Snowboarding in Gulmarg, Kashmir

Yes, I am from Switzerland, and I have spent a lot of time in the mountains. But I never knew how much they mean to me until I left my own country. This, I have come to realize after living one month in Belarus, one of the flattest nations on earth. But standing on a high elevation, overlooking the landscape, gazing into the distance, is just a magical feeling. Especially if the ground is made of solid rock and formed over millions of years ago.

Most of the time, we don’t really value the soil we are standing on, nor do we understand how it came to be. I was just living half a year in India, never wasting a single thought about the Indian tectonic plate and its relationship with Asia. But when I recently stood on top of mount Apharwat at nearly 4,400 meters, ready to slide down on a thin board, I started contemplating the whole world…