7Views 0Comments
A pilgrimage to a hidden wilderness lodge that can only be reached on foot
There is a great sense of achievement upon reaching a destination on foot. Staff at Shakti Panchachuli, our penultimate homestay, embellish that sense of arrival with buransh, a health-giving rhododendron juice, copper buckets of salted hot water for sore feet and cool flannels. Panchachuli has three custom-built barns of blackened wood and thatch cantilevered into the hillside, showcasing Indian artisanal skills. It is so spoiling and stunning a retreat I could easily hole up here for days, wrapped in cashmere in front of the firepit. But Shakti Prana is our end goal and prize: a standalone wilderness lodge that can only be reached on foot, an hour’s walk from the nearest strip of tarmac and miles from the nearest township.
The path swings around the mountain, following the contours of the valley on old mule trails carved out during the Anglo-Nepalese war of 1814-1816. Rai points out bears’ nests in the canopies and leopard spoors. The wildlife can be imagined, but the sense of peace is something anyone can feel, like a pebble in the pocket. The scents of orange blossom, shaved pine and immortelle are as cocooning as the silence, shattered only by the barbet’s call, insistent as a car alarm, that we raise as we plod on newly laid stone paths that wind ever upwards to Prana.
Children wave at us from doorways garlanded with marigolds, and terraces where the hay bales sit like shaggy Dulux hounds. They hand out bitter oranges and rhododendron petals from trees that grow more than 60-feet tall, blood red as in a fairy-tale illustration, against the triangular silhouette of the Nanda Devi mountain. This “goddess of joy”, an icon of the Indian Himalayas, is a flirt, making fleeting appearances from behind veils of mist. Now, as we reach Prana’s uppermost terrace, there’s the first clear sight of all the peaks, unveiled at last: Nanda Devi alongside the five incisor-sharp outlines of the Panchachuli range.
