India's snowy Himachal Pradesh keeps two capitals, one for each season
Shimla runs the show in summer, Dharamshala in winter. Himachal Pradesh, whose name means roughly the land sheltered by the snows, stretches across the western Himalayas and feeds both the Indus and the Ganges basins. It also became one of India's best-electrified states, with 99.5% of households connected by 2016.
The state covers 55,673 square kilometres of mountain country. The Zanskar range crosses its northeast and the great Himalayan range its north and east, while the Dhauladhar and Pir Panjal ranges and their valleys make up the heart of the land. Its rivers, including the Chenab, Ravi, Beas, Sutlej and Yamuna, never run dry, because snowmelt and rain keep them topped up. Four of the five rivers that gave Punjab its name pass through it.
Altitude produces wild swings in weather. The southern tracts are hot and humid, the high northern and eastern ranges are alpine or glacial, and while Dharamsala is soaked by heavy rain, Lahaul and Spiti are cold and nearly dry. People have lived in these hills since prehistory; the foothills were home to people of the Indus Valley Civilisation, at its height from 2250 to 1750 BCE, and groups such as the Kols and Mundas are thought to be the earliest hill peoples.
Later centuries brought small Vedic republics, conquest by the Gupta Empire and then a patchwork of local chiefs and Rajput principalities. Mahmud Ghaznavi took Kangra early in the 11th century. The Gorkha kingdom, powerful in Nepal from 1768, pushed west, and its general Amar Singh Thapa defeated Kangra's ruler Sansar Chand Katoch in 1806 before the British drove the Nepali forces back.
Modern Himachal was stitched together on 15 April 1948 from 30 small princely states. It became a Part C state on 26 January 1950, absorbed Bilaspur in July 1954 and turned into a union territory on 1 November 1956. Today farming, orchards, hydropower and tourism drive the economy. A 2017 corruption survey rated it the least corrupt state in India, and in 2016 it was declared the country's second state free of open defecation.
Source: Himachal Pradesh
