Waterside homes in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand

Rishikesh is where the Ganga leaves the mountains. The river arrives green and fast out of the Shivaliks and slows onto the plain a few kilometres downstream, and the town is arranged around that transition: ghats at Triveni, ashrams and dharamshalas up both banks, footbridges instead of road bridges across the gorge, and the pilgrim road to Badrinath and Kedarnath starting here.

The building tradition worth knowing is Garhwali rather than riverine. Up the valleys behind the town, houses are built of dressed local stone with courses of deodar or chir pine bedded into the walls, a method that rides out an earthquake better than mortar does, with slate roofs, deeply carved door frames and a stone-flagged yard shared between two or three households. The older houses on the valley floor are more modest, plastered stone with a wide verandah and a low-pitched roof, built for heat rather than for snow.