And we aren’t disappointed. Prakash Thakur, the soft-spoken owner of the Orchard Retreat, greets us and points out our room, the Apple Room. This is one of their best rooms, because it offers stunning views across the mountains. It’s on the first floor, a small room with a balcony on one side. The room has large windows down two sides, and a fabulous view of the apple trees across the hillside. Inside, it isn’t luxurious, but clean and comfortable—warm golden wood wardrobe, a large watercolour of flowers above the bed; two chairs with a tiny coffee table; a dressing table; and lamps on the two bedside tables. The bed itself, with a firm mattress and a warm quilt, is very comfy. The attached bathroom is small too, but has a geyser for hot water; a bucket and mug (de rigueur for most Indians, who wouldn’t use a bathtub or shower) and a shower. The linen, both bath and bed, is clean. Incidentally, the room has neither telephone nor TV—and we don’t miss them.

The Orchard Retreat has six such double rooms; they also have two family suites and two tents. Rates begin at Rs 4,000 (which is what we’ve paid), inclusive of all meals. Which is morning tea, evening tea (both with biscuits!), breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food is Indian, with a distinctly home cooked feel to it, not too spicy or oily. After our time at Shimla, our digestions can’t help but be thankful.

All extras—beverages, laundry, cab, telephone calls, and trekking guide—can be availed of at an extra charge. Hammocks, a library (with a small collection of very varied books; also a chess board and other board games), and a table tennis table are available, free of charge. The staff are polite, helpful, and thankfully unobtrusive—and Prakash Thakur is a friendly, warm host. At a bonfire before dinner, he chats with us and another guest, telling us about the property, about apples, and Himachal.

This is really one of those peaceful, lovely places that help iron the kinks out of your system. It’s so quiet, one can almost hear the silence. The rosebushes planted around the retreat are laden with flowers of just about every conceivable shade, from mauve to salmon. The honeysuckle is deliciously fragrant, the green apples on the trees very picturesque indeed.

Definitely recommended, and that too very highly.

Prakash Thakur, the owner of Orchard Retreat, asks us at breakfast how we plan to spend our day. When we say we’re planning to go to Tani Jubbal Lake and maybe the church at Kotgarh, he says, "How about Hatu Peak? The view from the top is fantastic. There are forests all along the way." Both Tarun and I are all for the woods, so we decide to put Hatu Peak up there on the top of our itinerary.

We drive up 15 km along the Thanedhar-Narkanda road. Just short of Narkanda, a steep and narrow road rises up a ridge towards Hatu Peak. A sign says Hatu Peak is 6.5 km away. The drive uphill is strenuous, the gradient so steep that our car literally groans at times as it struggles upward.

"This road needs a 4x4," Tarun says. And then he admits that a 4x4 wouldn’t actually be any use, because it wouldn’t fit this road anyway. The road’s only about eight feet across nearly all the way. There are a couple of narrow clearings along the way, but that’s all. We dread meeting another car coming down (a fear that comes true when we’re on our way back and meet up with a car coming up; maneuvering and making space for the two cars to scrape past each other takes nearly five minutes).

But the view is stupendous: dense woods of mixed conifers, ferns, banks of gorgeous wildflowers, and glimpses of wildlife. Tarun sees a red jungle fowl; I spot a rabbit-like rodent (God knows what); and there are troops of langurs further up.

We eventually reach the peak, whose summit is at 3,400 mt and does host a rather picturesque temple with a sloping slate-tiled roof. The summit of the peak, a long wide ridge, is stunning. Wildflowers, yellow, white and mauve, spread in a carpet right along the mountainside down to where the forests begin. As we wander around, taking photographs and gawping at the beauty of this place, the mist and the clouds start rolling in, first making the forests look deliciously alluring, then blanking them out completely. We hang around a while, and then, when the scenery disappears behind a screen of cotton wool, we decide it’s time to leave. The first kilometre or so downhill is a bit difficult and we have to creep back at about 10 kilometre per hour, but things clear at a lower altitude and it’s a comfortable drive back to Thanedhar.

Verdict? Not to be missed. The wildflowers, the woods, the view: all of it is hard to beat. And if you want to trek all the way, it’s a 6 km walk one way from the Orchard Retreat. They’ll provide a trekking guide for Rs 350.

