Shakti Prana, a blissful new lodge in the shadow of the Himalayas

On a clear day in Uttarakhand, Nanda Devi sits etched on the northern horizon, a monolith cloaked in bright white snow against an unblemished sky. It is the absolute highest peak in India. Kangchenjunga, an almost kilometre-taller massif to the east, technically straddles the border with Nepal, the country that boasts the celebrity Himalayan summits. But Uttarakhand is a small state in a place whose identity, old almost beyond reckoning, is inextricably linked to the world’s youngest mountain range; so it holds tight to its claim to fame.

Jamshyd Sethna has a special affinity for Nanda Devi. Though he can hardly be called local (born and raised in Mumbai, he’s based in Delhi after years of a highly social existence in London), the Himalayas have claimed an outsized measure of his devotion since he was at boarding school in Darjeeling as a boy. In 2004, he hiked into the Johar Valley in Uttarakhand; the view of Nanda Devi was a transcendental moment. It inspired him to create Shakti Himalaya, a series of walking circuits in Ladakh, Sikkim and Kumaon – the western precinct of Uttarakhand – that he launched a few years later.

Shakti itineraries are mapped around clutches of villages, in which Sethna and his team have restored or built small houses for guests. The exteriors are modest, but inside one finds quality mattresses swathed in high-thread cotton sheets and Bukhari stoves to combat the high-altitude chill. Most itineraries culminate in a stay at a Shakti lodge, which promise next-level mountain hospitality, stunning architecture, delicious food and that rarest of Indian commodities: miles of nature sparsely populated by humans. 

Eight hours north of Pantnagar airport sits Shakti Prana, a new lodge representing a labour of intense love. I am due to meet Sethna there in a few days, where he is busy hanging pieces from his own art collection, and putting the final touches to its bathhouse.

Before that, however, I am doing some trekking. Panchachuli is the new, fourth stop in Shakti’s Kumaon village circuit, a tiny settlement home to fewer than 30 people that clutches a steep terraced hillside carpeted in the needles of deodar pines planted 100 or more years ago by the British, who exported the resin they produce. On the walk in from the road, amiable bhotia sheepdogs occasionally trot alongside us. An ancient woman in a brilliant patchwork sari, bent almost double, beckons me to take her photo, grinning and pointing her index fingers skyward in tarjani mudra, looking like an NBA all-star. The view stretches down a cleft of wooded valley, faraway clusters of brightly painted houses forming pointillist swirls against a creased blanket of deep green.

Golden eagles circle on thermals above and below us

During the drive my guide, Rohan Dhar, had woven together vedic folklore, history and brief disquisitions on the flora as we logged mile after increasingly scenic mile. Dhar has worked for Shakti on and off for a decade, and scouted most of the walks surrounding Panchachuli. We wound through Almora, the former British Commissary, its arsenic- and fuchsia-painted houses tumbling down to the banks of the Kosi river, a tributary of the Ganges. We passed the Neem Karoli Baba ashram, where Indian tourists stood five deep at the entrance, taking selfies and chatting excitedly. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg came here seeking enlightenment, explained Dhar, but it’s the patronage of cricket megastar Virat Kohli that has transfixed the locals. The second-century Kasar Devi temple – and its deeply vibe-y surrounding forest – were favoured by Robert Thurman, Timothy Leary and Bob Dylan. 

Uttarakhand state was created when it broke away from Uttar Pradesh in 2000, but the history of Kumaon, like that of all of Himalayan India, stretches back as far as the era of the vedic Rigveda. Medieval ruling clans established the autonomous kingdom of Kumaon around the eighth century; after a brief spell under the Mughals, it was annexed in the late 18th century by the Gurkhas, who lost it 25 years later to the British in the Anglo-Nepalese war.

Though British India left marks on the landscapes, its shadow here is faint; Kumaon is in the syncretic frontier lands where Buddhism and Hinduism meet, though Hinduism broadly prevails – these are what you feel more. Nanda Devi – “goddess of joy” in Sanskrit – is considered a manifestation of Parvati, the deity who was Shiva’s consort. From the patio of the little one-room stone house I sleep in, she’s often hidden behind a veil of cloud. By contrast, the five peaks of Panchachuli – named after heroic brothers of the Mahabharata Hindu epic – sit dead-centre on the northern horizon, the rough serrated boundary of the visible world.

At Panchachuli days start and end in the outdoors. There are wholesome breakfasts of buffalo yoghurt, nutty granola, dosas and fruit, and ample suppers favouring kicky curries served beneath a waxing moon. Each morning we navigate the 40-minute dirt path down to the road. A driver then takes us to the trailheads leading into river valleys or up into the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary. 

We walk at a leisurely pace for hours, meandering up, down, but mostly up. Great barbets swoop from tree to tree, their repetitive, falling one-note call like the car alarm of the Himalayas. Fern-lined gullies rush with water released from the root networks of native oaks; we fill our bottles from icy cascades. Gentle updrafts lift the lower boughs of the pines, setting the needles shimmying in the sunlight; rhododendrons drop hundreds of their fat blossoms to the ground – nature’s own red carpet. On far ridges or hilltops are temples, little four-square structures, the sacred shaped in the most prosaic terms. 

