangstan climbing trip, is the head

Ada had a mid-term break from school, unlike Kate and Lucy, so we planned to head out for a ski.   Our thoughts first turned to a return to Georgia but I had work in Johannesburg for the first half of the week and the Joburg/Tbilisi flights did not link up, costing us a day’s skiing.   Plan B was Kazakhstan, where there was a ski field 25 km from Almaty airport and the flights linked up nicely. Our room at S.N.e.G.  Large, warm and stylish in a ski cabin kind of way You can't beat the real thing! Kate's sister had been encouraging her youngest son, Tom, to come away for his Uncle Chris experience.   Both of his older brothers had enjoyed ski time in Kashmir and he was due to complete his initiation too.   So I made the bookings with Tom joining Ada and I in Kazakhstan, after which we would return to Dubai drop of Ada before flying to Srinagar via Delhi. Easy! Almaty has good air links and we ended up travelling with Astana which was