Shimla in Winter; Mountains and Clouds, looking South of Shimla

This photograph shows a view of Shimla during the winters from an elevated platform overlooking a snow-clad mountainous landscape covered with pine trees.

Shimla, the current capital of Himachal Pradesh, was regarded as a favoured resort with the British residents in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It was known as the ‘English Convalescent Station’. Sharing his first impressions about Shimla in 1863 , Bourne’s states,“I must confess to disappointment on my first view of Shimla . A mass of apparently tumble-down native dwellings on the top of a ridge, with bungalows scattered here and there on the side of a mountain covered partially with fir trees….”.

However, as he further got acquainted with the city he wrote, “It has afforded me a considerable number of pictures of a certain class, while, as regards the climate, nothing could be finer”. Crucial for Bourne’s Himalayan expeditions, Shimla was an ideal trailhead for the access of regions into the high country.