The house was built as a family retreat — a place to escape to when the plains got too hot, or the year got too long. It sits on a hillside in Mukteshwar, Uttarakhand, among oak and buransh trees, with a small orchard the family has tended for years and a stretch of reserved forest just below the deck.
We've opened three of the bedrooms to guests who want the same thing we do: a slow few days somewhere quiet, with good light, real furniture, and a view worth sitting still for.
A stone path cuts down through the property, past the orchard and into a small reserved patch of oak forest — old, tall trees that the family has never touched, with buransh blooming bright red among them in spring. In spring there's blossom on the fruit trees too; in winter, snow settles on the branches and the whole hillside goes quiet.
Guests are welcome to walk the paths, sit in the garden among the hydrangeas, or simply watch the ridgeline change color at sunset from the wooden deck.
Buransh is the Hindi name for rhododendron — the tree that lines the path into our reserved patch of forest, flowering bright red every spring. It felt like the right name for a house built around its trees.