A known recluse yet an innate performer, showmanship feels etched in me like a birthmark. My Vedic chart readings (twice) said it loud and clear. And if astrology isn’t your thing, here’s proof enough: I’ll instinctively trade an hour on the mat in the quiet of home for a walk amidst the crowd. The spotlight calls - even if I often linger in the shadows, mine and everyone else’s.

If grace and grit make a paradox, that’s where I belong; though more grit than grace, it seems. At times a Navajo dancer channeling Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka on a windswept mountaintop; at others, a desert gypsy who could be Rabari, Bopa, or Bedouin - drifting through dunes, passing like sand, becoming yet another mirage. A restless, shape-shifting soul carrying a few lifetimes and many lives within one.

One breath, charging downhill at sunrise on my snowboard, slicing through powder in fierce flow; the next, edging up Himalayan heights in a zen state, maybe not as fast as a Sherpa, yet just as unwavering. One moment dancing with the Snow Vikings of Gulmarg (skiers and snowboarders who’ve been braving avalanches since childhood and know every ridge of Afarwat like a lover knows their beloved’s contours), and Bacha Nagma dancers in a snow hut to ‘Rind posh mal gindane draaye lo lo’ on my very second night in Kashmir. The next, circling Habba Khatoon all alone at the break of dawn before army helicopters shake the Gurez Valley awake - in awe of the peak’s indomitable spirit, no different from the Kashmiri poetess it’s named after. Not even the whir of rotors can break the spell of time-travel, back to the Silk Road era when caravans threaded the Karakoram from China. Transient as transient can be. Vicarious as vicarious will ever be.

For years, I’ve been living amidst the sacred energy of the Himalayas - in Ladakh, Kashmir (where I spent an entire snowboarding season and returned the next), the foothills of Rishikesh, and Himachal Pradesh. Mystics and skeptics alike call these peaks powerful vortexes of spirit; visit once, and the pull is undeniable. This way of life has made me as fleeting as a traveler’s heart, yet as steadfast as the mountains I call home.

These aren’t just photos and clips - they’re glimpses of how movement fuels creativity, how adrenaline sharpens focus, and why every mountain beat feels like its own kind of worship. Hit play and join the dance.