Layers of forested hills with the town of Almora spread across a ridge in the middle distance, and a row of snow-covered Himalayan peaks along the horizon under a clear blue sky.

Almora at the foot of the full Kumaon Himalayan range on a November morning

Near Mukteshwar, Uttarakhand · November 2020

A town spread across a hill, and behind it the full snow line of the Kumaon Himalayas — peak after peak, against nothing but blue. This is Almora seen from a ridge near Mukteshwar on a clear November morning.

Almora is about a couple of hours away by road from here, and the snow is another world beyond it. But November in Kumaon strips out the haze that softens these distances the rest of the year. In this light, the town and the mountains look like they share the same slope — a whole city at the base of the Himalayas, with nothing between them but air.

Photograph: Hisalu