HIMACHAL PRADESH (HP) is India's most popular and easily accessible hill state. Sandwiched between the Punjab and Tibet, its lowland orchards, subtropical forests and maize fields peter out in the higher reaches where pines cling to the steep slopes of mountains whose inhospitable peaks soar in rocky crags and forbidding ice fields to heights of more than 6000m.
Together with deep gorges cut by rivers crashing down from the Himalayas, these mountains form natural boundaries between the state's separate districts
An obvious way to approach the state is to head north from Delhi to the state capital, Shimla,
Another road from Shimla climbs slowly northwest to Mandi, a major staging post for the state. To the north is Himachal's most popular tourist spot, the Kullu Valley, an undulating mass of terraced fields, orchards and forests overlooked by snowy peaks. Its epicentre is the rapidly expanding tourist town of Manali - long a favourite hangout of Western hippies - set in idyllic mountain scenery and offering trekking, white-water rafting and relaxing hot springs in nearby Vashisht. The sacred site of Manikaran in the Parvati Valley also has hot sulphur-
free springs.
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