The Kumaon hills are proving to be a viable option to reboot and relocate

Social lives are more active and people are more involved in each other's lives in Kumaon than in the cities

In 2014, Chetan Mahajan’s life was progressing on an envied path. He had a good corporate job with HCL Learning. His wife, Vandita, ran her own practice in clinical psychology from home. Their children attended Gurugram’s reputed Shikshantar school. They lived in a nice house in the gated community, Nirvana Country. To all appearances, a perfect life.

Yet the couple was not happy. They worried about the influences their small children had to fight off in chaotic, rootless Gurguram — the pollution, the traffic, the aggression... “Disaffection from city life was rising,” explains Mahajan. He says he often felt “disengaged” with his surroundings. 

Like many urban upper middle-class parents, their children’s education had been a reason to stay put in the city. But then the duo started exploring options in the northern hills, first Himachal and then Uttarakhand. Once they chanced upon the Chirag School in Satoli village in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon, they were sold. In March 2015, the Mahajans moved bag, baggage and children to Satkhol. 

Next was figuring out how to earn a living. Mahajan, author and blogger, tapped into his talents and started the Himalayan Writing Retreat in 2016. It now attracts 200-250 writers every year. Mahajan, now 48, and his wife earn enough to get by and sometimes even save a bit. Both say they are “way happier” than they were in Gurugram and wonder why they didn’t do this earlier. 

Not far away from the Mahajans, in Majkhali near Ranikhet, live software engineer Aditya Babbar, 37, and his chartered accountant wife, Nupur. By 2008-09, Babbar had done three corporate stints, including one with Intel in Bengaluru, and was getting increasingly disenchanted with city life. In 2013, he met his current business partner and they co-created Resumonk, a site that helps people write better resumes. He got married the same year and, in 2016, the couple with a life-long love for the mountains found themselves in Majkhali.

Aditya Babbar and his wife Nupur S Babbar

Crucial in their choice of relocation was access to decent education as well as healthcare — they wanted to start a family and Babbar’s ageing mother lived with them. Ranikhet has an Army Public School (APS); Majkhali itself has the Himalayan Village School and Canossa Convent. The couple also needed a reliable internet service to work remotely. Majkhali offered all three. And in October 2017, they wound up their life in the National Capital Region (NCR) and moved. Their one-year-old daughter is growing up breathing clean air and surrounded by nature.

Anshu Meshack, formerly CEO of Delhi-headquartered NGO, Charkha, decided to call it a day in 2015. Meshack, 45, had worked with Charkha for nine years and loved her work but living in Gurugram made her fantasise about a better life. “I realised at some point that I have just one life and I need to change it,” she says. Kumaon was familiar territory since she had been a regular visitor in  her youth. She first moved to Ranikhet for a year and then, with her partner Deepak Purohit, to Barkat near Nathuakhan. They now run a homestay here with four cottages on a seven-acre property. Anshu is overjoyed she gave up her “visiting card”, to which she argues people are inordinately attached. “Too much of one’s identity is tied to what one does and represents in city living and less on what you are as a person,” she observes.

Deepak Purohit and Anshu Meshack at their homestay in Barkat near Nathuakhan

Anshu’s radical move prompted her brother, Alok Meshack, 42, to re-examine his own situation. With a job at Accenture, he worked long hours and his health was suffering. Alok decided to quit the corporate world in 2017, move to Kumaon and set up the Birdsong Café in Bhimtal. He now lives in Ranikhet, treks and is writing a novel. 

To those tired of urban living, Goa has been the escape destination of choice. The tiny state still doesn’t feel overcrowded, traffic is not yet a deterrent to leave home and the cost of living is low compared to the metros. Littered with quaint cafés and bars, the verdant state still has a laidback air. Music, literary, film, art, food and other festivals abound. An active social and cultural life is every bit as possible here as a quiet, reclusive one.

Few other places in India offer this mix. But of late, villages in the Kumaon hills in Uttarakhand — Sitla, Mukteshwar, Kasar Devi, Ramgarh, Peora and others — are slowly developing into viable alternatives for city dwellers to relocate. In the last two to three years, locals estimate that several hundred families or couples have made their way to these parts. The demographic is changing: there is an influx of not just retirees, but of people spanning ages 21 to 75, many of whom work remotely. 

A combination of factors has led this change. Vastly improved roads, for one. Then, a few better equipped private hospitals in Haldwani, such as the Brijlal Hospital and Central Hospital, have made medical help easier. For common ailments, people often use the Aarohi Arogya Kendra in Satoli; bigger problems are tackled in Haldwani; and anything more serious ends up in Delhi.

After all, Delhi is not so far away anymore — the six-days-a-week Kathgodam Shatabdi, which began its run a few years ago between the capital and the entrepot to Kumaon, has dramatically enhanced access. What was once an eight- to 12-hour drive on messy roads has become a comfortable six-hour train journey. (The overnight Ranikhet Express, which runs between Old Delhi and Kathgodam, is legendarily difficult to get tickets on.) It has made all the difference to people like Pankaj Wadhwa, who runs the NGO Himjoli, and shuttles between homes in Delhi and Bazzgaon in Kumaon. 

Decent primary education is available in the area through the Aarohi school in Satoli and Chirag in Simayal as well as a host of other affiliates. A G D Goenka day-cum-residential school will also soon be operational in Naukuchiyatal. 

The presence of several NGOs in the region ensures that there’s a steady stream of youngsters who work on development projects and live in the area while they do so. Social lives are getting more active and in general people are more involved in each other’s lives than in the cities. Here’s a recent example of the kind of engagement produced by a less stressful life. When Himanshu Ureti, a 28-year-old doctor working with Aarohi fell from his balcony and broke his spine, he was first taken by neighbours to Haldwani and later to the Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi. Nursing him back to health was a “joint mission” by his “hill gang”, several of whom put their lives on hold for weeks.

Over the last decade or so, life has also become more interesting for residents. A host of events through the year brings together locals and the city escapees. In Nainital district alone, there is the Mukteshwar marathon held every May, a literary festival, two music festivals and two film festivals. Cafés and small eateries — some of high quality — dot the hills. The Chandimati and Nirvana cafés in Mukteshwar, and the I-Heart and Birdsong cafés in Bhimtal, are among the popular ones giving competition to Mohan’s Café in Kasar Devi, an institution of sorts in these parts.

Asha D’Souza and Dutch filmmaker and anthropologist Louk Vreeswijk are among those who have chosen to move to Kasar Devi at what many would call retirement age. But they are working harder than ever before and are as actively engaged with their surroundings as the youngsters. Vreeswijk continues to make films for Discovery and other channels besides curating the next Dialogue Ceramique, an exhibition of ceramic art. D’Souza continues her consultancy work for a host of international organisations and has now set up the Green Hills community, a trust to rid these beautiful hills of garbage, one of the growing menaces in the region.

Ashish Arora, who runs the popular Himalayan Village homestay in Sonapani and has been in the area for 17 years, has witnessed many of these changes. Roads, internet access, mobile connectivity and real estate prices have “changed the social fabric” of the region. But he also worries that the “beauty of the region could eventually lead to its destruction or demise” if planning remains haphazard. He says the area can do with settlers who care about their environment and who are less exploitative in nature. Kumaon seems to be getting its share of responsible citizens such as Meshack and the Mahajans. Time for the rest of the world to spawn some too.