About Shivya Nath

Recent Posts by Shivya Nath

Inspiration from Global Travel Storytellers

INSPIRING YOU TO TRAVEL, SINCE 2012.

20 Ways to Cut Your Expenses, Grow Your Bank Balance & Have Money for Travel By Matt of Nomadic Matt.

One of the foremost reasons people who want to travel don’t, is because they don’t afford it. Or so they think. In this post, Matt lists just how you can save a large part of what you earn and travel with it. And no, it doesn’t matter if you don’t earn millions. This post really rung a bell, having tried many of these expense-cutting measures myself to save everything I have for my travels. As a female, I’d surely add ‘shopping’ to Matt’s list; there’s no bigger hole-in-the-pocket puncher.

NEW ZEALAND: FOR YOUR BUCKET LIST.

Postcards from New Zealand by Amanda of A Dangerous Business.

Ever since my cousin sister moved to New Zealand for work, visiting this postcard country has moved from my bucket list to a distant reality (maybe if I can save enough funds using Matt’s tips). These photographs from the Paradise of the Pacific will immediately transport you into a world where the only blues on a Monday are the waters & the skies, and all else is white & misty. Be warned, you won’t stop dreaming about travelling to New Zealand after seeing these postcards.

INCREDIBLE INDIA: FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

How India Has Turned Me Into a Feminist by Rakhee of Aussie Girl in India…

I’ve met Rakhee and tweeted with her and talked about places we want to travel to and dissed the sleazy men we’ve each encountered on our travels. But when I read this hard-hitting post on how her travels across India transformed her into a feminist, something in me sank. It felt like a mirror of what I’ve felt for so long, but haven’t voiced in as many words only because I don’t have the courage to face what I know. Perhaps a little heavy for a Monday, her post is one of those realities that we can escape for a little while but can’t turn a blind eye to.

GOING SOLO: DITCH THE ‘NO COMPANY’ EXCUSE.

Why Travelling Solo Isn’t So Scary by Sally of Unbrave Girl

Inspiring my own recent post on 5 Reasons Traveling Solo in India Isn’t So Scary, Sally addresses the one thing you always wonder when you meet someone travelling alone – Isn’t it scary? She talks about how solo travel makes you want to trust the world all over again, because you can’t carry fear and doubt with you at all times, though you can carry a pepper spray. In her words, I identify the transition to ‘trusting’ I’m gradually making in my own travels.

RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL: CAN WE SAVE ROHTANG PASS?

The Himalayas and The Old Man: How Much Do We Care? by Tarun on Hill Post.

Last year, when I crossed over to Manali from Spiti via the Rohtang Pass, my heart broke. Not because I was stuck in traffic for 4 hours and missed my onward bus, but because of the state of this once majestic snow-filled terrain that now looked like a dirty mucky picnic spot littered with waste as most picnic spots in India are. In this post, Tarun talks about the people on the other side of Rohtang Pass, the ones who spend one half of the year in frigid weather and the other half ‘clearing’ & ‘cleaning’ the road for tourists who want to see snow. A sharp reminder on why we need to get our act together and save our country’s most precious natural wonder – The Himalayas.

 

5 Great Reasons to Travel in India Alone

I remember the first time I took a train by myself from a small town in India to the big bad city of Delhi. While dropping me off, my mother announced to everyone sitting around me that I’d be alone for the journey, in the hope that some good soul would look out for me. I felt like a fresh wound exposed to the elements of nature. All stares & smiles I received on that train ride felt sinister. I wasn’t half as mortified to be journeying alone as I was in realizing that everyone around me knew it. Not much has changed for solo trips that start at home (and that’s a story for another day), but I’ve come a long way, stuffing my pockets with solo adventures.

If you’ve read anything about travelling in India, you’ve probably read scores of reasons why travelling solo in India, especially as a female, is at best, scary. You’ve probably read hundreds of tips to avoid getting ripped, mugged, touted or groped. You’ve probably felt surprised, angry, sorry and nervous, in that order, after reading all that you’ve read. So I present 5 reasons, from personal experiences, to assure you why India isn’t such a scary place after all, to travel, to travel alone, and to travel alone as a female:

1. Your perception is half your experience.

Last year, when I felt my corporate job was burning my soul, I took a 2-month sabbatical to see the the countryside of Europe and take my first solo trip in the high Himalayas of India. I didn’t spend hours reading about travelling solo and the things that could go wrong; I just took off, fearless and trusting, sans the scenarios my parents painted in my head. After the initial solo travel jitters, I quickly realized that making friends was easy, people were helpful, and ignoring the occasional jerk came naturally.

