Spring

Spring opens the sky. The winter haze lifts and the whole rim of the Himalaya stands out clean — a wall of snow peaks turning right around you, the clearest, finest mountain-viewing the year gives. After the closed-in cold, everything feels like it is slowly opening up — and the bright winter birds that filled the bare branches begin to drift back up toward the high country as the warmth climbs the slopes.

And it opens in colour. The buransh sets the slopes crimson, but it is far from alone — peach and plum blossom, the soft yellow of the mimosa (kesari, we call it), the orchards and the whole wild hillside coming into bloom at once. The first real warmth means the heaviest woollens go back onto their shelves.

Children carry baskets of flowers door to door for Phool Dei, laying blossom and rice on every threshold — the Kumaoni new year, kept by the young — and a little later the long, musical run-up to Holi fills the evenings with song. Mid-April's Bikhauti, with its cold river-dips and old fairs, marks the turn into the warm half of the year. It is the gentlest weather the hills ever give: bright soft mornings, easy afternoons, the year leaning forward and beginning again.