Episode 9: Himachal Pradesh — The Land the British Never Wanted to Leave

In March of 1959, a 23-year-old man left home in the middle of the night, dressed as an ordinary soldier so no one would look twice at him and didn't really stop moving for two weeks. He crossed some of the highest mountain passes on the planet, on foot, and on the back of a zoo. A yak cattle hybrid built for exactly this kind of terrain. With an army that wanted him stopped, closing in somewhere behind him the entire way. By the time he crossed into India, he was exhausted and reportedly quite ill. The Indian government offered him somewhere to stay. A half forgotten former British hill station that hadn't mattered much to anyone in decades. He accepted. He's been there ever since. So has the government he set up within the year and so eventually wear tens of thousands of people who made the same mountain crossing behind him. The man was the 14th Dalai Lama. The hill station was Tharamshala and the state that absorbed all of it without a huge amount of global attention is where we are spending today's episode. I'm Ray. Welcome back to around India in half an hour. This is episode nine and we're staying above sea level for most of it. Himachal Pradesh, a state built for vertical terrain, former colonial retreats and a 67 year old refugee community that a lot of the world only knows through its single most famous resident. We'll get into the wars that decided who controlled these hills before the British ever showed up. The man most Himachalese credit with turning a scattering of princely states into an actual functioning place. A 2023 disaster that's still shaping how the state government thinks about building anything here and a seven foot tall wrestler who became one of WWE's biggest global stars. Let's start climbing. Starting with the numbers because they are unusual even by Himalayan standards. Himachal Pradesh covers about 55,700 square kilometers, roughly the size of Croatia but ranges in elevation from just 350 meters in its southern plains to 6,816 meters at Rheopurgil. It's highest peak out in the speedy region. Very few places on earth pack that much vertical range into one administrative unit and it means the state doesn't really have a single climate or single landscape. It has several stacked on top of each other. Coming up from the south you hit the Shivalik hills first, low, young, the outermost and least dramatic of the Himalayan ranges. Keep climbing and you reach the mid elevation belt around Shimla and Kulu. Tens with pine and towering diodar, seder, dominated by the Tholadhar and beer-punjal ranges. Beyond that sits the high dry Zanskar range and past that the Trans Himalayan cold desert of Lahore and Spiti. A landscape of bare rock and thin air that looks and geologically more or less is an extension of the Tibetan plateau. Five major rivers drain all of this, the Pias, Satlej, Ravi, Chenab and a short stretch of the Yamuna along the Sadanaj. Every one of them snow or glacier-fed dropping fast through narrow valleys on the way down. That combination of heavy snow melt and steep confined terrain is exactly why the state has become one of India's most important hydropower producers and as we'll get into one of its most disaster exposed. Climate shifts with poor elevation and season here in a way that can be hard to picture if you've never been somewhere this vertical. The lower Kangra and Una belts get a proper monsoon and real summer heat. The mid-hills around Manali stay temperature with genuine winter snow and Spiti and Lahore sitting in the rain shadow of the main Himalayan wall are technically classified as cold desert. Some villages there get under 200 millimeters of precipitation a year. Almost all of it winters no fall rather than rain. Himachal shares borders with Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the north and northwest, Punjab to the west, Haryana to the south, Uttarakhand to the southeast and along the remote eastern edge of Kinnur and Lahore Spiti districts and actual international frontier with a Tibet autonomous region of China. That last one isn't just a line on a map it puts part of Himachal inside India border. Still unresolved border situation with China though this particular stretch sees far less military attention than the more contested sections of the frontier further east and west. That mountainous hard to reach geography shaped almost everything about how this region developed politically. It was never one kingdom that somebody down on the plains could conquer in a single campaign. Instead the terrain itself fractured the region into dozens of small defensible principalities each holding a value or two. Generally left to their own devices by whichever larger power happened to control Punjab at that time. Before any princely states existed this land was home to Janapadas, early tribal republics referenced in ancient texts including the Kulutas around present day Kulu. Described in some of the earliest sources as governing themselves more like a republic than a monarchy. Over the following centuries a patchwork of small hill kingdoms took shape across these valleys. Chamba, Kangra, Kulu, Mandi, Sirmar, Pilaspur, Pushaher and others. Several tracing their ruling families pack 12 over a thousand years, mostly surviving through some of the mixed geographic isolation and shifting alliances with the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals or from 1809 the Sikh Empire under Ranjeet Singh who took Kangra that year. Between roughly 1803 and 1815 Gorkha forces pushing out of Nepal swept through several of these hill states including Sirmar and Bushahar and their rule was harsh enough to be deeply resented by the local population. That expansion eventually brought the Gorkhas into conflict with the British East India Company and the resulting Anglo-Gorkha war of 1814 to 1816 ended