If someone had told me beforehand what the journey to Eagles Nest actually involved, I genuinely don’t think I would have gone. A six-hour ride on the Vande Bharat Express from New Delhi to Amb Andaura, then sit through another three-hour drive to Upper Dharamkot, switch into a tiny Maruti Zen for ten minutes uphill, and finally trek for fifteen more minutes(the roads were under repair when I visited), puffing and panting while my lungs staged a full protest, I probably would have said no.
But had I let all of that stop me, I would have missed out on two of the most beautiful days of my life and that would’ve been a tragedy. It’s something that can only be described as a scenic view from an old European movie.
A Slice Of Heaven, Hidden Between The Mountains
Eagles Nest sits in two square kilometres of cedar, oak and rhododendron in the Himalayan foothills, overlooking the Kangra Valley and the temple of the Dalai Lama. It is everything I love about mountain life, and then some. The moment you arrive, breathless and slightly ridiculous from the trek, and you turn around and see what surrounds you, every single minute of that journey makes complete sense.
I went there with one intention. To do absolutely nothing.
And I did it very, very well.
I relaxed. I roamed the property whenever the guilt of eating too much got to me. I ate delicious food three to five times a day, slept, woke up, ate again, and repeated. I am not kidding when I say that for far too long, I have been travelling with itineraries so packed I barely had two minutes to video call my husband, let alone actually rest. But up there, hugged by those majestic mountains, surrounded by nothing but natural beauty and the sounds of the forest, I finally, finally exhaled. And I want that for everyone reading this.
Are we not done with the relentless itinerary? Are we not now ready for a different kind of luxury? The kind that we’ve come to know as Hushpitality in 2026? Silence as the amenity. Rest as the indulgence. Disconnection as the whole point of a luxury vacation.
Hand to my heart, I wanted to gatekeep this place so badly. Over-tourism has not touched this corner of Dharamshala and it remains a hidden gem in every sense of the word. But since I was raised Christian and have had it drilled into me since childhood that sharing is caring, I will, very begrudgingly, tell you everything.
The Luxury Of Doing Absolutely Nothing
Everywhere you look at Eagles Nest, there is beauty. You can walk to the viewpoint where the whole of Dharamshala spreads out below you. You can actually see stars at night and I genuinely cannot remember the last time I could say that from where I live in Delhi. The air is clean and cold and tastes like something good. And the rhododendrons bloom in every direction as far as your eyes can carry you.
No amount of adjectives will do it justice. It is like a cluster of rustic houses floating somewhere between clouds and forest. And it has a story to match its setting.
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The History Behind Eagles Nest: 160 Years Of Stone, Ruin And Rebuilding
The current Eagles Nest was built from the bones of a stone house that is roughly 160 years old. it survived the devastation of the 1905 Kangra earthquake that destroyed thousands of buildings across the region. For years, it stood abandoned and untouched.
But even in rubble, love finds a way.
Bo and Sheila, the previous owners, began visiting the hill locally known as Dhongri from around 1985. Both were working in London at the time, but they kept coming back, camping in that broken-down old house, drawn to something they could not quite name. When the landowners eventually decided to sell, Bo heard in time, formed a Himachali company, and managed to purchase the land. Rebuilding began in the nineties, slowly and deliberately, and Eagles Nest gradually took shape. The original stable-barn still housed horses and free-range chickens. New stone and brick structures grew up around what remained of the original buildings on the site.
Today, it’s managed by Aashvim Hospitality Service’s ‘BookMark Hotels’.
A Quiet Refuge Above The World
The property has twenty bedrooms, each large and full of light, with floor-to-ceiling windows designed specifically to breathe the outdoors in. Rooms start at 320 square feet and suites go upwards of 400.
The landscaped lawns are dotted with walkways and flower beds. There is a greenhouse for organic cultivation on the premises. Three spots that will become yours within hours of arriving: the Deck, for morning yoga or evening bonfires under the stars; the Point, for a cup of chai with a full valley view; and the Meditation Zone, for the silence your nervous system has been craving. The yoga studio seats eighteen. The spa has two treatment rooms and a sauna.
And at the Barn, Sikandar and Jyoti (resident horses of Eagles Nest) wait to take you on a trot through the forest trails, or trained local staff will guide you on a trek through terrain that will genuinely take your breath away.
Waking Up To Snow-Capped Mountains
My husband and I would wake up, and the first thing we would see were snow-capped mountains so bright in the morning light they actually hurt to look at directly. We would sit on our balcony with our coffees, wrapped in the cold clean air, not saying much at all. Who needs an alarm when that is what is waiting for you?
After washing up, we would walk over to Bonhomie, the private dining hall. It is set in an atrium with a double-height skylight and the kind of warm, thoughtful interiors that make you want to sit down and stay for a while. The hotel manager Shashi Kant would greet us and on the lucky mornings, we would grab seats on the porch outside. On rainy mornings, we sat indoors and honestly it was just as lovely.
