Late summer to autumn
Apples
The orchard the cottage stands in. Eat them off the tree, in a pie, or as the chutney that turns up with breakfast.
A taste of the Himalayas
From our organic garden to your table
An apple orchard, walnut and pear trees, kiwi vines, terraced vegetable beds and a hillside that gives wild berries and mushrooms. This is where your meals begin.
From our own farm
In the city you eat what was packed.
Here you eat what was picked.
Most of what reaches a city plate has been processed, packed, chilled and trucked for days. At Namah the food walks a few steps from our own organic garden to the kitchen, and you can taste the difference.
A city plate
- Fruit picked unripe, then weeks in cold storage
- Vegetables that have crossed three states to reach you
- Packets with ingredients you cannot pronounce
- Walnuts and dry fruit from last year's stock
- Dinner in front of a screen, traffic in the background
A plate at Namah
- Apples and pears off the tree outside your window
- Greens and pahadi kakdi pulled from the beds that morning
- Nothing from a factory, cooked the way a home cooks
- Walnuts cracked fresh from our own trees
- Dinner at one table, with the valley for company
What grows here
An orchard, a kitchen garden and a generous hillside.
We grow the traditional pahadi way, in small terraces around the cottage, and cook what the season gives. Here is what you may find on your plate, and when.
September and October
Walnuts
Picked green, dried in the sun and cracked fresh. Nothing like the ones that have sat in a shop for a year.
Summer to early autumn
Pears and kiwi
Pear trees and kiwi vines grow among the apples. Guests in the right weeks get both at the breakfast table.
Through the growing season
Vegetables and greens
Potatoes, leafy greens and seasonal vegetables from terraced beds a short walk from the kitchen.
Monsoon
Pahadi kakdi
The mountain cucumber, as long as your forearm. Sliced with salt and green chilli, it is the taste of a hill monsoon.
Late spring
Hisalu and wild berries
Golden Himalayan raspberries that never reach a market because they do not survive the journey. You eat them where they grow.
A wild treasure
Gucchi, the mushroom that cannot be farmed.
The wild morel, known in the hills as gucchi, appears on Himalayan slopes for a few weeks after the snow melts and the first thunderstorms pass. It has never been successfully farmed at scale, which is why it is one of the most prized mushrooms in India.
Some years the hillside around Namah gives us a few. When it does, they go into the pot, not into a packet. It is a matter of luck and season, so we never promise it, but guests who have been here at the right moment remember it.
How we grow
Slow, small and by hand.
New saplings go in every year. Beds are dug by hand on terraces the hill has held for generations, and the orchard is looked after by the same people who cook your dinner.
- Our own organic garden and orchard, around the cottage
- Picked the day it is cooked, in season
- Home-style pahadi cooking, nothing from a factory
- You are welcome to walk the beds and pick with us
Questions and answers
About the food and the farm
Does the food really come from your own farm?
Much of it does. Apples, walnuts, kiwi, pears, seasonal vegetables, greens, herbs and wild berries grow in our own organic garden and orchard around the cottage, and what is in season goes on the table. What we do not grow is sourced as locally as we can.
What grows at Namah Stay Himalayas?
Apple, walnut, pear and kiwi in the orchard, pahadi kakdi (mountain cucumber), potatoes, leafy greens and other seasonal vegetables in the terraced beds, and Himalayan herbs. In season the hillside also gives hisalu, the golden Himalayan raspberry, and now and then gucchi, the wild morel mushroom.
Come, stay awhile. Breathe deeply.
Let the Himalayas work their magic. Check which dates are free, or simply tell us when you would like to come.