[travel]

It is the height of madness. Below me is a 2,200-m valley of death. I am returning from a blue sky holiday at 360˚ Leti, a hedonistic haven on a magical mountaintop, and I am not going to live to upload all my pictures on Facebook. My savagely trembling feet, which seem disturbingly disconnected from the rest of my body, are furiously trying to get a grip on the slippery mountainous mud, the result of a recent landslide. I am on shaky ground - Literally. I might just have been more successful climbing air. But then, I had no choice. The only way to, and out of, 360˚ Leti is by foot-up to the point where your car waits. Only the road that leads to the car park has just collapsed in the middle. So one either takes a longer (but, in hindsight, clearly safer) route across another mountain or rashly opts for the shorter rogue:
                            Shakti's village house in Deora (below); and its modest but comfortable, tow bedded interiors
which entails climbing down the mountain into the muddy split in the road and up again on the other side. I opted for the latter, and am now (just about) living to regret it. There isn't even a harness for support. I'm clutching onto our guide, Tenzing Jamyang, who appears to be holding on only to the power of prayer as he tires and pulls me up. A walrus gasping for breath would look more graceful than me right now. After much dangling in mid-air (and trying not to think of my vertigo), I make it to the top, breaking my nails but thankfully not my body.

Getting to and from the fantasy world of 360˚Leti (Pronounced Liti) is a test of fear, faith and fitness. Located deep in the heart of Uttaranchal, in Kumaon, Leti is situated 158 km away from Almora. The journey is long and tiring and certainly not for the lily-livered. The place is run by Shakti, a specialist travel company owned by the London-based Jamshyd Sethna, who is out to provide intrepid vacationers with an alternate travel experience. Prepare to cross secret waterfalls, uneven pitches and a serpentine, mountainous maze.

Chopper service, did you ask? Forget it. Sethna would much rather not have you at 360˚ Leti than build a helipad there.

I set off on my journey to Leti, with a close, and may I say, very fit friend from Delhi. It's a night train ride to Kathgodam, where Tenzing, out 27 year-old, guide and mountain musketeer with a weather-worn face and a chatty demeanour, meets us to

take us to Kasardevi, a three hour drive away. After a quick halt at one of Shakti's guest houses in Kasardevi to freshen up, we head off into the Kumaon hills for a village walk. After about an hour into the walk, as the sun rays become increasingly fierce (it gets rather hot during the day), I am ready  to call it quits. "You city girls." Tenzing teases us each time we take a break. At one point, I notice that my friend is nowhere to be seen. We go back, to find her sleeping like a Hindi movie heroine on the steps of a temple, with her hat on her face to keep the sun out.

Afer much coaxing with chocolate (Indian Kit-Kat never tasted better) and rhododendron juice, Tenzing tries prepping us up like a coach does his boxer. He cites the examples of an Australian couple who walked 100km in Hong Kong and some 60-someting English teachers who didn't wince and whine like we did. It makes no difference. We are exhausted. I am using the walking stick with its flickering compass needle like a crutch. So we stop at a village houses in the middle of the wild for a scrumptious lunch.

Shakti works with many of the villagers, in what has turned out to be a mutually beneficial exercise. The locals provide the travellers with lunch and dinner, and work as porters, cooks and cultural ambassadors, while Shakti, besides paying them for their services, teaches them rainwater harvesting and sends in its guides as volunteers to the local schools.

A two-hour trek follows the lunch, where we encounter a gamily of five, including two children, making hashish rolls in the middle of nowhere. They offer ti sell us the hash sticks and force feed us chutney that they have made out of the leaves. Hilltop hospitality is rather charming.

We finally make our way to Deora, where Shakti has one of the three houses which it has leased from the villagers (the other two ar at Alai and Jwalabanj) just as the red sun is saying its last hurrah for the day. The village houses are modest but comfortable; with two beds to a room., But be wanted the loos are outside and water is heated in a bucket under a log of firewood. Tenzing lights a bonfire for us, and we are entertained by village children spouting nursery rhymes, with crickets providing the back-ground score. We're told that Shakti also organises traditional dance performances at the other village houses. But those usually happen on the return journey from Leti when you halt at the village houses en route to Kathgodam.

