How Saraaya Was Built

There is a difference between building a hotel and building a place that you have imagined for years.

Saraaya was never meant to be a conventional resort.

From the beginning, I wanted to create something small, private and deeply connected to the landscape — a place where people could step away from the noise of everyday life and experience the mountains differently.

But finding the right place was only the beginning.

Building Saraaya was a completely different journey.

It Started With a Search

I started exploring Himachal in 2019.

At that point, I didn’t have a particular piece of land in mind. I was looking for a feeling.

I had spent most of my life in cities — in Dubai, Gurgaon and Chandigarh — and had built a corporate career in insurance and banking.

I had travelled to beautiful destinations around the world, from Seychelles, Mauritius, Phuket and the Maldives to Kenya, Denmark, Spain and Hungary.

But somewhere along the way, I realised that beaches and cities were not where I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

The mountains felt different.

They gave me something I couldn’t find in the city.

Space.

Silence.

Perspective.

I wanted to build something there.

It took me almost five years of searching before I found the place where I could finally see the dream taking shape.

Nauhali.

Choosing the Difficult Location

When I found the property, I knew immediately that it wasn’t going to be easy.

There was no proper road right up to the property.

The location was secluded.

Infrastructure was limited.

And the last stretch required a level of manual effort that would be difficult for anyone accustomed to city construction.

But that difficulty was also part of what attracted me.

I didn’t want Saraaya to be another property surrounded by traffic, shops and neighbouring hotels.

I wanted guests to feel that they had actually left the mainstream behind.

The remoteness was not a problem I wanted to solve.

It was part of the experience I wanted to create.

Building Without a Road

This is probably one of the parts of Saraaya’s story that guests don’t see.

Today, you arrive, settle into your suite and enjoy the surroundings.

But getting the property to that point was another story.

Construction materials had to be moved through difficult terrain.

Cement.

Steel.

Wood.

Furniture.

Kitchen equipment.

Electrical equipment.

Everything had to reach a location that wasn’t easily accessible by road.

A significant amount of material had to be carried manually over the final stretch.

In the city, you can arrange a truck and unload directly at the building.

Here, logistics became a daily challenge.

Sometimes the solution was simply to carry something.

And then carry something else.

And then do it again.

Even Electricity Had to Be Built

One of the biggest challenges was electricity.

I didn’t want Saraaya to simply depend on whatever infrastructure happened to be available nearby.

We had to arrange our own dedicated electrical transformer for the property.

For a guest, electricity is something you expect to be there.

You switch on a light.

Charge your phone.

Turn on a heater.

And carry on with your evening.

But getting that infrastructure established in a remote mountain location required planning, permissions, equipment and a lot of persistence.

It was another reminder that I wasn’t simply building safari suites.

I was building the infrastructure needed to make the dream possible.

The Mountains Don’t Follow Your Schedule

This was one of the hardest lessons for me.

In a city, you make a plan.

You give someone a deadline.

You expect the work to progress.

The mountains have a different idea.

Weather changes.

Road conditions change.

Materials get delayed.

Workers cannot always reach the site.

A job that you thought would take a few days can take much longer.

At first, I found this frustrating.

Eventually, I understood something.

The mountain doesn’t care about your deadline.

You have to adapt.

You have to wait.

You have to solve the problem in front of you.

And then you have to keep moving.

Three Years of Building

It took approximately three years to put Saraaya into shape.

Three years of construction.

Three years of logistics.

Three years of solving one problem after another.

Three years of making decisions without always knowing exactly what the next problem would be.

And even after opening, the work hasn’t really stopped.

A property in a remote mountain environment constantly teaches you something new.

There is always something to improve.

Something to maintain.

Something to protect from the weather.

Something to rethink.

That is part of the reality of building in the mountains.

Why Only Four Suites?

I could have built more.

From a purely commercial perspective, more rooms can mean more revenue.

But Saraaya was never designed around maximising the number of guests.

I wanted intimacy.

I wanted privacy.

I wanted the safari suites to have space around them.

I wanted guests to be able to sit outside without feeling like they were sitting next to another room.

And I wanted the forest and mountains to remain the dominant part of the experience.

So we built four private Safari suites.

Four was intentional.

The limited number of suites is not a constraint I hope to overcome.

It is part of the identity of Saraaya.

Building the Experience, Not Just the Accommodation

The safari suites were only one part of the vision.

I wanted guests to have reasons to slow down.

A bonfire.

An open-air movie under the stars.

Picnics.

Sunset experiences.

Forest walks.

Village experiences.

Trekking.

Stargazing.

Simple meals.

Long conversations.

And sometimes nothing at all.

Because a meaningful stay, for me, isn’t only about expensive materials.

Sometimes comfort is:

privacy.

silence.

space.

time.

Keeping the Place Connected to the Land

I also wanted Saraaya to feel like it belonged here.

Not like a resort that could have been built anywhere and simply placed in Himachal.