with a British victory and the Treaty of Sugali which pushed Gorkha control back roughly to Nepal's present borders and left Britain as the dominant regional power. Most local rulers kept their thrones as princely states under British paramount sea rather than being directly annexed and somewhat usually within colonial India. The hill states stayed loyal to Britain during the 1857 uprising when large parts of the plains did not. What the British really wanted from these mountains beyond security was relief from the plain summer heat Shimla developed from the 1820s onward was declared the official summer capital of British India in 1864. Complete with a narrow gauge railway line up from Kalka a mock-tutor architectural style that still defines its skyline today and for several months of every year the effective seat of the entire Raj's administration relocating uphill. Tharamshala, Talhausi and Khasawli developed a smaller version of the same idea. That colonial confidence in the hills took a brutal hit on April 4, 1905 when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake tore through the Kangra valley killing more than 20,000 people and flattening Kangra, Meclad Gunge and Tharamshala almost completely. One of the deadliest earthquakes recorded anywhere in the world during the first decades of the 20th century. It's still the reference point Himachals, Disney, and the rest of the world. disaster planners used today and the state remains classified in the highest seas micrisc zone in the country. That's worth holding on to because it's the same underlying fact that resurfaces later in the episode in a different form. This landscape is young, actively moving and has never really stopped reminding the people living on it. After 1947 the princely states sign the instrument of a session and we're folded together in states. Chief Commissioner Spravins in 1948, a part C state in 1950, a union territory in 1956 and then in 1966 a major territorial expansion when Punjab's hilly Hindi speaking districts, Kandra, Kulu, Lahalspithi and Shimla among them were transferred over following Punjab's linguistic reorganization. Full statehood arrived on January 25th, 1971 making Himachal Pradesh the 18th state of the Indian Union. One person drove most of that process from start to finish. Dr. Yashwan Singh Parmar, a Srimar-Bhorn lawyer and academic who organized the 1948 Sukhet Satyagraha that helped force the princely states merger, then served as the territories first chief minister for most of the period between 1952 and 1977. Beyond the political case for statehood Parmar pushed hard on roads, schools and critically for the state's later economy. A deliberate strategy built around horticulture, he's still known across Himachal as Himachal Nirmata, the creator of Himachal and the Apple economy will get to shortly traces its roots directly to his tenure. Then in 1959 the story view opened with following the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule that March the Dalai Lama was granted asylum by Prime Minister Jawahalla Nehru's government and settled in Meclod Gunsh, the upper part of Tharamshala. In 1960 he established what's now called the Central Tibetan administration, a democratically structured government in exile, currently led by a Sikh Yung or elected political leader. Working alongside the Dalai Lama's separate religious role. Tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees followed over the following decades and Dharmshala and Meclod Gunsh now hold one of the largest Tibetan exile communities anywhere. Sometimes called little Lhasa, China's government maintains its governance of Tibet is a legitimate exercise of sovereignty and considers the Dalai Lama a separatist figure. The Central Tibetan administration and its international supporters frame the same history differently. That disagreement remains unresolved and it's a live diplomatic issue between India and China to this day. Not a settled question with an obvious right answer. Whatever any individual's sympathies might be. Himachal's population sits at roughly 7.5 million. One of India's smaller states by that measure spread across the landscape that's still mostly rural. This remains one of India's least urbanized states with most residents living in villages and small towns rather than cities. Shimla serves as the summer capital and larger city. Dharmshala has since 2017 functioned as the state's winter capital. Letting the government relocate down hill once Shimla's winters make governing difficult. The current state government led by Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhw of the Indian National Congress alongside Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri has spent 2026 pushing an agenda built around green energy, lower industrial power tariffs and infrastructure expansion including a planned extension of Kangra airport meant to grow the tourism sector further. One of the year's most persistent economic disputes has centered on apples. With the crop worth an estimated 4500 crore rupees a year and supporting around 250,000 growing families, the state government has repeatedly pushed Delhi for higher import duties on foreign apples, particularly from New Zealand and Turkey arguing that existing trade concessions have led cheaper imports undercut local growers in the off-season storage market. There's a harder story sitting underneath the tourism brochures too. In July 2023, the match will experience its worst monsoon disaster in decades. A national disaster management authority report recorded more than 5700 landslides, 45 cloud bursts and roughly 500 deaths that season. With the total damage estimated over 8600 crore rupees. The same report pointed two separate causes rather than a single one. Intensifying climate change, driving more extreme rainfall events, and independently unregulated construction on unstable