The sound of a wheezy bagpipe floats up from the valley floor as my trekking group picks its way down a terraced Himalayan hillside. Far below, a wedding party emerges from a grove of cedars to cross a rickety bridge. The groom and his white horse are tinselled points of colour among the dark foliage. Singing and clapping, the all-male procession vanishes as quickly as it had materialised. Somewhere in a village above, a bride waits to be escorted to her new home.

 For relaxation therapists, the dream landscape constitutes one of the tools of the trade. "Imagine yourself in the most serene garden, the most beautiful scenery in the world . . .'' drones the TV hypnotist, the yoga guru. I know where I would go. My own interior escape route lies in the foothills of the Himalayas: in Nepal and Bhutan, Shimla and Sikkim, a jigsaw composition of tree-high rhododendrons, tumbling streams and prayer flags, all set against a horizon that climbs forever to reach the blue-shadowed peaks that roof the world.

Now I can rearrange the imagined pieces all over again, thanks to a small trekking enterprise in Kumaon, the eastern region of the fledgling state of Uttaranchal in the western Himalayas. Though hardly a hardcore trekkie - my own puffing probably outdid that of the bagpipe - I am seduced by these hills, and am fairly fit, and thus have seized with gratitude upon a holiday that offers serious but well-supported walking.

I'm waiting for curtain-up. For, floating weightlessly on the horizon, somewhere beyond the haze that in spring veils the endless folds of the Shivalik Hills, is the showstopper - a 180-degree panorama of the central Himalayan massif. From Kedarnath and wedge-shaped Nanda Gunthi, the pyramid of Trisul, the twin prongs of Nanda Devi, eastward to the five crests of Panchuli and the Api range in Nepal, this 200-mile eyeful packs in the biggest concentration of peaks between 20,000ft and 26,000ft in all the world.

With the comforts of Delhi's Imperial Hotel only a night's train ride behind, having your breath taken away in a hammock without stirring a single step seems like cheating.

We walk for five to seven hours a day, at heights roughly between 5,000ft and 7,500ft, stopping a lot. There is plenty to detain us. The old houses look cool and inviting, their stone roofs covered with drying sheaves of wheat, their heavily decorated shutters painted blue to ward off mosquitoes. In almost every flagged courtyard a granny sits on her heels, winnowing grain with a wooden paddle, sifting piles of lentils and mustard seeds, rising to bring water to a nursing buffalo tethered in the shade.

Far below, the terraced fields spill like an arrested flow of fudge down to a parched river bed. By late spring, with the season six weeks ahead of itself, the area is desperately short of water. The June harvest is already destroyed by drought, our guide says. But the heights are green, slippery with pine needles, pungent with the scent of resin tapped from scorched trunks, noisy with cuckoo and koel, the Himalayan nightingale.

Just below our highest point, where the Old Jageshwar Ridge cuts the breeze like a knife, a forest of rhododendrons drops scarlet flowers at our feet.

Every day adds fresh detail to my imagined jigsaw: the little tea house marooned in the fields, where we drink peppery chai while mynah birds squabble in the apricot trees overhead; the country temples shaped like outsized mushrooms, their carved gods worn down by a thousand years of devotion to almost formless lumps of stone. The resident deity may be little more than a smudge of paint on a biscuit tin lid, but the shrines never lack offerings, a single flower or a touch of vermilion kumkum powder.

Porters, affable non-professionals hired from neighbouring villages through hotel contacts, carry our luggage, including bedding rolls and cooking pots. This trek could not work without the invisible networks that link the Pahari hill people. If not actually related, everybody seems to know everybody else. Gossip and laughter drift up with the smoke from the ground-floor kitchens where the house's owner joins our porters to prepare the evening meal. Charpoy nights, spent on webbed frame beds, may have their Spartan moments, but the corollary, finding myself a guest in a Himalayan village instead of a stranger in a tent on the edge, feels like true luxury.

Kumaoni cooks are highly sought after in Delhi, for honesty as well as for their culinary skills. Ravenous at the end of each day, we fall upon warming mountain food: brown rotis made with finger millet flour, black dhal, chutneys made with lemon and roasted hemp seeds; chicken or mutton curries sizzled in mustard oil. Breakfasts on the terraces major on vegetable parathas, hot on chilli and coriander, cooled with buffalo curd.

At Deora, our first base, the neighbouring courtyard seethes with noise and colour as the women of the village celebrate another wedding, led by an elderly lady bashing a kerosene tin drum. The boys have not yet returned from fetching the bride from Ranikhet and we don't want to intrude, but repeated invitations are sent across to our courtyard.

By the end of the evening the groom's mother has lined up her three daughters for my inspection as potential wives for my son. I blame the rhododendron juice. The longed-for rain arrives ahead of the bridal party, each gust of wind temporarily dousing the lights and silencing the Hindi film music that competes with the odd roll of thunder. Eventually, a little girl called Punam flits over to beckon frantically with henna-patterned hands: the bride and the musicians have arrived.

A terrified-looking teenager, the bride is dressed to the nines in plum-coloured silk and embroidered net, with a glittery headdress and a nose ring the size of a prize heifer's. She has never met her new family and keeps her eyes modestly glued to her new Bata wedge-heels, 21st-century talismans.

Later Yoginder, our trainee guide and fixer - we are staying in his uncle's house - tells us that our coming to the village on such an auspicious day has been a good omen. "The people are happy that foreigners show an interest.''

The women harvesting wheat in the Jageshwar valley, binding their sheaves with a wisp of straw and an expert twist of the sickle, call to each other that Delhi wallahs are coming. They have never seen a digital camera and laugh incredulously at their own images.

Here in the Kumaoni hills, I have never once been hassled to buy a single thing. A small-scale trek, involving the local people on their own terms, brings modest but welcome revenue. Meanwhile, the impact on this remote farming region will remain low, since only one house is set aside in each of three or four villages, a day's walk apart, and no more than four strangers can turn up at a time.

Umit Singh makes the exception, a farmer with enough faith in the stunning setting of his lone 7,500ft eyrie on the Old Jageshwar Ridge to have built a hostel for visitors. The accommodation at Jwalabanj looks much as in the villages, sparse and clean with separate cabins for loos and bucket washes, but with the addition of a seating area by the family shrine in a rose garden that overlooks the rhododendron forests in one direction and the Himalayan peaks in the other.

At night, everyone gathers in Umit Singh's kitchen, the open hearth lighting the crouched figures of our host and travelling companions as they roll out rotis and pass them to the fire in relays, loading plates with goat curry, dhal, rice and a formidable array of our host's home-made pickles. Few visitors seem to have found their way to this enchanting spot. Only nine foreign signatures stand before our own in his five-year-old visitors' book.

At dawn there is a knock at my door. Would Madam like to see the snows? Wouldn't she just. We race up the last ridge just in time to find the ice goddess Nanda Devi and her acolytes floating, detached above the horizon, before retiring behind their veil of summer heat. Who needs hypnosis?

Cazenove+Loyd (020 7384 2332, www.cazloyd.com) arranges treks in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas as part of a 9-day itinerary, from £ 1,900 per person (based on two people sharing a double room). This includes a British Airways return flight from London to Delhi; accommodation at the Nikko in Delhi for two nights and guiding in Delhi; sleeper train to the mountains and drive back; and three nights in village houses.

Best months for village treks September, October, November, February, March, April. Guidebook Footloose in the Himalaya by Bill Aitken (Permanent Black, 450 rupees - buy it in Delhi).