Oh, hello Himalayan Mountains.

After a few days in Ludhiana we traveled northeast into Himachal through Parwanoo and Kasauli deeper into the Himalayan Mountains. They look nothing like the Rocky Mountains and are much grander, more elegant, and include people living within every nook and cranny. It is hard to imagine why someone would choose to live here - perhaps they do not have the economic resources to live anywhere else.

The mountain roads are hardly considered a road and are one lane wide, but here we drive close to 30 or 40 kph on them and they become three-lane highways. (See mom, this is what you should be worried about - not Pakistan!) After an exhaustively beautiful drive we arrived at our mountain guest house, provided - yet again - by the Trident Group and complete with its own cooking staff who had prepared tea for us upon our arrival.

We took a short hike up into the mountains to watch the sunset. Along the way we met many children who lived in tin shack "homes" built into the side of the rock, and had somehow managed to clear an open and (relatively) flat area to play cricket. Seeing the setting sun dip below a far off range of mountains, the magnificence of it all made it easy to understand why so many people lived here, even if not by choice.

CM