slopes and food plains tied to road widening and hydro power development. The state's hydro power sector supplies most of Himachal's own electricity, a meaningful share of this revenue, and it now sits at the center of an active public conversation about whether current building practices are keeping pace with how fragile this particular terrain actually is. We've already met Dr. Yashwan Singh Parmar in the history section, but he belongs here too. Without his three decade campaign for statehood and his early bet on horticulture, this episode wouldn't have a state to cover. Or an Apple industry to argue about with Delhi. Shiam Saran Nehji, a schoolteacher from Kinnor district, holds a small but genuinely charming distinction. He's recognized as the first person to cast a vote in independent India's first general election in 1951 and voted in every election after that until his death in 2022 at the age of 106. Sanjay Kumar from the last pool district served with the Indian Army's Jama and Kashmir rifles during the 1999 Kargil war was awarded the Paramveer Chakra. India's highest military decoration for repeated assaults on enemy positions under fire, sustaining multiple gunshot wounds during the successful push to retake the Mushkoh valley. The Leeps Singh Rana, grew up in a small Himachali village and standing over seven foot tall, became the first performer of Indian origin to win a world heavyweight title in WWE. Wessling under the name the Great Kali, an improbable global pop culture export from a state better known internationally for mountains than entertainment. Kanganar Anath, born in Mandi district, built a major Bollywood career across Chandra's. One multiple national film awards and later moved into electoral politics, winning a Lok Sabha seat from Mandi and Shiva Keshevan. From Manali, competed in the Lush at six consecutive winter Olympics between 1998 and 2018, a rare career for an athlete from a country with almost no institutional winter sports infrastructure, much of it self-funded in the early years. Himachali food is cold weathered food, built for communal eating and its centerpiece is the harm. A full festive meal traditionally prepared by a hereditary community of cooks called Botes. Served on leaf plates at weddings and celebrations, built around rice, Rajma or another legume, and Mandra, a rich, mildly spiced curry of chickpeas or beans simmered slowly in yogurt. Mandra, paris by district, Kangra's version reportedly evolved with a chamba recipe that swapped in chickpeas once Rajma stopped being locally available and most districts now claim their own to take it. Siddhu is the other dish most people associate with the state, a steamed, lightly-leavened, white bread stuffed with poppy seed, walnut or spice lentils usually served with a generous ladle of ghee. Up in the higher Buddhist influence Lahals with the region, the food shifts to words Tibetan staple. like Thukpa, a hearty noodle soup, built for cold winters, cha-gosh, lamb, slow-cooked, in a yogurt-based gravy and babru, a stuffed fried bread in the same family as a kachori, drowned out the savoury side. On the drink side, something that often gets left out of the Himachali food conversations entirely, Kangra tea is the real mention. British Administrators surveyed the Kangra Valley for tea cultivation as early as 1849 and by the 1920s, the region was producing close to half of India's green tea. Much of it exported to Afghanistan and Iran. It earned an Indian geographical indigestion tag in 2005 and a European Union won in 2023. Cronon and Dhaladar facing slopes between 900 and 1400 meters with a distinctive nutty, slightly fruity character that tea specialists rate well above most Indian black tea. Away from tea, look thee. A home-form-entered rice we are made by boiling rice down slowly in clay pots. It remains a popular traditional drink across much of the state. Particularly in rural and tribal areas alongside Shuli, a fermented apricot spirit specific to Kinnar. Shimla is the obvious starting point on your places to visit list. Maul road, the Visarigal lodge and the narrow gauge Kalka Shimla toy train, a UNESCO World Heritage Railway that climbs over a hundred kilometers of hairpin track and more than a hundred tunnels to reach the old summer capital. Manali and the Kullu Valley further north along the Bias combine apple orchards, the Solang Valley's key and adventure spot scene and old Manali's back-packer cafes into one of India's most consistently popular hill destinations. Tharamshalla and Meclad Guns offer something different, the Dalai Lama's temple complex, working Tibetan monasteries and a hillside town that functions as a real living seat of government in exile rather than a museum piece. It's also home to the HPCA cricket stadium, which at 1457 meters above sea level holds the record as the highest altitude venue ever to host international cricket. Worth a visit purely for the Dholadar backdrop, even on a day with no match on. Something wilder, Spiti Valley, reachable only from around June through early October. Before snow closes the high passes offers a version of India that looks and feels closer to the Tibetan plateau than to the rest of Himachal, all cold desert and centuries old monasteries and beer building. In Kangra district has built an international reputation as one of the world's best paragliding sites, launching from a ridge above 2400 meters against the same Dholadar range. Himachal Pradesh of course uses the Indian rupee, trading at roughly around 95 to 96 to the US dollar as of mid-2026. Worth checking a live rate before you travel as always. Three pillars hold up the state's economy. Horticulture leads with apples alone accounting for 80 to 85% of food production and close to 4500 crore rupees in direct annual revenue. Hydropower comes next. Drawing on an estimated potential above 27,000 megawatts from the