Growing up, summer vacations often included one trip to a cooler place in the Himalayas. I remember so clearly now how keen I would be that the hotel room have a view.

One summer we went to Dharamshala, close to Mcleod Ganj where the Dalai Lama lived and I suppose still does. Some family friends had arranged for the hotel room for us. When we got there I stood by the window and looked out at the narrow alleys densely packed with houses with barely a glimpse of the sky. My dad could read the disappointment in my face that this hotel did not offer good views. He asked our friends for other hotels and they found us a room elsewhere, some distance from the main street but with relatively open spaces. We stayed there a couple of days till a vacancy opened up at the most desirable accommodations in town with the best views. Here, our room opened into a lawn at the end of which were endless vistas of the valley and neighboring Himalayan peaks. One evening while everyone stood around the lawns drinking their evening chai we witnessed a brush fire in the hills .

Some of the best views we had were in Manali where the hotel was perched on a mountain slope and the large windows looked out to the Beas river in the distance and beyond that the hills where several groves of Pine trees happened to be clumped in overlapping triangles. This fascinated me endlessly. Immediately outside our windows were apricot trees. We would stick our hand out the open windows and pick fruit to snack on. We filled a few plastic bags with apricots for when it was time to go home.