In search of snow

Now in Shimla, my plan was to find a place in the Himalayas to ski. According to my Lonely Planet book, there were 3 places - Manali in Himachal Pradesh, Auli in Uttarankhand, or Golmug in Kashmir. It was mid March at the time, the book said that the first two had snow til the end of March and the latter had some into April. However a guy in Shimla told me that Manali's snow had all melted, but that Auli should still have some. Whilst in Shimla, I also walked to a famous Hanuman temple and generally chilled out. To get to Auli, I had to go Shimla->Delhi->Rishikesh->Joshimath->Auli. This sounds a lot but Rishikesh was a good place to break the journey, it is a holy town on the Ganges that the Beatles visited in the 60s, and is full of Ashrams and hippies. I stopped there for a couple of nights, met some other travellers, and didn't do to much, which was fine by me. The bus ride from Rishikesh to Joshimath was stunning, it followed the Ganges through the Himalayas for 9 hours along a high, steep gorge past huge statues of wierd Hindu Gods. I got to Joshimath around 4.00pm and from there took the cable car up to Auli, at 3000m. I got there; there was no snow on the slope. Not one snowflake. I went to sleep that night pretty disgruntled. The next morning, I woke up and looked around. There was snow nearby, The top of the mountain that the resort was built on had some, I could see. I decided to walk up there, however couldn't get any ski's to take up with me (the receptionist at my dorm looked at me like I'd gone mad when I asked). It took me 4 and a half hours to walk up to the top, there was quite a bit of snow. I was determined to get some winter sport done, and so took off my backpack, put my legs through the straps, sat on it and sledged down. Mission accomplished. I walked down tired but happy.