Pooja on the peaks

Evening tea with women of the village

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Evening tea with women of the village committee members

Where: Binsar, Saryu, Pindar

Who: Village Ways

AAGRTMemberper testo piccolo In the thirteen Communities women participate in the committees and work as guides, porters, cooks, housekeepers

If you are looking for Pooja Mansour, you would probably find her up on the Indian peaks, looking after a Village Committee discussion on new paths, or chatting with the ladies about a new recipe. For Pooja, this is a normal Himalayan life, since she is the regional coordinator, responsible for the seven Binsar and the six Saryu/Pindar villages, covering 14 guesthouses and the Jaikuni tented camp.

We are a few miles from the borders with Tibet and Nepal, where charming villages and self-contained communities lie along valleys, terraced fields, open meadows fringed with rhododendron, waterfalls and snow-covered peaks.

And since here women participate in the committees and work as guides, porters, cooks, housekeepers, you will probably also meet the first lady guides of Binsar: Rekha and Kiran. Now that Rekha got married, Kiran continues to accompany groups to the villages.
In Saryu, the first women guides are Pushpa, Basanti and Tara. They participated in the guide trainings organized by Village Ways and have been accompanying guests on walks in Binsar, Saryu and Pindar.
Very popular with single women travellers and family groups, the lady guides are great at explaining the details of village life to the guests, as they are very actively involved in looking after their farms, households and take pride in their culture and traditions.

That's why, in the eight trekkings (from 3 to 18 days) you can choose among, from the hill-side terraced to the mountain nested charming villages, from the Shiva complex of temples at Jageshwar in the Binsar Sanctuary, up to the Thousand Steps Path and down to the desert and the Hacra temples, the days visitors remember best, are those spent with local guests.
During your stay in Hacra you will have guided village walks, see the traditional crafts of shoe-making and rug-making and enjoy local folk music.
In the two villages of Saryu and Binsar where you spend two days and nights, you will become familiar with the mountain work too, you will join in and watch or help harvest the fruit, tend the buffalo or work in the fields. prepare traditional dishes using the day's harvest, picking coriander, wheat and rice, cocoa yams, sweet lemons and pomegranates. After dinner you may be invited to a gooli-dandia or cricket matcht, before a night in the twin bedrooms community owned guesthouses, or under the stars at the tented camp at Jaikuni.
And for ladies'groups, an unmissable holiday: eleven days of culture, walk and village life, with a personal guide, staying in the old stone residence of Khali Estate and in the guesthouses, learning about the local customs and the work of the women in the communities.