It’s exhilarating. But unsettling. I am the farthest thing from grounded

The sinuous drive north to Shakti Prana is breathtaking. The town of Bageshwar spreads in a kaleidoscopic jumble along both sides of the glacial Sarju river, its chalcedony-coloured melt rushing down the valley. Golden eagles circle on thermals above and below us. The altitude we’re heading for isn’t extreme – less than 3,000m – but the mountainsides grow steeper and the vegetation sparse. Soon I’m peering over precipitous edges down into valleys whose bottoms I can’t make out. 

The road ends at the path up a dauntingly steep mountain, and we start walking, a pair of wiry Sherpas bounding ahead with our bags. After a half-hour ascent,  the muddy trail bends and morphs into a neatly cobbled lane, at the end of which is Shakti Prana.

Prana’s story is a unique one. Almost two decades ago, this circuit’s lodge stood a mile or so away on a small, flat plain. Designed by Studio Mumbai’s Bijoy Jain, Shakti Leti, as it was then called, set a new bar for remote-luxury lodges, not just in India but across the world. 

But the land’s owners eventually caught on to its success, and Sethna’s lease payments started their own precipitous climb. That and the encroachment of a new road close to the lodge sent him searching for a new site; he found this one, curled into a north-facing hillside, with space for seven villas, a large communal living-dining lodge, his beloved sauna and bathhouse, an open-air yoga platform and kitchen gardens. A 10-minute walk further up the hill takes you to a ridge and the trailhead to one of the most beautiful walks for miles around. 

Sethna enlisted Sam Barclay, who had been Jain’s site manager on the Leti project, to design Prana with him. Barclay had gone on to found his own studio, Case Designs, in Mumbai in 2013; he knew the landscape and its demands better than anyone. And Sethna’s idea was quite the ask: take apart Leti, stone by joist by glass panel; move all the materials to the new site; and reuse every last one of them.

“I missed the Construction-By-Donkey survey course at architecture school,” says Barclay of the 10-month build. On any given day the project saw between 40 and 80 animals ambling up and down the path in choreographed loops – along with around 150 on-site workers, including carpenters from Rajasthan and masons from Nepal. 

“In these hills, nature’s hospitality eclipses what all men can do,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi the first time he visited Kumaon in 1929. That hasn’t stopped Sethna from trying. If Panchachuli is about striking out all day into the surrounding forests, Prana invites rest and contemplation; this has everything to do with the lodge’s exceptional linear beauty. The suites are one-bedroom bungalows, with separate sitting rooms where leather-clad Eames Lounge chairs and long sofas abut stone fireplaces. Bathrooms have rain showers and brass sinks – originally designed, like 95 per cent of everything else, for Shakti Leti. My bedroom is wrapped in half-walls of glass, with gleaming ceilings of reused teak.

I leave the lodge only once in three days. We practise loose-limbed yoga just after sunrise and again in the afternoons with an instructor from Rishikesh. Meals are a slightly more formal affair here, prepared by a Tibetan chef whom Sethna has employed since he founded Shakti. In the fire-warmed dining room, Cannonball Adderley and Ahmad Jamal play on the solar-powered sound system; outside, a single artificial light beyond the property’s boundaries is visible in all the blue-blackness.

It’s exhilarating. But unsettling. Despite the conspicuous preponderance of rock everywhere, including the one we’re on, I am the farthest thing from grounded – wide awake, I confess to Sethna, and virtually vibrating through the wee hours of the night. It’s not an easy location, he concedes. “But that’s kind of the point. Only from a place like this can you achieve that kind of incredible, spiritual moment the mountains offer.”

To the extent I have one, it comes the next day, my last at Prana. In the late afternoon Dhar and I take the trail above the lodge through the cool of an oak forest, passing a small farmstead and a watershed. After walking in silence for a couple of kilometres, during which I slightly zen out, we abruptly exit the woods and step into the widest wide open I’ve encountered on this trip – staggering inverse volumes of matter and emptiness surround us so suddenly that I almost yaw off the path from a wave of vertigo. 

The wind has picked up over the last hour; clouds scuttle and columns of light strafe the valley below us. Beyond it, the five peaks of Panchachuli are lit up against the fading sky. It is unreally, almost unbearably beautiful.

We see a man and a little boy coming along the trail from the other direction. They stop and the man speaks to Dhar, gesturing down towards a declination in the slope, where a low red-roofed hut sits on its own. Dhar tells me he is inviting us in for tea. We demur, indicating the approaching dusk and pressing our palms together in thanks. The man smiles, joins his own palms in front of his heart, then takes his son’s tiny hand and walks down the hill, bound for his home on the roof of the world. 

Maria Shollenbarger travelled as a guest of Shakti Himalaya (shaktihimalaya.com), which offers five-night Village Walks experiences, including three nights at Shakti Prana and two nights at Shakti Panchachuli, from £4,850 per person based on two sharing, taxes and flights not included. People travelling to India are advised to check FCDO travel advice at gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice before departure