2. Strangers fear for you.

While people are nicer to solo female travellers in most countries, it is particularly so in India (and mostly in a platonic way) because everything you’ve read & heard about the country being unsafe for women has also been read by thousands of other people, many of who will take it upon themselves to ensure that you get around okay. Stuck in Pin Valley and waiting for a ride, I literally had an entire village scrambling to find me a way to get back to my base town of Kaza before nightfall. I was offered food and endless cups of tea, invited to attend a cultural function in the village school, and ended up exchanging life stories with strangers while I waited.

3. You are constantly reminded to be safe.

Even if you do decide to let your guard down, you’ll constantly be reminded of how risky it is to be by yourself, and how unsafe this country is for solo women. On a bus ride during my recent trip to North Kerala, I met a chemistry teacher from the small town of Kannur, who tried to initiate a conversation with me in Malayalam and when I told her in English that I don’t speak the language, she affectionately chided me and made me swear not to tell anyone that again. (How I could pretend to know a language without knowing it is something I refused to argue about). She went on to warn me not to talk to strangers. By the time she alighted from the bus, I knew all about her inheritance, her love for Malayalam literature, and her son’s north Indian friends, and she knew all about my pepper spray!

4. Among 1.1 billion people, you’re hardly ever ‘alone’.

Let’s face it. You must really work hard to find a dark lonely alley to walk along. Unless you are trying to chart an off-road trail, there is no reason to not always be surrounded by plenty of people, locals if not foreigners when you happen to be somewhere less travelled. As I found out, the region with the lowest population density in India also has the friendliest of people; a simple interaction in Spiti for directions or a ride would often turn into a homely meal, or a heartfelt invite to join a family on their yearly pilgrimage.

5. There’s a ‘women-only’ everything.

Say what you may, but that’s a blessing not so much in disguise. From women-only ticketing queues, railways compartments and bus seats, to run-by-women-only taxi services and home stays, having women-friendly services is a reassurance that there are places where (sleazy) men cannot intrude. Feminists may argue against the segregation and fairly so, but when you are passing the night on a bus predominantly filled by men, it is comforting to smile at the woman sitting next to you.

 

A Must Excursion in India: The Backwaters of Alleppey

I rotate the wheel towards the right, giving it several turns at one go. Joseph chuckles at my effort to maneuver between an approaching houseboat on the left and a long canoe on the right. I succeed, and a carpet of bright green leaves greets us as though to applaud me. The backwaters of Alleppey (Alappuzha) are as picture perfect as I remember them to be from the last time I came here.

Only this time, Joseph, our boat driver, happily hands over the wheel to me.

We float through a large stretch of still water dotted with rows of tall coconut trees, undisturbed by the scurry of household chores along the villages on the shore.

I ask Joseph if the village folk mind that their backwaters are now infiltrated by scores of tourists every year. Nodding no, he explains that these waters were rather polluted before houseboat tourism picked up almost 10 years ago, and their maintenance is now complimentary to tourism.

He talks about his life in the gulf where he lives for the large part of the year; driving houseboats is how he spends his holidays when he visits home. His well built physique and fluent English would barely do justice to turning wheels I imagine, but he insists he would do this any day if only it paid half as well.

A half-filled houseboat floats past, and the people on board smile as they see me (expertly) driving our boat. The villages on the shore are replaced by shiny green rice paddies, interspersed with banana plantations.

Agriculture was once the primary source of income of these backwater villages, but low yield over the past years has increased the need for tourism-related income & ‘working in the gulf’.

As a small flock of sea crows appear in the water, a man rowing a large canoe from the opposite direction yells something in Malayalam to Joseph. Flustered, he immediately asks me to hand over the wheel and I comply. There might be someone inspecting houseboats ahead, and letting a guest take charge is an obvious no-no.

We ride along, now through narrow canals, now alongside palm-fringed shores, now past prawn-sellers. Our serene journey is occasionally interrupted by blaring music, and my friend spots the culprit in a tall coconut tree. A small canoe rowed by a fellow traveller passes us by and we burst into a little laugh at his painstaking efforts to propel the canoe forward. He laughs with us and poses for a snap!

