Pahadi House in Kanatal

Pahadi House in Kanatal

Kanatal sits at about 8,500 feet on the Chamba–Mussoorie road, in Tehri Garhwal. Twenty years ago it was mostly farmland and forest, with a few villages on the slopes. Now there is a market on the highway and a line of hotels along it, and the villages are still there behind them. Our stay is in one of those villages, Chaukhal, a few kilometres short of Chamba town.

The property is Pahadi Ghar, Himalayan Homestay. Cottages built into a terraced hillside, every one of them facing down the valley. The rate is ₹4,000 a night for two people, and dinner and breakfast come with it.

If you searched for “Pahadi House Kanatal”

Pahadi House is our company. We started in 2014, after the 2013 floods took the rafting resort we had run at Ghattugad on the Ganga for more than ten years. We did not want to build the same thing over again, so we went back to our villages and leased a stone-and-mud house in Chopdiyal that had been locked up for years after the family left for the plains. That house is where the name came from. We now run stays in Mussoorie, Rishikesh, near Corbett, and here in Kanatal.

Several other properties near Kanatal use names close to ours. You will see them on Tripadvisor and the booking sites. Some are good places. They are simply not ours. If you book on this page or on the WhatsApp number here, you are coming to Pahadi Ghar at Chaukhal.

What ₹4,000 a night covers

One cottage, two people, one night, with dinner and breakfast, plus tea and coffee through the day. The room has an attached bathroom with a geyser, a television, an electric kettle and a sit-out or balcony facing the valley. Parking is on the property and housekeeping comes every morning. There is usually a bonfire in the garden in the evening if the weather holds.

It does not cover lunch, a room heater in winter at ₹500 a night, taxis, and the trips out to Surkanda Devi or Tehri Lake. If there are three of you we will put you in a Super Deluxe room and charge for the third bed separately. If you want four or five cottages for a group, send us the dates and we will give you a number for the whole booking.

Chaukhal, and why we work out of villages

Chaukhal sits off the highway. The hotels on the Kanatal main road get the traffic and the day-trippers stopping for tea. Up here there are terraced fields that people still work, pine and deodar on the slopes, and very little noise after dark.

More than 700 villages in Uttarakhand have been recorded as fully abandoned in the last decade. Around ten lakh people have left the hills from Pauri, Tehri, Rudraprayag, Pithoragarh and Almora, mostly because there is no work to stay for. A house that gets used again earns its owners a lease, and the cooks and caretakers and guides are hired from nearby. That is why we take village houses and not highway plots.

Snow in Kanatal

Snow usually falls somewhere between late December and February. Some years it comes around Christmas, some years not until the last week of January, and some years it is thin and gone inside two days. At 8,500 feet Kanatal gets more of it than Mussoorie does.

Nobody can promise you snow on a particular weekend. What we can do is tell you what it looks like outside on the morning you ask, so message us two or three days before you travel and we will send a photo. If the road is bad we will say so. Nobody enjoys being stuck at Suwakholi.

Surkanda Devi, Tehri Lake and what else is close

Surkanda Devi is the one everybody does, and it deserves it. The temple sits at 3,030 metres on a ridge above Kaddukhal, about 8 km from us. Drive to the base, then walk 1.5 km uphill, which takes 30 to 45 minutes at a steady pace. There are ponies if the walk is too much, and a ropeway now runs from the base as well. Go early. On a clear winter morning you can see Bandarpunch, the Gangotri peaks and a good stretch of the Garhwal range from the top.

Tehri Lake is about 40 km away, on the reservoir behind the Tehri dam. There is boating, jet skiing and kayaking. Set aside a full day for it; it is too far to squeeze into an afternoon. Closer to home there is the Kodia jungle trail through deodar and pine, Dhanaulti at 12 km with its eco parks, and the walk through Chaukhal itself, which costs nothing.

The food

Home cooking, served in the dining hall. Simple Indian food most nights, some Chinese because children ask for it, and Garhwali dishes if you tell the kitchen you want them. Dinner and breakfast are part of the tariff. Some of the vegetables come off the property. Lunch is not included but the kitchen will cook it if you ask in the morning.

If you are Jain or vegan, allergic to something, or travelling with a small child who eats one particular thing, say so a day ahead. It is a small village kitchen, so the notice genuinely helps.

Best time to visit Kanatal

• March to June is the easiest weather. Warm days, cold evenings, clear views of the ranges. This is also when Delhi empties into the hills, so weekends fill up early.
• July to September is the monsoon. Everything turns green and the valley fills with cloud for days at a time. Landslides can close roads. Rates are lowest and the place is empty.
• October and November are the quiet months, and the ones we would pick. The air is washed clean after the rain, the mountain views are the sharpest of the year, and there is hardly anybody around.
• December to February is cold and is when the snow comes. Carry proper woollens. This is peak season for Christmas and New Year, so book well ahead for those dates.

Getting to Kanatal from Delhi, Dehradun or Mussoorie

From Delhi it is about 320 km and takes roughly eight hours if you leave early. The usual route runs Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Roorkee, Dehradun, then up through Mussoorie and Suwakholi, or via Rishikesh and Narendra Nagar if the Mussoorie road is jammed. Leave Delhi by six in the morning and you will be having lunch here.

From Dehradun it is about 80 km and three hours. Buses and shared taxis run to Chamba from Dehradun ISBT, and from Chamba it is a short local ride to Chaukhal. Jolly Grant airport is 90 km away, about three hours. Mussoorie is 40 km, an hour and a half on a winding road. Rishikesh is 85 km.

The last stretch off the main road is narrow. Tell us when you are setting out and we will guide your driver in by phone, or send someone down to the turning if it is dark.

What this is not

It is not a resort. There is no pool and no lift, and you reach the cottages by steps cut into the hillside. The older rooms have the mud, cow-dung and wood walls that hill houses here have always been built with. They hold heat well. They do not look like a hotel. The Wi-Fi is unreliable. The nearest proper hospital is in Dehradun, though there is a doctor on call in Chamba.

If a valley view from the bed and food cooked by people who live in the village is what you are after, message us at +91 95287 30156 with your dates.