Anyway, Sharmaji, in consultation with Prakash Thakur, decides that the best bet would be to take us to the nearby Saroga Forest. Saroga is a traditional Orchard Retreat trekking route, the trek taking three hours. Typically, a vehicle drops trekkers off at the start of the trek—a point about 3 km from the Orchard Retreat. The vehicle then drives off to the end point of the trek, and picks up the trekkers three hours later when they arrive. Tarun and I want a short walk—maybe about an hour or so—so Sharmaji suggests we park the car at the starting point of the trek, then do part of the trek and loop back again to the car. Sounds good, so we drive off with Sharmaji and three large, sturdy umbrellas in tow—in case it rains.

The road up to Saroga Forest rises from the Thanedhar main road, and is rough, dirt track in parts. The recent rain has brought down stones and mud, so the surface isn’t too good. Sharmaji directs Tarun to park on one side of the road, and we get out and get going. The trail Sharmaji leads us on used to be the forest inspection path. It’s a fairly well-defined path that clings to the edge of the mountain, so narrow that we are forced to walk single file. Tarun makes me go on ahead so that the two men can moderate their pace to suit what’s comfortable for me. I’m really in no danger of getting left behind, but being first person on the trail has its disadvantages—by the time we get back to the car, I’m covered in twigs, dead leaves and cobwebs that I’ve blundered into and inadvertently cleared for those who follow.

Sharmaji is a mine of information about the forest. This is a forest of mixed conifers: silver fir, blue pine, deodar cedars, some rhododendron, the odd oak. There are ferns, shrubs, wildflowers, bushes laden with berries—and Sharmaji seems to know something interesting about each one of them. We’ve just about begun when he bends down and plucks a small mauve wildflower. "This is called banaksh," he says. "In the villages, they gather the flowers and dry them. If you boil the dried flowers and drink the brew, it’s a sure cure for a fever." He points out the Taxus Himalayana, a conifer with very distinctive needles: the tip of every bunch of needles is a bright, light green whereas the rest of the bunch is much darker. "This is used as a source of Taxol," Sharmaji says. "Which is used to treat cancer. Our old men in the villages used to drink a tea made from the bark of this tree."

Sharmaji also tells us that the fine, small needles of these conifers make an excellent substitute for hay. "They’re easily obtainable," he says. "You can literally pick up all you want from the forest floor. And laid in a bed on a cowshed floor, it makes a clean, warm, and comfortable bed for cattle. And the weight of a cow breaks the needles down very soon. Mix that with cow dung, let some earthworms loose in it, and you get very good compost. The man who owns the shop on the road above the Orchard Retreat uses this compost in his apple orchards. Thrice a year he forks it in, and that’s all that’s needed." He adds that the Orchard Retreat themselves have used this compost to grow vegetables—aubergines and tomatoes.

We walk on, and Sharmaji points out a rhododendron tree. He tells us that the rhododendron—currently not in flower, unfortunately—has a special place in the traditions of Himachal. In March and April, when the rhododendron bursts into bright red flowers, people gather the flowers and give them pride of place in a special religious ceremony that heralds spring.

As we wander along, we hear and see signs of life around us, mainly birds chirping in the undergrowth. At one point, we enter a small clearing and startle a pair of partridges that flap off in a flurry of handsome brown, white and black plumage. Sharmaji tells us that this time of the year, there aren’t too many wild animals to be seen; most of them confine themselves to the higher reaches. "That’s mainly because the fruit’s growing right now in the orchards," he says. Nearly all orchard owners post a watchman who acts as a guard, and it appears even the wild animals shy away from the guard. "Once the fruit’s been picked and dispatched and all that’s left is tough or rotting fruit, the animals start coming down," he tells us. "You can even see them in the Thanedhar street sometimes." The local fauna is small, as I’ve read in the Orchard Retreat’s brochure. Himalayan weasels, flying squirrels, small cats. There are bears too, but much more elusive.

On the side of the path, Sharmaji stops to point out some ferns. These have fronds of leaves, but there are also leafless tendrils. "This is similar to a Himachali delicacy known as lingad," our guide says. Tarun and I recall seeing lingad being sold in Shimla: long, thick curling tendrils tied into bunches like asparagus. "Lingad is a fern too," Sharmaji continues. "And it tastes very much like asparagus. Delicious." Lingad should never be washed after it’s been cut, he says. Like okra, it exudes a gluey, yucky secretion if its cut parts come in contact with water.

We move on, admiring a small meadow of yellow wildflowers; a far-off view of the River Sutlej meandering away into the distant mountains; a bush laden with red berries that even Sharmaji can’t identify. By the time we arrive at our car, an hour later, we’re feeling strangely exhilarated. My face is scratched and my sweater is festooned with cobwebs, but I’m happy. Our walk through Saroga has been fun. And I know—more or less—what to do with lingad if I’m ever faced with having to cook some.

