‘Discovering’ Kullu and Manali: Colonial Interventions and Excursions, Circa 1846–1925

This article focuses on Manali and the Kullu Valley in Himachal Pradesh. It seeks to reconstruct colonial interventions and excursions in the area between 1846 and 1925 to examine the emergence of modern recreational travel and tourism in the Kullu Valley. In doing this, the article contributes to the scholarship on hill stations in South Asia in two ways. First, it incorporates the largely missing colonial history of tourism in Manali and the Kullu Valley into existing scholarship. Second, it argues that what this tourist history reflects is that even without the building of a colonial urban settlement, colonial practices of visiting the ‘wilderness’ could themselves produce subsequent urbanisation—catalysing sites from which the Himalayas were consumed for recreation and leisure. The article is in three parts: The first part considers the distinction between colonial travel and tourism and older, indigenous forms of mobility and visitation. The second part illustrates the chronological development of colonial settlement and tourism in Kullu, including imaginative and tangible infrastructures for travel as the number of English visitors increased. Finally, the article reflects on how colonial excursions and interventions set the stage for tourism and urbanisation to flourish in postcolonial Manali and the larger Kullu district.