state's snow-fed rivers. Supplying most of Himachal's own power needs while exporting the surplus to the national grid and pharmaceutical and light manufacturing concentrated in the industrial town of Bhaddi has grown into one of India's largest farmer manufacturing hubs on the back of earlier central tax incentives. Tourism adds a meaningful fourth leg directly employing a large share of residents along the Shimla Manali Dharamshala corridor. Within India, Mahachal Pradesh means the hills, honeymoon and family hill station tourism. Apple orchards and for an older generation a specific nostalgia for British build Shimla as a former colonial summer capital. Internationally the state's profile runs almost entirely through Tharamshala's connection to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan exile community which draws a steady stream of visitors and researchers with little awareness of the rest of the state. Two facts get far less attention than they probably deserve. Mahachal's cricket stadium holds a genuine world altitude record and its signature fork dance holds one too. Nathi is Himachal's defining fork dance, a fast communal circle dance performed to dole the Mao drumming at festivals across Kulu, Mandi, Shimla, Sirmar, Chamba and Kinnar each district with its own regional variation. In 2015 a mass Nathi performance staged in Mandi entered the Guinness World Records for the largest fork dance ever recorded. Thousands of participants moving in coordinated rhythm, a point of considerable ongoing local pride. Kulu Dha Sahara held each October in the valley's Halpur Maidan draws several hundred thousand visitors for a week long festival built around processions of local deities carried down from mountain temples layered on top of the more familiar Pan Indian celebration of Rams victory over raven. Visually the Kangra School of miniature painting which flourished from the 18th century under the patronage of local hill state courts ranks among the major schools of Indian miniature art. Delicate lyrical work centered on Krishna devotional themes painted in a softer more naturalistic palette than the geometric Rajasthani schools further south and credited above all to two master painters, Nainsook and Manakhu whose work is now held in major museum collections worldwide. The Chamba Rumal and Embroidered cloth worked in a distinctive double satin stitch that renders an identical image on both sides of the fabric, developed as both a decorative textile and a traditional wedding gift and remains a protected recognized craft today. Up in the Buddhist influence districts of Lahore, Spithiyankanore, the artistic traditionships almost entirely to Tibetan Buddhist forms instead. Thanka painting, monastery mural work and ritual music and dance tied to the monastic calendar. Cricket has one singular claim to fame here, the HPCA Stadium in Dharamshala at 1457 meters is the highest altitude venue anywhere in the world to host international cricket and it regularly hosts IPL and international fixtures against a mountain backdrop. Most grounds simply cannot compete with. Beyond cricket, the state's terrain has produced a small but real pipeline of winter and adventure sport athletes despite almost no formal winter sports infrastructure to speak off. Shiva Keshewins, six Olympics, Luzh Karyar is the clearest example. Kabaddi carries genuine weight too. With former national team captain Ajay Thakur hailing from the state and shooting has delivered Olympic results as well. With Vijay Kumar taking silver in the 25 meter rapid fire pistol event at London 2012. More broadly, he marches geography has made it a legitimate adventure sports hub in its own right. Paragliding at beer building, white water rafting on the bias and trekking through the great Himalayan national park. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014. For most Indians, Himachal Pradesh means one thing above everything else. The hill station is skip. The place you go when the planes get unbearable in summer largely unchanged in that basic function since the British used it for exactly the same purpose. What that image consistently misses is the sheer range packed into one small state. A Buddhist majority cold desert in spethies sitting inside the same borders as Hindu temple towns in the lower hills. A government in exile and exile operating in the same district. as a record-holding cricket ground. International visitors, meanwhile often arrive in Dharamshala with almost no awareness of the rest of Himachal at all, treating it as a self-contained Tibetan Buddhist destination rather than one part of a much larger Indian state. What tends to go uncredited nationally is how consistently Himachal ranks among India's better performing states on literacy and per capita income, given how much harder basic infrastructure is to deliver on terrain this steep. And the question the state is visibly still working through, out in the open rather than hidden away is how much more road-building hydropower capacity and tourism development this particular landscape can actually absorb. A question the summer of 2023 answered at real cost. More clearly than anyone would have liked. There's a phrase the man from our opening still uses, "Tecaids into a life he never planned for." That nothing about any of this was ever meant to be permanent. He's been in Himachal longer than most of its residents have been alive. In a state that spent the same stretch of time discovering exactly how much its own ground can and can't hold. Both of those are still ongoing stories. Neither one is finished. Next stop, alphabetically, Charkhand. Forrest, mineral wealth and a very different kind of hard ground than the one we just left. Thanks for tuning into our ground in your half an hour. If this one was worth your time, hit follow and leave a review. It genuinely does help. Catch you next Tuesday.