Huge rally organized in the build-up to the Khelo India Winter Games 2026 second leg
The event was flagged off by top officials of Jammy and Kashmir Sports council
The 2nd leg, which will feature snow sports, starts from February 23 onwards
In Srinagar, as pale winter sunlight spilled across the Jhelum and traffic resumed its familiar rhythm, engines revved at Bakshi Stadium.
Rows of motorcycles gleamed against the cold. Cyclists tightened gloves. Track athletes stood beside martial artists, footballers alongside winter sport competitors. They were not assembling for competition, but for conviction.
The rally that rolled out of the stadium gates was the first public pulse of the Khelo India Winter Games (KIWG) 2026 build-up. Scheduled from February 23 to 26 in Gulmarg, the games may unfold on snow-clad slopes, but their opening statement this week was made on asphalt.
The message on banners was unequivocal: ‘Say No to Drugs.’
Flagged off by Joint Director Tourism Wasim Raja, Secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir Sports Council Nuzhat Gul, and SP South Srinagar Shabir Khan, the rally carried more than symbolic weight.
Tourism, sport, and law enforcement stood at a shared starting line – a coalition underscoring that youth engagement and social responsibility must move in tandem.
As the convoy wound its way toward Abdullah Bridge and through the arteries of Srinagar, commuters paused. Shopkeepers stepped out. Children pointed at the column of riders cutting through midweek routine. This was awareness on wheels – a mobile declaration that sport is not merely spectacle, but alternative.
Kashmir today faces a sobering challenge: the rising tide of drug abuse affecting its youth. Synthetic substances and narcotics have seeped into neighbourhoods and campuses, threatening a generation’s promise.
By bringing athletes into public view – disciplined, driven, and determined - organisers sought to replace one narrative with another. Not youth adrift, but youth in motion.
If the games are about medals, the rally was about mindset.
Two days earlier and a few valleys away, another chapter of Jammu and Kashmir’s winter story was unfolding – this time in Sonamarg.
For years, winter sport in India has had one shimmering address: Gulmarg. The alpine resort has hosted all previous editions of the Khelo India Winter Games, evolving into the undisputed nucleus of the country’s cold-season ambitions. Later this month, it will once again welcome athletes from across India to carve arcs into its storied slopes.
But in Sonamarg — the ‘Meadow of Gold’ - snow has begun to signify more than scenery.
The inaugural Sonamarg Snow Sports Festival transformed the serene meadow of Ganderbal district into a vibrant arena. Football skimmed across packed powder.
Kabaddi players lunged and locked in fierce duels on frozen turf. Tug-of-war teams dug boots into crystalline ice. Even cricket, India’s perennial obsession, found bounce under a pale winter sun.
If Gulmarg is the established monarch of winter sport, Sonamarg is emerging as its bold heir.
The festival, organised by the Department of Youth Services and Sports and Jammu and Kashmir Sports Council served as both prologue and provocation ahead of the KIWG. It signalled J&K’s winter ambitions are expanding – geographically and imaginatively.
Where Gulmarg showcases elite skiing and snowboarding, Sonamarg broadened the canvas. You did not need skis to belong. You needed grit. By introducing multi-sport competition on snow, organisers democratised winter athletics. Inclusion became innovation.
Students from the Government College of Physical Education Ganderbal embraced the novelty with infectious zeal. Their sprints sprayed silver into the air; their dives left fleeting signatures on white. For a meadow long admired for cinematic stillness, Sonamarg sounded, perhaps for the first time, like a stadium.
Together, the scenes in Srinagar and Sonamarg sketch a wider sporting arc.
In Srinagar, athletes reclaimed city streets to assert that the future belongs to ambition, not addiction.
In Sonamarg, students reclaimed snowfields to assert that winter sport is not confined to one resort or one discipline. One event moved on wheels, the other on snow – both moved an idea forward.
This is how sporting ecosystems are built. Participation inspires interest. Interest cultivates talent. Talent sustains excellence.
Over five editions, Gulmarg has matured into a Himalayan amphitheatre of national winter competition. Infrastructure followed events; events followed belief.
Now that belief is spreading. From Lal Chowk to Abdullah Bridge, from Gulmarg’s slopes to Sonamarg’s meadow, a network of engagement is taking shape.
The Khelo India Winter Games 2026 will bring medals, television cameras, and national attention to Gulmarg. But long before the first ski slices through snow, Jammu and Kashmir has already begun its larger race - to safeguard its youth, to broaden participation, and to deepen its sporting identity.
On Srinagar’s roads, engines roared in defiance of substance abuse. In Sonamarg’s fields, boots crunched into snow in celebration of inclusion. One city rode for sport. One valley rose with it.
