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fter the cheerful but relentless din of Delhi, hiking the forested trails of the Himalayan foothills feels like a soothing prospect. But as we wind ever higher up the vertiginous hairpin bends of Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region, the spirit of Delhi appears to live in every roadside town. Each is a cacophonous riot of animals, children, hawkers, traders, tourists, buses and carts. It is both exhilarating and exhausting.
April marks the waning of the season for walkers, as dried-up riverbeds and tinderbox valleys await the lush renewal of monsoon season. For miles in every direction, steep forested mountains cascade in spiny ridges with impossible terraces hewn out of the landscape for subsistence farming.
At 6,000ft, a haze hangs over the valley as villagers burn the old grasses before the rains come. The smoke forms a shroud that confounds any hopes of witnessing what we have really come to see: the snowy peaks of the Indian Himalayas.
Steep forested mountains cascade in spiny ridges across Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region
