Glamping @Nayalap Uttrakhand

It’s been so long that we have witness a proper cold climate, this time in January we got the opportunity to witness the same that too in beautiful Uttarakhand, India at Nayalap.

We wanted some relaxing holiday far from all the tourist place, to enjoy best of nature and get some mesmerizing view of mighty Himalayan range. For this we searched for a place on the hills and found an amazingly luxurious camp site in Shitlakhet.

Nayalap Rural Himalayan Glamping was a beautiful find. It is charming and boutique home/ retreat consisting of 4 luxurious tents, spread out from each other for privacy of the guests.

We have to attained one wedding in Delhi and my wife was going to her mom’s place in Agra for her cousins wedding, so we converted this opportunity in a relaxing glamping holiday ?.

We booked trains this time as from past so many years we have not travelled by train as from Bangalore it was too much time consuming. We booked August Kranti Rajdhani from Mumbai Central to H. Nizamuddin Delhi.

The train left around 4 PM and reached at 11 AM, as it’s a Rajdhani so no trouble for food on train. Due to more stops it took 2-2.30 hr more than Rajdhani.

Trains now a days are quite clean, and facilities have also improved, like cleanliness, seat cover in western toilets etc.

We stayed for a day in Delhi for a wedding. There are 2 good options to reach Nayalap, one is Ranikhet express which leaves from Delhi at around 10 PM and reach Kathgodam 5 AM, other is Shatabdi early in the morning at 6 AM and arrives 11 AM at Kathgodam which is the last station for this area.

We got down at Haldwani which is second last stop where our driver, Heera Singh was waiting for us. Tanuja the owner of Nayalap helped us in booking the cab. You can either ask her to book it for you, it will cost you around Rs 2500.

Kathgodam is the place where plains end and Mountain region begins. It is a 3.5 hours drive from Haldwani to Shitlakhe. As you leave the plains and drive up the hills, the drives becomes beautiful with the mountain vistas, terraced fields and beautiful villages.

We reached Nayalap at around 3 PM, there our host Tanuja was waiting to welcome us with warm herbal drink. She showed us the property and introduced us with the wonderful staff of Nayalap – Prem, Chandan and the cook Basant.

Nayalap is located on Hill slope on a land that was used for farming long time back. We came to know that now a day’s people are migrating from hills to plains in search for better life, education and career opportunities. The name Nayalap is a reverse of ‘Palayan’ meaning migration in Hindi.

Tanuja’s thought was to give back to the people of hills and provide them a better opportunity in their native land, instead of moving to the cities at least a few people can work near their home and can stay with their family which is simply amazing thought and she executed it as well by building ‘Nayalap’. All the staff who helps to make your stay happy are local peoples from the nearby village.

This place has 4 luxurious tents with amazing view of the Garhwal & Kumaon side of Himalayan range. All the necessary amenities are present in the tents and they have private and quite spacious bathrooms with geysers, handmade soap with all-natural ingredients, a shampoo and a body lotion.

There were super clean towels, a dinning table to seat 4, a small 2-seater sofa, a chair and a king size bed with clean and soft sheets with hand woven sheep’s wool blanket and electric heaters to keep you warm in cold winters.

Instead of stone flooring in the tents, Tanuja has done it with mud which helps in keeping the temperature little warm during winters and cold during summers. The mud floors are covered with dry grass floor mats which are hand made by locals.

The property is adjacent to the main road and has enough parking space. One tent is adjacent to parking but far enough to avoid any disturbance from parking and then when we walk down, we have another tent and their kitchen. Then wakling further down the hill, we have 2 more tents.

Out of 4 tents the 2 new one has wooden doors and the initial 2 has a zip to close the tent will gives little more feel of living in a tent. There is an open dining area, covered from the top and then we have a fireplace right adjacent to the dinning space to enjoy the bon fire during winters.

You can enjoy your morning tea with view of the Himalayas facing the mighty Trishul, Nanda Devi peaks, and listening to the chirping of the birds around. We really enjoyed our stay here, we did some reading, played with our little one in open ground, she liked exploring the ground on her own, climbing up and down, touching different plants, dried grass, wood etc.

This will really help the kids living in big cities to know the wilderness up close and experience the nature. We went to a local house and introduced our little one to rabbits, cow and baby goat (kids). She really enjoyed feeding them and was not ready to leave from there.

As this place is quite far from any of the major cities so you won’t find any restaurants nearby which a plus point is again as in this way you can taste the local specialties and all the ingredients are sourced from locals.

The food here really tastes good and homely and another amazing thing which we have not seen this till now is they do prepare dishes as per your request which is great hospitality.
We really enjoyed our stay here, the cold weather, mesmerizing view, great food it was such a relaxing trip, what else does one want in life ?

Other then relaxing and enjoying nature, one can go for a 5 km long treck to hilltop, which we could not do due to our daughter as we won’t be able to carry her, and we didn’t bring her baby carrier. Then you can do a village walk which is not that long but a nice experience to have.

If you want to do more touristy things then you do excursions from Nayalap to Kasar Devi, Almora, Ranikhet, Katarmal Sun temple which are about 1 hours drive one –way each from the camp. Tanuja can help you plan your visits according to your interest and time. You can visit Kosi dam built on Kosi river, also you can visit a beautiful small stream and enjoy the fresh cold water.

We visited Kasardevi temple which is an ancient temple and well known with the nature seekers, yoga practitioners and it is said be one of the three places in the earth where magnetic fields are the strongest.

We had a beautiful stay at Nayalap and enjoyed every bit of our vacation in the hills, exploring this wonderful corner of the world, where only the lucky ones tread. We are glad we were lucky to be there and experience the joy of glamping in the beautiful foothills of Kumaon.

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