The Food At Eagles Nest: Homely, Himachali And Wildly Good
Breakfast was homely and just right, all thanks to Chef Harmeet Singh and his team. Eggs, bread, dalia (cracked wheat with milk). A daily special that changed, so one morning there would be stuffed paranthas, the next chole bhature. And then there was the jam. I need to stop for a moment and talk about the jam, because I have hated jam my entire life. Since childhood. Never touched it. But my husband told me this one was different and something in the way he said it made the food reviewer in me lean in. It was a bitter orange marmalade, made in Himachal Pradesh, not overwhelmingly sweet. Slight bitter, full of rind, spread over hot toasted garlic bread with a little butter underneath. I bought a dozen jars to take back to Delhi for family and friends, which tells you everything you need to know.
When it rained, I’d curl up in the den, surrounded by a wall of books, revisiting The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. It felt like meeting an old friend. My husband would wander off to the games room at the back of the property to play pool or foosball and we would find each other again at mealtimes, unreasonably happy.
The Wilderness Right Outside Your Room
One day we went on a trek with one of the local guides. It was exhausting. Very exhausting. (The exact degree of exhaustion will vary depending on whether you ask me, my husband or the guide). But reaching the top and standing there looking out over the whole town made every laboured step worth it. Our guide walked alongside us talking about how humans and wildlife coexist on these hills, mentioning bear encounters the way most people mention a trip to the market. He told us to stay calm if we ever came face to face with one. This did not entirely calm me down. But he also told us that if we were lucky, or unlucky depending on your threshold for wildlife, we might spot leopards, Langur and Rhesus Macaque monkeys, Himalayan Black Bears, pine martens, mongoose, Barking Deer, Himalayan Deer, porcupines, Himalayan foxes, leopard cats, jungle cats, flying squirrels and more. All in those forests, all around Eagles Nest.
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The mountains surrounding the property are home to an estimated 450 bird species. The Himalayan Griffon Vulture. The Lammergeier, which has the longest wingspan of any living bird, up to three metres. Khaleej Pheasants, the long-tailed blue and white Himalayan Magpie, clouds of fiery Scarlet Minivets, turquoise Verditer Flycatchers, and on the rarest days, the Golden Oriole. You can see many of these from the gardens of Eagles Nest itself, provided you wake up in time and have your gear on.
Because there is no road to the top of this hill, there are no vehicles either. That absence of engines is precisely what has allowed this wilderness to stay intact. The people who live up there understand that they are guests in it, not its managers, and the wildlife continues to thrive because of it.
Lunch was all Himachali: lentils, Chha Gosht, Meat Bhath, salad pulled fresh from the kitchen garden, roti and rice. Eagles Nest operates on a set daily menu based on what is available and in season, cooked in small, considered portions.
They also harvest rainwater, draw drinking water from their own spring, and separate all their waste so that food scraps go to the dogs, horses or compost, paper feeds the fires, and a local man collects glass, tin and plastic for recycling.
Every meal comes from that sustainable philosophy.
Every single afternoon, we promised to eat less.
Every single afternoon, we failed.
It always started the same way. “Let’s keep it light today.” And then five minutes later, “Okay but this dal is insane, can we get more?”
Why Eagles Nest Is the Ultimate Slow Travel Destination in Himachal Pradesh
After lunch, I would sink into the hanging chair in the garden, usually with a slice of banoffee pie or a bowl of purple rice kheer in my hand, while my husband dozed off in his chair in the middle of taking a photo of me. It was perfect. Absolutely and completely perfect.
The luxury of doing abso-freaking-nothing turned out to be the greatest thing I gave myself in years. No pressure, no rushing, no guilt about wasting time. I grew up with a disciplinarian father who woke us early, even on holidays, because there were always places to go and things to see. Over time, I internalized the belief that rest was somehow a waste. Eagles Nest quietly undid all of that.
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Dinner was a mix of everything comforting. Soups, curries, grilled chicken breasts, pasta. And yes, the same charade every night where we vowed restraint and then ate with great enthusiasm. After dinner, I would plant myself in front of the bonfire in the Den, a pillow strategically covering the evidence of how much I had eaten, a small plate of chocolate cake balanced on top of it, while my husband and Shashi Kant talked about the mountains and the forest and everything under the stars.
I would drift in and out of sleep in front of that bonfire, and in those soft half-awake moments, I would think of Heidi. You know Heidi, the protagonist from the 1880 children’s novel by Johanna Spyri, later made into a television series? The one where every episode opened with snow-capped mountains, lots of flowers, small cottages and a little girl singing and spinning across a hilltop, completely in love with where she was.
But that was me, right there, by that fire, between two people I liked, with a mountain I had spent two days falling in love with just outside the window.
I have always wanted to live like Heidi. For two days, I did.
