Sunset Over the Ridges

Hill Station, India · landscape

The sun drops behind tree-covered ridges as the valleys fill with haze. The familiar geometry of a hill station evening.

Indian hill stations all do this — late afternoon, the sun loses its edge, the layers of ridges separate from one another in the haze, and the valleys fill up with something that's not quite mist and not quite smoke. You can stand on a viewpoint for two hours and watch the same view change four times.

This one was from a path that wandered out behind a town, past the last of the homestays and into a strip of mixed forest. The viewpoint was unmarked. I sat on a rock for a while before taking the picture. The sun was small and pale by then, the trees a clean dark line, and the ridges receding into one another like cardboard cutouts. By the time I walked back the lights had come on below and the whole town smelled of woodsmoke and tea.

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