As we alight from our boat after the round trip, I look back at the calm of the backwaters and the houseboats readying to set afloat on them, and wonder how visiting these backwaters 15 years ago would’ve felt, with no houseboats, no tourists, and perhaps no common language with the people who live ashore.

 

The Arabian Sea: India’s Last Beach Paradise?

I softly tread on the white sand, slippers in hand and jeans rolled up. The residual waves of the Arabian Sea caress my feet and playfully slip the sand from underneath my soles. I look at the chirpy turquoise blue waters before me, and at the only trail of footsteps I’ve created in the soft sand; in a country of 1.1 billion people, you have to be really lucky to find a sun-kissed beach with not another soul in sight.

I arrived in Diu on a long, jerky bus ride from Ahmedabad this morning, and immediately fell in love with the laid-back ambiance of the island. The empty roads beckoned me to rent a scooter and drive along one of India’s most untouched coastlines. With the wind in my hair, I manoeuvred my way around the majestic churches of Diu, its sparsely populated villages, its Bohemian eating joints, and the remains of its old forts, all emanating parts of its Portuguese history.

Instead of returning in the evening to what is locally known as sunset point, a snippet of conversation with a resident of the island convinced me to head towards an edge of the island, where “there’s no one,” he promised. Following his directions, I found myself at the base of a cliff, on the right of which the sea and sand stretched for miles.

The sun is now a bright yellow ball of fire, and to my heady self, it appears to be smiling at my arrival. On an impulse, I drop my slippers and run into the sea. The waves throw me a frisky welcome; I float atop the smaller, jump against the mighty, duck under the intimidating, and often get hurled to the sandy seabed. Each time I look up, the sun has moved a few inches lower, and turned a few shades more orange.

A dozen colourful little structures on the cliff scramble for my attention, and as the tide starts to rise, I wade my way to the shore to attempt to climb the rugged but gentle slopes of the cliff. The structures, as I soon realize, are shrines that house the remnants of the Portuguese occupation of this little island. The waves crash sharply on the rocks at the edge of the cliff, and the sun turns a bright red, as though trying to prompt me of the original colour of these shrines. I keep them company till the sun paints the entire sky red and sinks all the way to the horizon.

Walking away in the after-sunset, I realize that the footprints I created on the sand have been wiped away by the sea. It has no memory, I’m harshly reminded. Tomorrow, it will kiss the beach again, play with the waves, shine over the shrines, colour the waters, paint the skies, and welcome any life that chances upon it.

This post was originally posted over on HuffPost.

On and Off the Beaten Path in India

If you’ve ever fantasized about living in a remote village in the high Himalayas, experiencing the colonial charm of a hill station minus the tourists, savoring the country hospitality of India’s most hospitable culture, waking up to birds chirping on a farm, or finding the beauty of Europe’s alpine countryside in India, this post is for you.

While travelling in India over the last 6 months, I have met families, communities & individuals running small travel offerings in rural parts of India, that offer travel enthusiasts an insight into a world away from the cities and the popular tourist circuit of India. Through tourism, they help the local community preserve their way of life, protect the local ecology, conserve the heritage of a place, provide employment opportunities to the village folk, and offer the artists & craftsmen of the region a financial avenue to sustain their work. Unfortunately, the lack of an online presence in today’s Google-dominated world means many such offerings haven’t yet become self-sustainable.

India Untravelled was born on a weekend I spent on the countryside of Punjab, amid a 400-acre fruit & cotton farm and the heartwarming hospitality of a family from the pind of Ghallu. It is an attempt to bridge this online marketing gap. It is a window into the India that many of us romanticize about. It stems from the fact that people who would enjoy experiences off the beaten path in rural India are not people who would book their travel through a travel agent. These are independent thinkers who rely on Google for their travel research.

In the 3 months of its existence since January 2012, India Untravelled has introduced travellers primarily from Europe & India to five socially responsible travel experiences across the states of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan & Punjab. A village stay in Madhya Pradesh and a jungle camp in Uttarakhand are the latest in the list of untravelled Indian destinations.

