A family's mountain, now entirely yours. Switch off. Five rooms only.
Balbir built things his whole life — businesses, furniture workshops, orchards, relationships. Not out of ambition exactly, but out of a restless conviction that the world rewards those who show up with curiosity and warmth. Radical optimism, lived quietly.
He travelled when travel meant something. He believes strongly that the best thing you can do with a mountain is share it — not broadcast it. He has met strangers in forty countries and left all of them as friends. BHAV is, in many ways, simply that impulse given a roof and a view.
The retreat exists because he wanted a place where people could arrive distracted and leave changed. Where the silence did some of the work. Where the food came from the land and the conversation lasted past midnight.
If you're lucky, you might just meet Balbir himself.
At 2,200 metres in Chamoli district, Hartola is a settlement so small it barely appears on maps. Fewer than 400 people. One road in. The Pindar river always audible. Deodar forests on three sides.
In April the hillsides go deep crimson with Buransh — the rhododendron that is Uttarakhand’s own flower. In September the apple orchards give. In winter the snow makes everything beautifully impossible.
No fixed menu. The chef works with what blooms, what the orchard gives, what the village brings in that morning. One long table. One seating. Everyone eats together at dusk.
The wood in the rooms. The weight of the chairs. The way a table sits in a space. None of it is accidental. Heena has been making furniture for over twenty years — for more than a thousand homes across India, the UAE, and California. When you leave Hartola, you don't have to leave it entirely.
See the furniture →
A handful of rooms. Hartola, Chamoli. No WiFi, no itinerary.
Complete silence. The Himalayan peaks at breakfast.
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