Kumaon Temples & Tea — Almora, Jageshwar & Kausani, 5 Nights

North-east across the plain, up through Bhowali and Bhimtal and along the ridge road to Almora, which the Chand kings founded in 1568 on a horseshoe of high ground. Most people take the overnight train to Kathgodam and drive up in the morning, which makes this an easy day rather than a long one. The evening is the Lal Bazaar on foot: a paved street of old shopfronts that runs the length of the ridge, with the Nanda Devi temple and its carved stone in the middle of it.

Up to Kasar Devi, eight kilometres above the town, where a small temple stands on the ridge that Vivekananda meditated on in 1890 and where a strange succession of visitors settled afterwards — Danish mystics, Timothy Leary, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens — giving the hamlet below it the name Crank's Ridge. The view runs from Trishul to Nanda Kot. Afterwards the Bright End Corner sunset point, the Govind Ballabh Pant museum in the town, and an afternoon in the bazaar, where Almora's copper workers and its bal mithai shops have both been at it for generations.

Thirty-six kilometres north-east and down into a valley of old deodar, where the Jataganga stream runs past one of the densest temple groups in the Himalaya: a hundred and twenty-four stone shrines built between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries, in a grove that has been protected for as long as anyone has kept records. The complex is a Monument of National Importance and its museum holds the carved stone taken from the ruined shrines. Staying the night here means the evening arti at the Dandeshwar and Jageshwar temples with almost nobody else present, and a forest that is silent after dark.

West through Almora and out along the Gomti valley to Baijnath, where a group of twelfth-century temples built by the Katyuri kings stands beside the river, with a stone Parvati in the main shrine that is among the best carving in the hills. Then the climb to Kausani at 1,890 m, a ridge village that exists for one reason: on a clear morning the Himalaya runs across the northern horizon from Kedarnath in the west through Trishul and Nanda Devi to Panchachuli in the east, and the whole village faces it.

Sunrise on the range if the sky allows, which is the reason people come this far north and is entirely the weather's decision. After breakfast the Anasakti Ashram, where Gandhi spent twelve days in 1929 and wrote his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the Anasakti Yoga; the ashram that grew from the visit was founded by Sarla Behn, and his rooms are kept as a small museum. The afternoon goes to the tea estate on the slope below the village — one of the highest working gardens in India — for the plucking, the withering lofts and the tasting, and then to the Lakshmi Ashram, the girls' school Sarala Behn founded in 1946. A last evening on the ridge.

Down the Kosi valley through Someshwar and Kosi to Kathgodam, about four hours, for the afternoon or overnight train to Delhi; Pantnagar airport is a little further. Driving the whole way to Delhi is a long day and we would rather put you on the train. On the way down the car can stop at the Chitai Golu Devta temple outside Almora, hung with thousands of brass bells and written petitions, which is the last thing most people remember about Kumaon.