 

A L’il Jungle in India

The coals are slowly burning out, making the stars glow brighter. “We live in the mountains,” he conclusively says, “we can’t not believe.” We are just ending a session of spooky, even gruesome stories about the creatures of the wild and those beyond the natural; from tales of leopards picking up dogs in the vicinity of where we are, to white carcasses haunting the jungle path we trekked up in the dark, a few hours ago. Some real experiences, some figments of imagination. As our newfound friend says, living in this jungle for the last 20 years, he has seen everything and nothing at all.

The jungle is eerily silent tonight. Just after it turned dark, we could hear the calls of the flying squirrels. We grabbed our torches and set out to see the jungle on a night trek, and sitting on a plateau in the middle of nowhere, I could hear the silence in my heartbeat. Not a bird chirping, not a deer moving, not a leaf falling. The silence was uncharacteristic, even for our friend who has seldom seen the world outside of this jungle. Either the leopard has made his appearance in the jungle, or the weather will be stormy tomorrow. There is not a single cloud in the sky, nor the slightest breeze in the air.

We call it a night, thrilled at the conviction that we’ll hear a leopard call as we sleep. Sticking close together and clinging to our torches, we make it to our abode for the night. It’s cold, and a few minutes after we’ve tucked ourselves in for the night, the jungle reverberates with loud barking-sawing-growling sounds all rolled into one. I’m so worn out from a day of trekking, rappelling & then night trekking, that I fall into deep sleep after trying to analyze the sounds as closely as I can.

At 1:45 am, I’m awoken by my tent-mate. Light footsteps outside the tent, then a swoosh. We lie awake, then dismiss the sounds as our imagination. What feels like a long time later, I’m jerked awake by loud shuffling sounds right outside my side of the tent. I can feel the footsteps getting closer. I roll to the inside edge of the bed, tightly clutch my blanket, and hold on to my breath, scared that ‘it’ might sniff me out. No bucket lists, no flashback of my life, I think of the sharp pain the moment it will strike my neck. My tent-mate breaks my thoughts and asks me to make loud noises and shine the torch, so it might shoo away. I obey. Seconds later, I hear it walking away. The time is 2:30 am. We leave the torch on because the dark feels sinister.

Just as I’m slipping back into my sweet slumber, the shuffling sounds are back. This time louder and more distinct. It seems to be sniffing the  small flap-like window of my side of the tent. I jump awake and loudly wake up my tent-mate. We play Coldplay on my phone, make loud thudding noises on the floor of the tent, try to shine the torch on the window. I notice signal on my phone for the first time since we’ve been here. I quickly tweet, a last tweet, a call for help, or maybe a scared goodbye. We contemplate shouting out for our friend from the jungle. “He’ll get killed if he runs to our rescue,” my mate suggests. I anticipate that he’s already heard us talking at the top of our lungs, but he thinks we’re beyond rescue. The sounds gradually fade away. 2:57 am. It’s an incredibly slow night. Something drops on the top of our tent, and slips all the way down. Rain? Why did we venture out into this jungle, I ask myself.

At 3:30 am, the shuffling sounds are back. We replay our noise-making tactics, but the sounds won’t go away this time for over 15 minutes. Either come in or leave us alone, I yell. My tent-mate tries the “hush” sound used by shepherds to keep animals away from their sheep. “They probably don’t understand English.” We laugh. If it was out to harm us, we would have been harmed by now. Just as we are about to dismiss the sounds, I notice a shadow at the edge of the tent. We spot a nose with a thin hair sticking out, an open mouth with a sharp canine tooth, and on the inner side of the face, an eye. An intricate open eye, complete with an eyeball. We sit up. A dog it hunted? Maybe we interrupted a killing. I freeze in my spot, and ask the torch be shone on the light again. My tent-mate refuses. We don’t want to agitate it. We stare at the shadow, the open mouth, the nose, the bump on the back. We stare for what feels like hours. 3:48 am. A night has never felt longer.

My tent-mate has a eureka moment. “Move the cap, it’s forming the shadow of a head.” I oblige. The cap is in my hand and the face is on the wall. I move the pillow. The face remains. I move the blanket, the face moves too. I crumple the blanket and shove it aside. The face is gone. The nose, the mouth, the bump gone. The eye is gone too. The sounds outside are gone. They’ve been gone a while, but we were too busy with the face to notice. I get back into bed, but don’t fall asleep till 5:30 am, when the first birds start chirping, followed by more. A sign that whatever was haunting the jungle has gone.