The surrounding villages, forests, water, traditional mills, local crafts and mountain trails are part of the story.

That’s why I encourage guests to explore beyond the property if they are curious.

Visit Nauhali.

Explore Kareri.

Walk towards Kareri Lake.

Discover traditional water-powered mills.

Learn about local wool and handicrafts.

Visit Boh Valley.

Or simply sit in the forest.

The property is only one part of the experience.

The landscape is the other half.

There Were Plenty of Moments of Doubt

I don’t want to romanticise the journey.

It wasn’t always beautiful.

There were disagreements.

There were financial pressures.

There were construction problems.

There were infrastructure problems.

There were moments when I questioned whether I had taken on more than I could handle.

Building a business in a remote location is very different from building one in a city.

There is less convenience.

Less infrastructure.

Less margin for error.

And often, fewer people around to solve a problem immediately.

But every difficult phase taught me something.

My Family Had to Believe in a Dream They Couldn’t Always Understand

I owe a great deal to my family.

Especially my wife, Sanam.

While I was spending years searching for the right place and eventually building Saraaya in Nauhali, she remained in Gurgaon and managed our life from a distance.

That wasn’t easy.

I was dealing with the property, construction, labour, logistics and the uncertainty of building something from scratch in the mountains.

She was managing life in Gurgaon and carrying her own responsibilities while supporting a decision that was anything but conventional.

Thank you, Sanam, for giving me the space to pursue this dream and for managing the distance with me.

I also want to thank my parents, my sister, my brothers-in-law, my in-laws and our entire family.

There were disagreements.

There were concerns.

There were difficult conversations.

And I understand why.

From the outside, leaving a corporate career and investing years of your life into a remote mountain project can look like a completely mad decision.

But eventually, they allowed me to follow it.

And that support means more to me than I can explain.

I Wasn’t Trying to Build for Everyone

One of the things I knew from the beginning was that Saraaya wouldn’t be for everyone.

And I’m comfortable with that.

If you want a hotel in the middle of a busy tourist town, Saraaya probably isn’t what you’re looking for.

If you want nightlife outside your door, we’re not that.

If you want shops and restaurants within a few steps of your room, we’re not that.

But if you want to wake up surrounded by mountains…

If you want forest instead of traffic…

If you want privacy…

If you want to slow down…

Then you may understand why I went through all of this to build Saraaya.

The Hardest Part Became the Best Part

Looking back, I sometimes think the difficulties were actually what shaped the property.

If there had been a proper road all the way to the site, perhaps things would have been easier.

If infrastructure had already existed, perhaps construction would have been faster.

If the location had been convenient, perhaps the business would have been simpler.

But maybe Saraaya would also have become something different.

The difficulty forced us to build slowly.

It forced us to think carefully.

It forced me to understand the land.

And it taught me to respect the environment in which I was building.

What the Mountain Taught Me

The biggest thing the mountains taught me wasn’t about hospitality.

It was patience.

The mountain doesn’t care how ambitious you are.

It doesn’t care how much money you’ve invested.

It doesn’t care about your timeline.

You learn to work with it.

You learn to adapt.

You learn that some things take time.

And you learn that difficult doesn’t necessarily mean wrong.

Sometimes it simply means that you have chosen something worth working for.

Saraaya Is Still a Work in Progress

Even today, I don’t consider Saraaya finished.

There are things I still want to improve.

Ideas I still want to build.

Experiences I still want to create.

There will probably always be something.

And I’m okay with that.

Because Saraaya was never a project with a simple beginning and end.

It is something that continues to evolve.

Just like the mountains around it.

Three Years Later, I Still Know Why I Did It

Sometimes I sit quietly at Saraaya and look around.

The forest.

The mountains.

The safari suites.

The lights in the evening.

Guests sitting around a fire.

And I think about what this place looked like when I first found it.

I think about the years of searching.

The materials being carried manually.

The infrastructure challenges.

The transformer.

The construction.

The disagreements.

The uncertainty.

The sacrifices.

And I realise that the most important thing we built wasn’t the safari suites.

We built a place where the feeling that brought me to the mountains could be shared with other people.

Welcome to Saraaya

Saraaya is my attempt to create the kind of place I was looking for when I decided that city life was no longer enough for me.

It is small.

It is secluded.

It is still evolving.

It is not the easiest place to reach.

And it is certainly not for everyone.

But it was never intended to be.

It was intended for people who appreciate what happens when you remove the noise and leave space for nature.

So when you arrive, I hope you don’t only see four private Safari suites.

I hope you see the story behind them.

The years of searching.

The hands that carried the materials.

The people who stood by me.

The mountains that tested me.

And the dream that refused to go away.

This is Saraaya.

Built slowly. Built with sacrifice. Built in the mountains.

And most importantly,

built with a belief that sometimes the most difficult place to build is exactly where the dream belongs.

— Sabhay Thakur
Founder, Saraaya Glamps Dharamshala

Serenity in Wilderness