The Town Behind the Tourism Manali has a problem that most of its travel guides are too polite to name directly: it has been so thoroughly marketed as a destination that the marketing has become the dominant version of the place, and the actual place — which is quieter, older, more interesting, and more genuinely

A City That Was Planned to Work There is something that becomes apparent about Shimla once you have spent a few hours in it, and it is not immediately obvious from photographs or descriptions. The place was designed. Not in the improvised, organic way that most Indian cities develop — not as a settlement that

A Place That Opens Up Instead of Rising Most mountain destinations in India are organised around altitude. You go up, the valley opens below, the horizon stretches outward, and the experience is defined by the scale of what you can see from above. The higher you go, the more you see, and seeing more is

A Town That Changes As You Rise Through It Most hill towns in India are legible from arrival — you understand quickly what kind of place it is and what it is offering. Dharamshala takes longer, and the reason is that it is not one place but several, stacked vertically along a hillside in a

The Hill Town That Doesn’t Rush You There is a particular kind of arrival that Dalhousie produces, and it is different from most Indian hill destinations. You come in through pine forest, the road winding steadily upward, the air cooling in the way that mountain air does — noticeably, pleasantly, in a way that marks