Over breakfast, we relate to our friends from the jungle how the night was, sans all our fear. One suggests the shuffling sounds were a barking deer outside our tent, walking on the leaves. The other says it was a good thing we didn’t step out at night; it could’ve been as much a deer as a leopard. Both called last night. We don’t tell them about the eye, we still don’t know where it came from. Such a well-formed eye, complete with an eyeball, alive. We’ve lived in the mountains a night, we can’t not believe.

 

5 Best ‘Work From Home’ Cafes in India’s South Delhi

Let’s face it, working from home isn’t easy. Waking up early in the morning can be injurious to your daily schedule. Getting distracted by social media is necessary to keep your sanity. You can be eating breakfast at dinner time, and supper during lunch. The least you deserve is a handful of cafes that understand your lifestyle.

Since bidding goodbye to corporate life in sunny Singapore and moving to Delhi, I’ve been on a quest to find cafes with easy all-day access to good food, a lightening fast internet connection, and the option to interact with a friendly staff. It’s been over 6 months, and I’m glad to present my pick of five cafes that best meet the basic necessities of working from home:

- Free, fast and reliable Wi-Fi.
- Affordable and good food.
- Non-intrusive service, i.e. you don’t get kicked out for occupying a table all day with only a couple of drinks & some food.

1. Zaffiro by Zaza, near GK I.

If the name isn’t quirky enough to tempt you to visit this cafe, maybe the idea of a bamboo roofed working space and exquisite Medditeranean-Italian-Continental food at affordable prices will. Tucked away in a quiet corner of Zamrudpur, away from the bustling markets of Greater Kailash,Zaffiro by Zaza is a tastefully designed cafe, a funky artsy retail shop, and a hub for cooking classes, all rolled into one. The food is consistently good, the Wi-Fi reliably fast, the noise levels low, and the service welcoming & friendly, especially since the owner, Rachana Desai, is almost always around. Mushrooms on toast, pesto pasta, the egg salad sandwich & the home-brewed iced tea are personal recommendations.

Cafe Zaffiro practical information: Location | Website

PS: The word Zaffiro is Italian for sapphire.

2. Market Cafe, Khan Market.

Khan Market has no dearth of cafes, and yet finding free internet access and unobtrusive service isn’t easy. Market Cafe affords you both at reasonable prices, considering the up-market area that it is located in. It’s outdoor seating is perfect for a sunny winter afternoon or a breezy summer evening, and it has enough quiet corners indoors to let you work undisturbed for hours, and chill with a drink or sheesha after.

Turtle Cafe, the more popular hangout among the Facebook generation, is a disappointment in comparison, with uptight service and no connectivity. Watermelon, around the corner from Market Cafe, is the second best bet for a quiet space to work, only with a less reliable internet connection.

Market Cafe practical information: Website | Facebook | Zomato

3.Cafe Ziro, Hauz Khas.

While Kunzum Cafe is all the rage in Hauz Khas thanks to its commendable branding as a ‘travel cafe’, the absence of food leaves a lot to be desired if you intend to work for long hours. Cafe Ziro, on the other hand, offers a quiet rooftop fenced with quirky green bottles to work from, complete with plug points, Wi-Fi and good music. The food menu is extremely limited, but they more than make up for it with what they do serve.

The word Ziro comes from a little village in Arunachal Pradesh inhabited by the Apatani tribe, who live in a sort of time warp, drawing only on the positive aspects of the modern world. They closely profess to the Epicurean philosophy of eat, drink, be merry, and to unpretentious living – exactly the kind of ambiance you find at Ziro.

Boheme is another good rooftop option to work from at Hauz Khas, with the added advantage of a spectacular lake view, though that also makes it more popular for post-work hangouts and less apt as a quiet work place.

Cafe Ziro practical information: Facebook | Zomato

4. Coffee Quotient, Saket.

Hidden away in an obscure corner near the parking lot behind Select City Walk, Coffee Quotient offers a quiet hideout to work from, even on a busy Sunday when every other cafe in the mall is overflowing with people. It is modestly priced compared to other cafes in the area, with a cozy wooden ambiance, and plenty of fast food & drinks to choose from.

