Moving mountains: a slow travel experience

Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell shares his thoughts on slow travel and the enduring beauty of walking in the Himalayas. 

There is a lot of talk about ‘slow travel’ nowadays – and rightly so. Not only because it is a better use of our natural resources but because it offers a richer and more immersive experience. Taking fewer trips but making them more in depth makes sense in every way. 

Some twenty years ago, I travelled up to Kumaon in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, walking from village to village taking in life as I came upon it and being hosted by local families. I was travelling with Jamshyd Sethna who, on the back of this rather experimental trip, set up Shakti, a Himalayan village walking tour company. Twenty years of investing in the existing infrastructure of houses and training guides, chefs and drivers to bring this stunning region to life has resulted in a luxurious but active and authentic insight into a little visited part of India. Today, Shakti comprises three locations: Kumaon, Ladakh and Sikkim. 

After the success of Kumaon, albeit it in the small and low impact way that was always his plan, Jamshyd took this concept to Ladakh, where he gradually built a similar model in a remote and very different part of the Himalayas, with an alternative season (June, July and August) and very different logistics. The ‘slow’ in Ladakh is less about walking and more about spending time in the heart of quiet rural life, in oasis-like villages where houses have been sympathetically restored. It is about arriving at a monastery for morning prayers and unwinding to the chant of the monks, taking in the incense and the dimly lit interiors. If that won’t slow you down, the altitude in Ladakh certainly will. 

During our first trip to Kumaon, Jamshyd noted that Sikkim was also perfectly suited to walking trips. Having spent his teenage years in a school outside Darjeeling with Sikkim as his playground for outdoor adventures, he knew it well – and he was right. Sikkim, on the border with Nepal, is a perfect place for village walks. Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Kanchenjunga and offset by the gentle soundtrack of rural life as a soundtrack – think chatter floating up from the fields, the gentle chiding of a goat or the clatter of a cooking pot – the walking through rhododendron forests along steep winding paths is necessarily slow, as is the pace of life. 

I have now been lucky enough to experience Shakti village walks in each location, including a few trips to Kumaon, watching as the houses, guides and chefs evolved with each visit. I was also in Ladakh when the first village houses were put in place and, as with Kumaon, the number of houses and the variety of activities has flourished over the last ten years. Sikkim offers the most demanding walking of the three locations. The paths are steep, and at times slippery. It rains all year round thanks to the heat from the Bay of Bengal hitting the cooler air of the Himalayas, however the vegetation is always lush and green as a result. Whichever location you choose, however, slow travel with Shakti will leave a mark on your heart forever.

Having travelled as a family to Kumaon when the children were much younger (and bribing them to walk by having a donkey accompany us each day), it was special to travel to Sikkim with my now adult daughter, more than ten years later in 2023. We experienced a whole new area but were equally inspired by the mountains and the people we met en route.