Snow queen from the South
OB Bureau
In a land where snow is routine, Bhavani Thekkeda Nanjunda had to borrow her first winter. She grew up in the red earth and rolling coffee estates of Kodagu, where mornings are misty but never frozen, and snow belongs to cinema screens.
At 23, she felt ice kiss her cheeks for the first time. Earlier this week, at 8,700 feet above sea level in Gulmarg, the 30-year-old daughter of a coffee farmer became the undisputed queen of sprint.
Bhavani stormed to gold in the Nordic women’s 1.5 km sprint at the Khelo India Winter Games 2026, slicing through the snow-covered Gulmarg Golf Course with authority. The medal adds to her two earlier bronze finishes this season in the 15-km and 10-km relays.
When she crossed the finish line, lungs burning and skis cutting their final arcs into Kashmir’s snow, it was more than a win. It was geography rewritten. She looked at the mountains. Then at the snow beneath her feet.
“This is for my parents,” Bhavani said, adding, “Though I participate in winter sports, my mom and dad have never seen snow. I hope they will someday come to Gulmarg, see the snow, and see me win gold.”
Back home in Kodagu, her father tends to coffee plants. But it was he who cultivated something rarer – belief. In a region with no ski trails, no frozen lakes and no culture of cross-country skiing, winter sport sounded like fantasy. Bhavani chased it anyway.
The inception
Her journey has already broken barriers. She became the first Indian woman to win a medal at a Fédération Internationale de Ski et de Snowboard (FIS)-accredited cross-country skiing event, clinching bronze in the 5-km interval start free race at the 2025 FIS South America Cup in Chile.
She has represented India at the 2023 and 2025 Nordic World Championships and competed in all six editions of the Khelo India Winter Games. But the improbable beginning still defines her story.
Bhavani started out as a mountaineer in 2014. She went on to become a certified ski instructor. She learned to glide on snow she had never imagined touching as a child. Every step forward meant fighting financial strain, scarce infrastructure and the sheer tyranny of distance. Karnataka offers no natural ski slopes, no winter academies, no childhood snow days.
“I myself had not even seen snow till I was 23,” Bhavani said. “If I could excel despite picking up the sport so late, imagine what someone who starts early can do with proper training, coaching, and facilities,” she added.
In Gulmarg, she found both mentors and mountains willing to test her resolve. She credits the Army’s High Altitude Warfare School (HAWS), the Indian Institute of Skiing and Mountaineering (IISM), and the Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports (JIM & WS) for opening doors to athletes from places where winter exists only in textbooks.
The way ahead
Now she wants those doors flung wider. Bhavani has pointed to the Jammu and Kashmir government’s plan to train 500 youth from across India every year and urged youngsters, especially those from unlikely landscapes, to take the leap.
“Interest in winter sports is growing. The snow is calling farther south than ever before,” she said.
She also acknowledges the backing of Reliance Foundation, which sponsors six girls from across India – one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and two from Karnataka, including her.
Long before she stood atop a podium in Gulmarg, she was a girl in Kodagu watching mountains on the big screen in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Cinema offered her a glimpse of snowy peaks. Life demanded she climb them.
Next in her sights – the 2029 Asian Winter Games in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Bigger stage. Sharper cold. Higher stakes.
But for now, the image that lingers is simpler – a coffee farmer and his wife in Karnataka who have never touched snow, raising a daughter who has mastered it.