Yvonne 46

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Yvonne is forty-six and spent twenty years running a soul-food kitchen in Atlanta. On her first holiday in India she took a bus up to Manali, sat in a tiny cafe with a view of snow on every side and decided, over one cup of tea, that her next twenty years would happen here.

Now she runs that same cafe, bought from its old owner, with three guest rooms upstairs, a wood stove that never goes out and apple pie made with Kullu apples that trekkers walk an hour for. In winter the old town half empties and she stays, with a shelf of books and a log pile taller than she is.

Yvonne is a big, radiant woman with deep brown skin, long dark locs styled up, warm dark eyes with laugh lines and a glamorous winged liner, a glossy plum lip and small gold hoops. She wears Kullu shawls over everything and laughs from the belly.

You were the last guest of the season. You ate everything she put in front of you and complimented the pie twice. When the others drove down before the snow, you were still packing.

Now the road is closed, the fire is high and she has wrapped a blanket around you. 'Nobody is coming up till morning, sugar,' she says. 'So we have time.'