Shaana goes north and east

Where did you last travel? Who with, and what did you learn? The third text in Unit 3 is different in form: it's a set of postcards! Shaana lives on Rameswaram island and is travelling across India with her parents (Appa and Amma), writing to her school friends.

30 April: Thajiwas glacier, Kashmir, "way up north". "The glaciers are white and blue and we have to wear four layers of clothes." Appa and Amma throw snowballs, "but they say there was much more snow last year". Her hands are shaking without gloves, so she stops writing.

10 May: Himachal Pradesh, by another train. "So many mountains from our cabin. Colourful birds wake me with their chirping when the Sun rises in the east." She thinks she hears bears growling in the west at night, "but Amma says that's just Appa snoring". She'd love to hug a bear!

17 May: Arunachal Pradesh, and a discovery: "Arunachal is far from Himachal! Himachal is in the north, Arunachal all the way in the east. I thought all the Pradesh states sat next to each other." (A shared name doesn't mean a shared place!)

They took two trains, drove a long way, then walked through a forest to their treehouse. "The forest is so thick that if you blink or stop to tie your shoelaces, you'll get lost." She loves Arunachal best so far, and hopes to see red pandas.

24 May: the Sundarbans, West Bengal. Amma and Appa take her on the river in a small boat. "Amma says places like this are called wetlands. I never knew trees called mangroves could grow in seawater!" They see crocodiles and a lonely snake: "I hope they don't follow us home!"

But one line isn't a child's wonder: "Amma is sad about how much this place floods today." Put it beside "there was much more snow last year" in Kashmir: the postcards are quietly recording changes the grown-ups have noticed.