Private Family Residence with Observatory, Kumaon

The Family Suite does not perform heritage. It simply has it. The entire upper floor of the main house is yours. Two bedrooms, each with its own ensuite shower room, each entered through a cobalt blue doorway; the Kumaoni colour that appears throughout, on the beams, the window frames, the doors, as though the house chose it once and has never reconsidered. The walls are plastered in the old method: mud, cow dung, a century of craft. They warm slowly and hold that warmth long after the fire has quieted. There is no system that replicates this. Guests invariably remark on how they sleep here, and they are not wrong to remark on it. The common living room is arranged around a wood-burning stove and opens, in late afternoon, into one of the most particular qualities of this house: golden light entering through the blue double doors, moving across the jute floor and up the ochre walls, lighting the hanging plants from below. It is the kind of light that makes people put down their phones. On certain evenings, this room has held music; tabla, harmonium, candlelight, a singing bowl at the centre; and it is suited to that, too. The observatory is glass on all sides. The valley falls away below it through successive ranges of blue-hazed hills. At night, and this is not a soft claim, the Milky Way is visible from the terrace. The private dining room has its own fireplace. The Library is directly accessible from the suite. A few steps up the ridge behind the house, the Himalayas appeared; unhurried, enormous, on the other side of everything. The Family Suite is the right accommodation for people who want to be entirely private and entirely together. For a family who travels with intention. For friends who have been meaning to take a particular kind of trip for years. For the writer who requires a desk, a view, and a door that closes; but also company at dinner. This is a Kumaoni home, restored without reinvention. It will not surprise you with novelty. It will do something less common: it will feel, within a day, as though you have always known it. The Family Suite is adequate for larger groups or extended stays.