THANEDAR (HILL OF APPLES)
By ravinderjeet singh Submitted 2008-08-21 02:59:41 ~ articledirectory.com
Yes it is in Himachal state of India. The smell of blue pine and conifer trees that carpet the hills lingers in the air long after you have taken the last turn into Thanedar. Also lingering in this fruit bowl of India is reverence for an American missionary who headed to these hills in 1904, married a Himachali girl and transformed the village. The apple trees he planted in Kotgarh next door continue to reap a rich harvest even 100 years later. In fact, Samuel aka Satyanand Stokes is a family name in the entire Shimla region. The belt is replete with apple boughs. The orchards are bare and grey in winter and you have to strain hard to catch a glimpse of colour. But head here mid-April onwards and watch the trees come alive with white-green flowers that burst forth into blood-red fruit by mid-may.
THINGS TO SEE AND DO Continue reading »
In apple country, there’s nothing more exhilarating than picking your apple and eating it too. The apple blooms play hide and seek with the less exotic plums, the white almond trees and other stone fruit that are sure to rouse your passions, if fruit is your aphrodisiac.
source: http://10yearitch.com/
About 18kms northeast of Narkanda is the little village of Thanedar. Situated just off the old Hindustan-Tibet road, it is where the apple-farming revolution, if you can call it that, originated. The British had introduced cooking apples in India in the late 19th century but these were not sweet and therefore not coveted by the locals or viable for the market. Samuel Stokes, an American, who came to India in 1904 in search of spirituality stayed on to marry a local girl and made it his life’s mission to help the impoverished people of Himachal. After experimenting with other crops and failing, he decided to give apple-farming a try. He brought a sapling of the red, deliciously sweet variety of apples from Philadelphia and planted them in Thanedar. And the rest, as they say, is history 
! Today, the economy of Himachal is on the up completely because of the flourishing apple industry.
Today morning we checked out of the lovely Tethys Resort and asked for a cab to take us to Thanedar. Continue reading »
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