In order to avoid the extreme heat of Santiniketan from mid-May to mid-June, this year too, we took off for cooler climes. Although we wanted to go to Uttarakhand or Himachal we did not want to be anywhere near the tourist spots. So, after many hours on the internet, we chose a small village in Chamoli district in Uttarakhand for our respite. We decided we would divide our time between there and another little hamlet 30 kms from Dehradun. We rented two houses in the two places and our summer was sorted early in the year, by March in fact.