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“For those travelling from cacophonous cities to these hills, this silence can seem menacing. It is broken only by the calls of birds and animals, cow bells, and the cries of unseen herdsmen across the slopes. Some friends of mine run from it, restless and bored after a day or two. One of them was too fearful to leave the safety of our house at all. A few find that the forest changes something inside them for good: no other place, however beautiful or exciting, will ever mean to them what the Himalaya does. These are the people who keep coming back. Some decide to live here, as we have.”

When novelist Anuradha Roy and her husband chanced upon a dilapidated cottage in Ranikhet, they decided to make it their home. Leaving behind the hustle and bustle of their city life in Delhi, the couple embraced the gradual pace of life in the hills. Twenty-five years later, she wrote her first work of non-fiction, Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya, an intimate memoir capturing her observations and experiences.

In a conversation with Scroll, Roy spoke about, among other things, the moment she decided to live in the hills, her favourite mountain writers and her...

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