As day breaks, we do a 30 minute trek downhill from Deora and get into a Toyota Innova that takes us to the closed motorable point to Leti. After that, you have to rely on your own two feet and willpower. Tenzing breaks the news to us straight up. "See

that plot up in the mountain, that's where we have to to," he tells us. "Where?" we ask, squinting, trying to follow his finger.  "Right there, " he says, pointing to a vague dot on a mountaintop far, far away. "Come on, let's start walking?"

Start walking? Where? There's only a valley of boulders and a jungle in front of us. Before we can ask my more questions, Tenzing jumps into the valley. Beckoning us to follow. Remember my story about the broken road? Well, this is out trek in, through the valley of near-death. Our bags, Incidentally, are being carried by pretty girls who've blithely strapped them onto their backs and rushed off like Alice chasing the rabbit into the black hole. My friend is rattling on about wanting to see a leopard in the Jungle. Tenzing says that my not be possible since he has ions

One of the glass panelled, sun-kissed rooms at Leti (top);
the bathroom with its brass fittings

here (named Ramganga. Hiramani, Gola and Leti, after the view from each room) which mimic village houses, and one main common sitting room. All the structures are made of limestone and glass. Half meter-thick stone walls line the interiors of each room and extend to the bathroom and courtyard. Firmly fastened into each other, the limestone provides adequate thermal mass and is weather proofed to protect the occupants against excessive climatic conditions. Surrounded by large, wooden framed glass windows, the rooms spell sunshine and serenity. Jain got local masons to build the dry stacked masonry walls, which were then carried to the site form the near by quarry by porters and mules. In fact, all the materials, like timber, canvas, the plumbing fixtures, solar panels, metal sheeting and the large sheet of glass that marks the entrance of the sitting room, were carried to the site by porters. Charlotte Martin, our British hostess, tells us about a super-human porter who brought a generator up one morning and came back with a fridge in the evening. Phew!

There is no electricity at Leti; only solar lanterns that are charged by the stored energy that also powers the kitchen.
                                      The sitting room at 360˚ Leti (below)and its spartan but snug interiors where guests mingle (top)

No Internet or cell phone network either. Lit only by candles, a coat of moonshine makes its way through the glass place; this is as surreal as you can get. Standing there under the bars of Orion, you feel like oou are on the top of the world. After all the curses you hurled his way while you were climbing, now you start to think Sethna is a really smart man to have set up what's possibly the world's smallest luxury resort in the remote location at an altitude of 8,000 ft. This is the only second season that the resort is operational.

Later that night, we amble our way to the glassy confines of the snug sitting room, a slice of heaven, for drinks and dinner. By now, 360˚ Leti reminds me of a house party in the country. Think Gosford Park. After dinner, which is a three=course feast of divine Indian and international cuisine we crawl back to our rooms before the night moon swallows us whole. With the bukhara going and hot water bags under our blanket, sleep descends like a silent army.

We are woken the next morning by blocks of white sunlight streaming into the room through the naked glass windows. Chef Yeshi Lhama, whose hands can whip up instant magic, sends us cups of tea and piping hot scones to lure us out of bed. I make up for all the trekking by gorging on freshly-baked Banofee pie, chocolate cake and carrot cake.

There are several ways to keep busy at 360˚ Leti: you can walk, eat, read, eat, drink, eat. We survey the resort's below the resort. By the time we head up again, lunch has been set up under a gazebo at the edge of a crazy cliff. It looks like a set out of a Bertolucci film. After a delicious lunch of pasta, aubergine, salad and focaccio and vino, I can't move.

I lie in the meadow under the bright blue barnyard, as the afternoon sun coaxes the crescent moon to take its place in the evening sky, and the world around me slowly begins to disappear. This is a soul vacation, a ride into the calmer sutra. I wonder if Venus has blown my mind. This is the closest to heaven that I'll ever get and I don't want to go home right now.