Guldaar
Basera

We are in Malla Biswa, a village in Almora district, five kilometres from Ranikhet — close enough that the town is a short drive when you want it, far enough that you cannot hear it.

The house sits at 5,400 feet on a pine and oak hillside. What is around you is forest and village, not a market road.

The short answer is the pin. Open our listing on Google Maps and send it to whoever is driving before you set off — Malla Biswa is a village, and searching for the name alone will not put anyone at our gate. If you are bringing your own car, there is parking here on the property.

By train, the railhead is Kathgodam, about three and a half hours from us by road. By air it is Pantnagar, about four. A good many guests drive up from Delhi instead, which is a full day's drive.

We can arrange a car to meet you and will coordinate it on your behalf. Price and availability come from the operator, so both are best confirmed when you book — as a guide, recent trips have run in the region of ₹2,300 from Kathgodam and ₹13,000 from Delhi.

The last stretch is a village road rather than a highway. Tell us how you are coming and roughly when you expect to arrive, and we will talk you through it — and we would always rather you got here in daylight.

₹8,000 a night for 'Buransh' or 'Fyonli', ₹9,000 for 'Mehal', which has its own bathroom. That is the price of the room, not the price per person.

It includes every meal — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the tea and snacks in between — along with Wi-Fi, power backup, kitchen access, the library and board games in the attic, and one guided walk through the village with us.

There is no separate charge for any of that, and no service fee on top. If you are staying seven nights or more, tell us and we will make it worth your while.

Six adults and three children across the whole floor. Each room takes two adults and one child.

Taken together the three rooms are the entire floor — three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen and the private sit-outs — and a family or a group of friends can have the whole of it to themselves. Taken as a whole it is ₹21,000 a night, rather than the ₹25,000 the three rooms come to booked separately.

No. The bedrooms require a flight of stairs to reach, so the house is not step-free.

We would rather tell you now than have you find out when you arrive. If you are unsure whether that will suit you, say so when you write to us and we will describe the climb honestly.

By asking us, not by pressing a button. There is no instant-confirmation engine here — you send us your dates and we come back to you with what is free.

The enquiry form on this page is the fullest way to do it: it takes about two minutes and asks for your dates, how many of you there are, what you eat and which room you have your eye on. WhatsApp and the phone work just as well if you would rather talk. Alka reads every one of these herself.

A submitted form is a request, not a reservation, until we have written back. Check-in is from 2:00 PM and check-out is 11:00 AM. We take UPI, bank transfer or cash.

Our kitchen is. Every meal we cook — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the tea and snacks in between — is vegetarian Pahadi home cooking, made fresh here rather than ordered in.

You are welcome to bring non-vegetarian food and cook it yourself; kitchen access comes with every stay. What we cannot do is cook it for you. Our staff have never worked with it, and we would rather tell you that now than have them learn on your dinner.

The same goes for anything you would like to drink with dinner — bring it up with you. One tip from experience: buy it in Haldwani on the drive rather than in Ranikhet, where we have found the quality less dependable.

Not at the moment. There are leopards moving through the forest around the house, and a dog on the property is not a risk we are willing to take with someone's pet.

Probably not, and we will not promise you one. At least twelve move through this territory and our CCTV picks them up on the balcony at night, but we do not track them or bait them. You are far more likely to hear one than see one — which is, we think, the better story.