It was the last day of 2015, and the minarets of Ottoman-era mosques stood sentinel over an Istanbul downtown core plastered with snow. A foot deep in places, it was the heaviest snowfall the ancient coastal city had seen in decades. Turkey’s a country more famous for its rich culture, white-sand beaches and sugary baklava than its urban snowboarding potential. It’s a country caught somewhere between the Occident and the Orient, Christianity and Islam, and ancient and contemporary culture. It was there that I welcomed the New Year in Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul, with a group of guys from India who had never seen snow, slipping and sliding around the seventh largest city in the world…

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