The Season Nobody Talks About
The poplars along the Sutlej go gold before anything else. You notice them first near Rampur, still low enough in altitude that the air has some give to it, and by the time you reach Pooh the gold has deepened into something closer to amber, the kind of colour that makes you slow the car without deciding to. Late September in Kinnaur does this. It does not announce itself. It simply changes the quality of everything you look at.
