‘What do you do?’ asked my two young Kumaon guides.
‘I write a magazine for people with allergies and food intolerances.’ I replied. They looked puzzled. ‘For people who are made ill by some of the foods they eat.’ I tried again. They nodded, politely, but obviously found the concept hard to grasp. Among the people of the Kumaon such a thing is unknown. They eat the grains, vegetables and fruits that they grow, which have been fertilised by the manure of the buffalos whose milk they drink – but of chemicals, pesticides, fertilisers, antibiotics, manufactured foods – and allergies – they know nothing at all.

Although certainly not conceived as an ‘allergen-free’ holiday, the Village Ways walking tours could serve well as such. The mountain air is clear and unpolluted, water and not much else is used for washing,
and the food throughout (including overnight stops in Delhi) is vegetarian and freshly cooked, served with rice and chapattis. (These are now often made from wheat but traditionally they were, and still can be, made from finger millet.) Milk in Delhi is from cows but in the
villages is almost exclusively from buffalo.

So for those with allergic respiratory or skin problems, and for wheat or dairy intolerants, the holidays are ideal – although maybe not so good for those with serious food allergies as the villagers might not understand the importance of contamination – and you are two hours walk from the nearest medical help!

As regards food allergens, apart from dairy and wheat, walnut trees are common but the nuts are only available in season; soya oil is the main cooking medium and soya beans are sometimes served. Eggs only appear at breakfast time as an omelette so are easy to avoid. And after lengthy discussions the Village Ways directors were sure that the villagers would be both willing and able to accommodate most diets.

So what is this holiday?

Village Ways is an ‘eco-holiday’ in which visitors walk along ancient mountain paths from village to village in the Binsar wildlife sanctuary guided by local guides and cared for in each village by the villagers themselves.

An excellent website (www.villageways.com) gives you a good flavour of the walks on offer. Although party size is limited to six by the size of the guest houses, your ‘party’ can be as small as yourself. You are responsible for booking your flight but you are collected from the airport and delivered to the overnight express to the mountains (via a restful day in a delightful 1930s Delhi ‘guest house’), then
collected from the train and driven up through the mountains to the Kahli estate where the Village Ways walks start.

Guides

All walking parties are accompanied by two local guides; mine were 22-year-old Hem and 30- year-old Raju. All Village Ways guides speak very serviceable English and have had two months’ intensive training, which includes fairly detailed knowledge of the local flora and fauna.

Between them Hem and Raju could not have taken more care of my safety or my comfort. Always around to see that I had everything that I wanted but never intrusive and they had mountain peoples’ gift of companionable silence without the need for endless chat.

The walking

The Binsar Sanctuary (in the far north-eastern corner of India, nestling between Tibet and Nepal) is a mixture of pine forest, Himalayan oak and rhododendron – a forest of red blossom in March and April. There is only one road, access to the villages being along ancient forest paths. These can be steep or gentle, narrow or wide but would present no problem to anyone who had walked in the Lake or Peak districts of England.

The distances between villages vary from two to five hours walking but the pace is gentle with many stops for rests, water and whatever snacks you have squeezed into your pack.

Khali to Dalar

My first night’s stop was at Hem’s home village, Dalar.
An hour’s walk brought us to the bottom of the valley where terraced slopes were being ploughed for the winter wheat sowing. Small bulls pulled ancient wooden ploughs guided by the farmer, followed by women with mallets breaking up the larger clods: hard labour under the hot Himalayan sun.

Dalar is perched on the side of the hill and, like all the Binsar villages, has already lost about half of its population. The houses are strung out along the mountainside and the first that we came to was Hem’s, with his father drying soya beans and chillis on the terrace.

As with all the village houses, Hem’s house is surrounded by a verdant vegetable garden bulging with cabbages, onions, garlic, coco yams, mustard greens, pumpkins, ginger, coriander and much more.
In between the vegetables grow roses, canna lilies, chrysanthemum, daisies, zinnias, drooping amaranth and hundreds of marigolds. And over all arch walnut trees, apple trees, peach, pear, apricot, fig and heavily laden lime trees.

The soil is fertile and water from the mountains is plentiful so most villages are largely self- sufficient – which is just as well as a visit to the market can involve a three-hour walk to the nearest road, two hours on a bus, then a three-hour walk home, carrying your purchases!
After tea with Hem’s father we walked on to the traditional, stone built guest house (sparkl-ingly clean and neat, as were all the guesthouses) with a solar-powered shower and a flush lavatory attached. At Dalar, as in all the villages, a committee of villagers look after the guest houses and cook the excellent, fresh the vegetarian food.

Darkness comes early in the Kumaon and since light is scarce and the work is hard the locals retire to bed – and the light supply retires with them. Not that turning in early is any hardship. The beds are very comfortable and there is charm in gazing up, by the light of your candle, at the pine beams and slats of the roof or out the open shutters at the thousands of brilliant stars which crowd the sky.

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