Backstory 2024: When I trekked two hours in Himachal for an interview

The driver and I sat in silence, assessing our failure. He had tried twice that June morning to drive up a very steep incline on a road in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district – and failed both times.

We were trying to get to the last motorable stop of the village Miroo, where a young farmer, Lalit Mohan, had agreed to speak to me about how a hydropower project nearby was impacting their lives and livelihoods. This was for a story I was researching on how dams in Himachal were selling dubious carbon credits.

Since we were unable to press forward on the road, I called Mohan to ask if he could come down to where we were – the last bus stop of the village, a kilometre short of the point that usually small vehicles were able to reach. From there, residents hike up for about a kilometre through narrow forested lanes to get to their homes.

But Mohan had a crucial task at hand. He was at the dhar, or the highest slope of his village, where he and others owned apple orchards. It was his family’s turn that day to access spring water to irrigate his orchard.

“If I miss doing this today, we do not know...

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