Coffee Quotient practical information: Facebook | Zomato

5. Bagel Cafe, Defence Colony.

You don’t need to love bagels to love Bagel’s Cafe, but chances are both will grow on you. For the uninitiated, the bagels here are heavenly creations stuffed with ingredients ranging from grilled veggies to nutella & cheese. The cafe’s homely ambiance, alternative food and friendly staff make it a hit for working from home on weekdays, while weekends get louder with more people discovering this chic hangout. It’s still a personal favorite for me, to the extent that I’ve been given an exclusive loyalty card for spending so many work days here gorging on bagels.

Bagel’s Cafe practical information: Website | Zomato

 

5 Offbeat Romantic Weekends Near Delhi

As much as I’m repelled by the Hallmark holiday that is Valentine’s Day, it seems like an opportune time to collect a list of romantic weekend getaways near Delhi. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill getaways with a million and one other couples, nor do they offer a luxurious stay in a fancy hotel that’ll burn a deep hole in your pocket. These trip ideas are romantic in the artistic sense of the word, ones that make you realize how beautiful life is, and often transport you back in time.

1. Diu, Daman & Diu.

A quaint little island soaked with colonial Portuguese influence on the shores of virgin blue seas, Diu is a mishmash of Pondicherry’s small town charm and Goa’s sun-kissed beaches. Its absence from most tourist maps makes it one of the few places in India where you can find an isolated beach and watch the sun sink to the horizon in solitude, or swim solo in the Arabian Sea. Diu’s designation as a union territory makes it a perfect budget getaway, being significantly cheaper than its cousins on India’s west coast.

For a weekend trip to Diu from Delhi, fly to Ahmedabad on Friday evening & take an overnight bus to Diu (the video coaches are the best of the lot). Stay at Hoka Island Resort, a bohemian boutique hotel.

2. Shoghi, Himachal Pradesh.

The mighty Himalayas possessively protect the little valley of Shoghi from the crowds of Shimla; only those who search hard enough can find its picturesque countryside villages in the shadows of snow-clad peaks, often perched on the hillside or on the green stepped slopes that line the insides of the valley. A quiet recluse on the Himachali countryside, Shoghi’s proximity to the waters of the Sutlej is an additional treat.

Shoghi is 12 km short of Shimla, and can be reached within 6-7 hours from Delhi by bus or car. Stay at Veer Garh, a majestic mansion perched on the hillside of Shoghi, run as a home-stay by an army wife.

3. Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat.

Amitabh Bachan’s “Kutch nahin dekha toh kuch nahin dekha” (if you haven’t seen Kutch, you haven’t seen anything) campaign may have opened the Great Rann of Kutch to mass tourism, but the Little Rann remains a well-kept secret. Its magnificent white salt desert and abundance of rare wildlife make you appreciate nature on a whole new level, while its typically Kutchi villages offer a glimpse into the simple lives we often crave.

The best way to reach Kutch from Delhi for a weekend is to fly to Ahmedabad (or ride an overnight train) and take a bus to your town of choice along the little Rann. Stay at Devji Bhai’s Koobas for a traditional Kutchi experience right at the doorstep of the Little Rann.

4. Abohar, Punjab.

If you’ve watched or heard of old Bollywood movies, a trip to Abohar is both surreal and nostalgic. The region is the country’s most fertile cotton belt and is decked all over with green fields dotted with white snow-like cotton. Cotton fields are often interspersed with acres of fruit farms; walking in their clearing along gurgling streams, plucking sour fruits & berries, and being pampered with unadulterated Punjabi hospitality is a soulful countryside experience that is rare to find in the citified version of our lives.

Abohar is an overnight train / bus ride away from Delhi, and most of its villages & farms are located an hour into the countryside. Stay at Mohindra Fruit Farm, in the farm owner’s haveli that is now run as a homestay.

5. Raison, Himachal Pradesh.

In the shadow of the colossal Dhauladhar Range lies the village cluster of Raison, its fairy-tale Himachali villages exuding a colonial charm, its apple, kiwi & pomegranate plantations lending it the colour of spring, and the River Beas making constant music in the background. In winters, snow paints the village white, making life both introspective & beautiful.

Raison is located off the Kullu-Manali highway, and is easiest to reach via an overnight Volvo bus from Delhi. Stay at Ramgarh Heritage Villa, a colonial British bungalow run as a homestay by the apple barons of the region.

 

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