We do Tani Jubbal after returning from the picturesque Hatu Peak. At first glance, we can’t really believe our eyes; this is the lake? It’s more oval than round, hemmed in by a stone embankment-walkway of sorts. The water’s muddy and dirty, an almost opaque brown in colour. We park at the far end of the lake, just beyond where a gang of workmen has just downed tools for lunch. They stare unabashedly at us as we get out of the car and wander around to the Nag Devta Temple at the far end of the lake.

Nag Devta—literally, the Snake God—is worshipped by many Hindus, but I must admit that this is the first temple to the Nag Devta that I’ve ever seen. It’s a pretty little temple, standing in a patch of grass studded with wildflowers, a striking weeping willow drooping on one side. The temple has a slate-tiled sloping roof; its pillars and the decorative closed arches along each side are painted green. Most interesting—and this is something Tarun points out to me—are the two snakes painted on either side of the door, on the doorposts. The temple’s closed, but that hardly makes a difference; in any case, the Nag Devta Temple is not open to outsiders.

We walk around the lake once, looking out for signs of any life in its murky waters. All we manage to see is a frog that looks dead. A green dragon fly buzzes half-heartedly around us, then whizzes off into the undergrowth on our left. Ten minutes after we came, we bundle into our car and head back to Thanedhar.

Advice? Don’t come to Tani Jubbal. It’s not picturesque or historic or commendable in any other way. Just about its only saving grace is the temple, and even that only because it’s a little unusual. Visit only if you’re really bored and can’t think of anything else to do with your time.

Barely had Stokes settled in when a devastating earthquake hit the Kangra Valley, also in Himachal. Spurred on by his desire to be of use, Stokes took himself off to Kangra and did a lot of voluntary work, helping to rehabilitate those who’d lost family and homes in the quake. Stokes’s work at Kangra was exemplary, but it eventually wore him out, and when it was over, he moved to Kotgarh, (in the vicinity of Thanedhar) to recuperate.

In Kotgarh, things began happening in Stokes’s life. He fell in love with, and married, a local girl called Agnes. He spent some time living in a cave as a Christian hermit. And he realised that this part of Himachal had potential as an agricultural treasure house. If Stokes could grow something more lucrative than what the farmers cultivated at the time, he might be able to help the farmers improve their lot too. The young American began experimenting—initially with wheat and barley, and then with something rather more unusual: apples.

The Stark brothers, in faraway Louisiana, had also been hard at work experimenting. The result of their experiments had been, in 1916, the development of an apple they called the Red Delicious. In 1919, Stokes sent for Red Delicious seedlings from the States, and when they arrived, planted and nurtured them. In 1926, the first lot of fruit from Stokes’s orchards hit the market, and were a success. In the meantime, Stokes had started distributing seedlings to other farmers all across the Kotgarh-Thanedhar area, and the story of the Himachal apple had begun.

Other events had also started taking place in Stokes’s life. He had converted to Hinduism and changed his name to Satyanand. And he had become an important and well-loved man in Kotgarh and Thanedhar.

Shortly after he had arrived in Kotgarh, Stokes had initiated a `passive resistance’ movement among the people of Kotgarh to protest against the government’s system of forced labour. The government eventually had to back down, and Stokes became something of a folk hero. Over the years, he helped set up and popularise education in the area (he himself taught a number of subjects in school and paid out of his own pocket to bring teachers to the region). Stokes also set up and ran a dispensary, and distributed grain free of cost during times of scarcity and disease. By 1919, he had entered politics—he joined the Indian National Congress and became an associate of Mahatma Gandhi. He began to actively work for the independence of India from British rule, and ended up even going to jail during the freedom movement—the only American to do so.

Stokes died in 1946, just a year before India became independent. That year, the Kotgarh-Thanedhar area produced 15,000 boxes of apples: 15,000 more than had been grown when Stokes arrived. To this charismatic and unusually dedicated man goes the credit of making an entire area self-sufficient.

Today, Stokes’s name is well-known in Kotgarh and Thanedhar. The stone temple that Stokes built in Kotgarh welcomes visitors, as does his family home in the village—though, since the family still lives there, you need permission to visit. Walls all across Kotgarh and Thanedhar are splashed with pre-election graffiti: Vote for Vidya Stokes, Congress Party. Vidya’s a descendant, and she continues the family’s association with the Congress Party.

And yes, the apples still grow in Thanedhar and Kotgarh. All across the hills, for miles and miles. And every year, between July and September, when the fruit is harvested and packed off for markets far and wide, the people of this area have something, once again, to thank Samuel Evans Stokes aka Satyanand Stokes for.