Himachal Pradesh

"The Himalayas are," says a Western writer M’cintyre, in Attack on Everest "the supreme mountains of the earth tossed high in some convulsion of the primal age, and stricken immobile, a frozen ocean of lava waves whose crests are on the outer fringess of space, whose depths and hollows are the secret places of the earth unknown and inaccessible rock-cut gorges set about by forest swamp and interlocking jungle, within whose grim recesses life may pullulate shut off for ever from the outer world, Himalaya the abode of snow. At least 40 heights exceed 24,000 feet. This mountain continent makes its own variations of climate from the coldest, aimless arid heights to dark, seamy sunless deeps, glaciers whence torrents run through caverns, measureless to man, down to the sun-parched plains of India. Here the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Alakananda burst smitten from the bound rock to wind a hundred miles, through hidden valleys, subterranean gorges and leagues treacherous tarai marsh to spread their healing water on the plains and so to find the ocean and the end of all things, re-absorption in the infinite, re-incarnation and rebirth - the very symbol of the pantheistic cults, that give them adoration."