Kumaon Journeys — Retreat & Cultural Programme at Kot Kailash Kumaon
Not a wellness offering.
Not a scheduled activity.
A platform.
Each edition takes its name from the ridge at the season it runs. The archive of editions becomes a record of this ridge across its seasons — a body of work, not a catalogue of retreats.
Kumaon Journeys began with a question: what happens when world-class practitioners of ancient and endangered disciplines are brought to one of the most acoustically and spiritually resonant landscapes in the Himalayas, and a small number of people are given five days to be present for it?
The answer was Burānsh — Edition One, April 2026. The guests came from Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata. They arrived uncertain of what to expect. The musicians performed live. The forest held the sound. They left changed. The departure, by every account, was emotional.
That is the standard every edition is held to.
No theatre.
Kot Kailash Kumaon
Trishul
tri-shool · Shiva’s trident · Named for the peak on the October horizon
October 2026 · 4 nights, 5 days · Full property · Dates to be confirmed
The peak appears
when the monsoon clears.
The rhododendron is gone. The harvest is in. The monsoon has cleared. In October, the Trishul peak — one of the summits of the Nanda Devi massif, visible from the bed of Kumaon Vann on a clear morning — comes back into full sharpness on the horizon.
The second edition of Kumaon Journeys returns to the discipline that began on this ridge in April: Nada Yoga and Dhrupad, the yoga of sound and the oldest surviving form of Hindustani classical music. Live performance. Five days. The full property. The October silence, which is different from the April silence in ways that must be experienced to be understood.
Nada Yoga and Dhrupad.
Two expressions of one truth.
Nada Yoga is the understanding that vibration is not merely heard but felt — that the body is an instrument, and sustained attentiveness to sound is itself a form of practice. Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of Hindustani classical music: a tradition of such rigorous discipline and philosophical depth that it is, in much of the world, disappearing.
Together they form the core of every Kumaon Journeys edition in this series — a serious encounter with a living tradition, in a landscape that has held sacred sound for two and a half thousand years.
People who arrived here
first as guests.
Rashi Pant and Pulkit Sharma — the principals of Cchitvan — hold PhDs in Dhrupad and have devoted their practice to ensuring this tradition survives. Krishna, Rashi’s husband, brings a rigorous yoga practice that deepens the sound work. Their musicians perform live. This is not recorded sound in a wellness space. It is Dhrupad, performed at 7,800 feet, in the silence that only this altitude produces.
On the property, Pushkar Singh Negi and Balam — both yoga practitioners — hold the experience from the inside. Pushkar leads dawn bird watching walks on the ridge between sessions. The practice does not end when the circle closes.
Trishul is being planned for October 2026. Exact dates will be confirmed shortly. We conduct a brief conversation before extending an invitation — to ensure the group is right for the experience, and the experience right for the group.
Register Your InterestEvery edition. Every season.
The ridge, recorded.
Kumaon Journeys is a living archive. Each edition adds to the record of what has been brought to this ridge, and by whom, and in what season. The archive does not diminish. It deepens.
Burānsh
Edition One · April 2–6, 2026
In collaboration with Cchitvan · Nada Yoga & Dhrupad
Named for the rhododendron — burānsh — that blooms across the Shaukiyathal ridge each April. The same flower that lives in the O of the Kot Kailash logo. The same forest that surrounded the property for five days in Edition One.
Rashi Pant and Pulkit Sharma of Cchitvan — PhD Dhrupad scholars — led the Nada Yoga and Dhrupad sessions. Krishna guided the yoga practice. Their musicians performed live each evening. Pushkar and Balam held the mornings.
The guests arrived uncertain of what to expect. They left changed. The departure was emotional for everyone — guests, practitioners, and the team who had held the five days together. Burānsh ran during the bloom. Edition One is complete. What it began is not.
Virām
A future edition · In collaboration with Aikyam Retreats
Transformative Coaching & Wellness · Dates to be announced
Virām is the Sanskrit word for pause — not as escape, but as a conscious return to breath, to truth, to centre. A retreat conceived in collaboration with Guramrita Oberoi of Aikyam Retreats: an ICF-certified coach and transformational facilitator with over twenty years of practice, whose work with C-suite and corporate leadership has taken her across India and internationally.
Guramrita came to Kot Kailash as a guest — long before any retreat was discussed. She stayed on the ridge. Felt what it does. The conversation about Virām came only after. That sequence matters. It is the only sequence we trust.
Virām will return to the ridge. The season and the dates will be announced when they are ready.
Every collaboration in Kumaon Journeys has begun the same way.
Rashi and Krishna came on their honeymoon. Pushkar heard her sing. Months later, Burānsh existed. Guramrita came as a guest. She stayed. She felt what the ridge does. Virām followed.
This is not a policy. It is simply what has happened, every time. The ridge is the first conversation. Everything else comes after.
This ridge is available
to the right practice.
We are not looking for practitioners. We are recognising them when they arrive.
If you are a practitioner, curator, or organisation whose work is rooted in genuine discipline — whether in sound, movement, contemplative tradition, transformative coaching, ecological knowledge, or classical art — and you believe this ridge is the right place for it, we would like to hear from you.
We offer the property, the kitchen, the landscape, and the hospitality. We ask for your practice, your integrity, and your willingness to let the ridge do some of the work.
- —A practice that is rooted, not assembled.
- —A collaborator who has arrived on this ridge before they approached us — as a guest, a visitor, or someone who simply knew what this place was.
- —Work that would be at home in the same sentence as Jageshwar Dham.
- —The honesty to say when something is not ready.
We do not offer this as a platform.
We offer it as a partnership.
The conversation begins with a discovery call. There is no form, no submission, no pitch deck required. A brief introduction and a sense of what you do and why you believe it belongs here is enough.
Begin the ConversationBuilt by two people
who chose the mountain.
Kot Kailash Kumaon was co-founded by Pushkar Singh Negi and Sayed Aziz — two hospitality professionals who decided, independently and then together, to build something of their own. Something with no theatre.
Pushkar Singh Negi · Co-Founder
The ridge is home.
Not a setting.
On the property, every day.
Pushkar was born here. He grew up in the five-house village of Kailash Kot, surrounded by the oak forests that still stand above the property. He knows every family in Kunja Gunth, every trail through the forest, every window that catches the first light on Nanda Devi.
When Rashi sang on the ridge during her honeymoon and a conversation began, it was Pushkar who heard what it could become. Kumaon Journeys did not come from a strategy. It came from someone paying attention to what the place was already asking for.
When guests write after they leave — not to praise the room, but to say they miss the conversation — it is him they are missing.
Sayed Aziz · Co-Founder
The world found it.
Because he showed it the way.
Strategic direction, from London.
Sayed has spent his career at the highest levels of Indian and international luxury hospitality. He knows, from the inside, what it takes for a place to earn the trust of guests who have seen everything and settled for nothing.
Guramrita — who would later conceive Virām with Kot Kailash — came to the property as a guest first, long before any retreat was discussed. She and Sayed have known each other since school. The conversation about bringing her work to this ridge only became possible because she had already felt what the ridge does. That is the only kind of conversation Sayed trusts.
He oversees Kot Kailash’s strategic direction, international positioning, and every decision about what the brand is — and what it refuses to be.
Pushkar is on the ridge every morning.
Sayed is the reason the world will find it.
Together, they are Kot Kailash Kumaon.
The same ridge.
Available year-round.
Kumaon Journeys runs on the same ridge, in the same rooms, served by the same kitchen as a regular stay at Kot Kailash. If a retreat edition is not running during your dates, the property is available for individual bookings year-round.
Direct bookings always receive the best available rate.
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