Kabir and I eyed the clouds doubtfully. Thick, white and pretty enough in their own right, they nonetheless shrouded the sight I had travelled by air, car, train and foot to see: the stunning panorama of the Indian Himalayas stretching from Kashmir to Nepal.
“You can usually see it beautifully from here,” Kabir, my guide, said. The rain that we had driven through all morning fell in fat, lazy drops, splatting on the rocks below.
My journey had begun a day earlier in Delhi. I have a theory about the place: it is an angry city. I say this with some authority, having spent four years there. It is noisy, traffic-clogged and cursed with one of the vilest climates on Earth. It is also populated with some of the rudest people I have met.
Landing at the airport and braving the airport road is the first and least uplifting step on your journey to some of India’s most glorious spiritual experiences.
I had come here to have one of these experiences - not some self-depriving ashram sojourn, not quite my style - but a rather lovely few days walking through the Himalayan foothills. The best was to be saved for last: two nights in the glass-walled luxury lodges of 3600 Leti, looking out on a panorama of Himalayan gorgeousness.
Advertisement
The weather, however, was not playing ball. My journey had started in true Delhi style, being half-savaged by some imperious old gent who loudly insisted that my sleeper carriage was his. After he was carted off still screeching I fell asleep and woke up in Kathgodam to the sound of rain. It continued for our whole trip up to Almora, where Kabir and I now stood, gazing forlornly at the sky.
Everyone has a thing about the Himalayas, don’t they? I certainly do. When I lived in India, I loved Kashmir above all other places. I liked Nepal, too, but had never made it trekking there. Trekking routes were overcrowded, I was told. To get into untouched territory, you had to be a seasoned trekker - and I was not.
Uttaranchal is another thing. India’s Himalayan tourist trade is barely developed. My three-day trip would take me through remote villages, staying in local dwellings while being waited on by guides, porters and cooks who appeared from nowhere. Michael Palin didn’t come here on his Himalayan odyssey. He missed a trick.
The rain had stopped by the time Kabir and I started on our first walk, following the stone paths through the village into emerald rice paddies. I was in need of some rebalancing, having just come out of three weeks in Afghanistan, one of those with the Gurkhas, being shot at by the Taleban, sleeping rough in the desert and getting rather filthy and thin.
I had not escaped the Gurkhas yet, though. This, Kabir told me, was the place of the last Anglo-Gurkha war, the conflict in which the Nepalese warriors so impressed their British opponents that they started recruiting them into their army. Kabir’s grandfather was a Gurkha, he said, and he would have loved to be as well, but the selection tests, including running up mountains with rucksacks filled with rocks, were too arduous.
Advertisement
Our trek was not. It was perfectly paced for scenic dawdling, listening to the birds call across the valleys, exchanging “namastes” with children passing by. And stopping for lunch. Porters appeared at a clearing in the pine forest, unfolding a couple of chairs and spreading out on a tablecloth a feast of curries, dhal and rice.
The rain began moments after we arrived at our first lodging place, but this time I didn’t care. Soon I was tucked up on the balcony swathed in pashmina blankets, a hot-water bottle on my lap and a glass of beer in my hand, munching on hot pakora. I slept soundly on a bed heavy with blankets, listening to the rain.
But I still hadn’t seen the Himalayas. Worse, the rain had fallen so heavily that night that the road to Leti would be impassable that day. At the end of a five-hour drive up twisting mountain roads, the journey to Leti finishes in a 90-minute trek along a rocky footpath crossed by waterfalls, now turned into raging torrents. We would have to wait.
Not for nothing is 3600 Leti a contender for the world’s most remote luxury resort. Its creator, the Indian travel company Shakti, designed it that way, the idea being that it was an experience to be earned.
The rain had cleared by the time we reached the footpath where a group of hillspeople were milling. These were the Sherpas that carry up to Leti every item needed to build and maintain it: 8ft panes of glass, a refrigerator, cases of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Leti is luxury at altitude - 2,400m (7,875ft) of it. Kabir and I clambered along the rocky path, pulling off our socks and shoes to ford a waterfall, our luggage safely in the hands of the Sherpas. Then we turned a corner, walked up a narrow wooded path and on to a grassy plateau. “Look!” said Kabir. There they were, the Himalayas, ranged out in front of me: snowy, beautiful, finally gracing me with their presence.
Advertisement
They were just as lovely in the dusk, as Annie, the manager, joined me by the firepit outside my lodge with a bottle of chilled chablis. Just as lovely in the morning sunshine when I woke up and gazed upon them through the glass wall of my lodge, still curled under a thick feather duvet. This is what Leti is for - being, rather than doing.
The next two days passed in a state of deep bliss, dining on nutty red rice and aromatic Kumaon curry cooked up by Yashi, Leti’s Tibetan Buddhist chef, who bakes focaccia in a wood stove while a portrait of the Dalai Lama looks on. I could stay here for ever, I thought. I could even give up being shot at.
It was over too fast. A day later, I found myself back in Delhi, the full horror postponed for a few hours by a stay in the Art Deco splendour of the Imperial Hotel. There I picked up the Hindustan Times and discovered that my theories about Delhi rage had been recognised. It has a name, said the experts - intermittent explosive disorder - and residents of the capital were overwhelmingly affected by it. I thought of my angry man on the train; I know a place he should go.
Need to Know
Catherine Philp travelled with Scott Dunn (020-8682 5075, www.scottdunn.com). A ten-night trip from the UK, including three nights at 3600 Leti, flights, transfers and all food and drink in the hills, costs from £2,485pp. More information on 3600 Leti is at www.shaktihimalaya.com