The tour operator Shakti Himalaya offers “culturally immersive” walking holidays in three remote, mountainous regions of India – Sikkim, Ladakh and Kumaon. But although these adventures take you far off the beaten track, says Pamela Goodman in Country Life, they involve none of the “hardship” such treks would usually entail.
The accommodation – in beautifully restored village houses or lodges – is “sumptuously comfortable”, with deep mattresses, wood-burning stoves and breathtaking views of snowcapped peaks (often through floor-to-ceiling windows). The food is fabulous, and the service is attentive. On the walks, picnic lunches are served on chequered-clothed tables in wooded glades.
For my latest trip with Shakti, I chose Kumaon, which makes up one half of the state of Uttarakhand, immediately northwest of Nepal. The company’s new showpiece here is Shakti Prana, a seven-bedroom lodge perched at 6,000 feet, with a “soul-filling” view of Nanda Devi (India’s second-highest peak after Kanchenjunga) and the five dramatic summits of the Panchachuli range. It sits a 45-minute walk from the nearest road, and a ten-hour, “helter-skelter” drive from the airport in Pantnagar, and so I broke up the journey with stays at Shakti’s three other Kumaon lodgings, all of which are restored village houses. One of them, Shakti Kana, sits in the very heart of a village on a steep terraced hillside, where local people greeted me as I trod the “slippery” path that wound between their homesteads.
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The walks took us through sacred cedar forests and past 8th century temples, up “near-vertical” hillsides and beneath towering waterfalls. In the tiny villages through which we passed, people proffered fresh cucumber sprinkled with chilli and Himalayan salt, and mugs of warm milk “drawn straight from the cow”. And at Shakti Prana we soothed our limbs in the sauna and bathhouse, feeling like “epic adventurers” at the end of every day.
Cazenove+Loyd has a nine-night trip from £8,600pp (cazloyd.com).