Kanatal

A closer look at Kanatal

Kanatal sits at around 2,590 metres on the Chamba–Mussoorie road, roughly four hours from Haridwar, and it has become the short-break destination of choice for people who have done Mussoorie once and found it a little too busy. There is no mall road here, no traffic and very little to see in the conventional sense. What there is instead is deodar and pine forest, cool air even in June, and the kind of quiet that takes about half a day to properly notice.

The one unmissable outing is Surkanda Devi, a Shakti Peeth on a 2,750-metre ridge above Kaddukhal. It used to be a stiff kilometre-and-a-half climb; a ropeway now carries you most of the way, which has made it accessible to elderly parents and small children who would previously have waited in the car. From the temple courtyard the view runs from the Bandarpunch massif in the west across to Nanda Devi on a clear day, and down the other side to the plains.

Ten minutes down the road, Dhanaulti has its two Eco Parks — Amber and Dhara — terraced through deodar forest with walking trails, swings and quiet corners, and further on the Tehri lake spreads out below with viewpoints, boating and, for the energetic, jet-skiing on the reservoir. None of it takes long. A typical Kanatal day is Surkanda Devi in the morning, Dhanaulti and lunch in the middle, Tehri viewpoints in the afternoon, and back at the camp before dark.

Stays here range from proper boutique resorts with heated rooms and good kitchens to fixed camps with bonfires and shared dining, and the choice makes a real difference to the weekend, so we ask before we book. Late December to February brings snow, which is when the place fills up; March to June is warm-days-cold-nights and the most comfortable; and the monsoon, though green and dramatic, means mist and occasional roadblocks on the Chamba stretch. We drive the route year-round and will tell you plainly if your dates look poor.