Aranyaka Upanishad is Ithaca and Home in the Forest Hills of Mussoorie

Dr Roopali takes on an unusual tour, at Aranyaka Upanishad, a resort in 50 acres, on the outskirts of Mussoorie. A place to unwind and return to, she says, exclusively for Different Truths.

Mussoorie in Uttarakhand, India is a resort established, in 1825, by Captain Young, a British military officer, with Mr. Shore, the resident Superintendent of Revenues.

I spent most of my grown-up years vacationing in Mussoorie with my parents. The quaint little shops with antiques and books that are collectors’ items stay closely in my mind. Anglo India was always in full view with its many sprawling houses and many iconic places that we visited.  

Especially the house belonging to Mr. Everest. The CPWD guest house with its lone chowkidar, who also doubled as a cook. He’d shop, slaughter, and cook a desi murga for hours on a wood fire. Our stomachs churned with hunger and anticipation. But that was a long time ago. 

Stay at Aranyaka Upanishad

A pre-Diwali post-Covid vacation took us to Mussoorie to stay at Aranyaka Upanishad. Fifty years ago, a professor and a soldier had bought fifty acres of forest land and decided to live there. The lady, I am told, just sat herself down on a rock surrounded by a dense coniferous forest and announced, “This is my home. This is where I am going to live!”

Her soldier spouse was taken aback but not surprised. He had after all married a feisty woman and the life force was speaking! That is how they came to live in Mussoorie. This is not only their story. It is the story of a forest and a forest sprite.

Forty years ago, their daughter, the young Dr. Anusuya Kumar left her home in India for the United States. And then one day when the time was ripe, both parents crossed the Rubicon, bequeathing the forest to her.

She returned, leaving behind a successful academic career. The perfectly manicured life left behind in the United States and in Europe never again impinged on her mind. She is now as passionate a conservationist as her parents were.

The winding hill road that begins the climb to Mussoorie from the foothills of the Shivalik range takes you past coniferous forests and dense foliage to a hermitage-like getaway called Aranyaka Upanishad. The old-fashioned pillars of the gate carry a few messages. The one that stands out stark and bold declares, “Odysseus is in Ithaca.” 

Home: A Place of Return 

Like Ayodhya and Camelot, Ithaca too, is home and a place of return.  The traveller, like the legendry Ram, Arthur, or Odysseus travels far and wide only to return to the place from whence once began the journey. It all comes full circle.  But the return is never simple. Afterall, the person who left on the journey is never the same as the one who returns. They are now tempered in fire. A wise person.

A student of English and Sanskrit, Dr. Anusuya Kumar calls her forest Aranyaka Upanishad. She has named her home Penelope, herself Odysseus and her abode in the clouds, Ithaca.

Aranyaka Upanishad is not an opulent hill station residence. It is fifty acres of forest land that requires continuous tender care. The greedy eyes of tree cutters and builders periodically ready for gouging; unabashed voices of gender bias continuously needing silencing. A woman has swooped in and taken over. And an outsider at that! Presenting the biggest sense of defeat to the tree cutters and builders.

“What brought you back here?”  I asked Dr. Anusuya Kumar. She replied with a deep sigh. “My mother’s spirit brought me home. My dreams always took me away to these emerald forests. I found myself one with trees. Sometimes becoming one even with the leaping leopard. I returned to protect my parental heritage. I strongly feel her presence. She laid the foundation and now I am the caretaker. It has been life transforming in more ways than one.”

Beautiful Inheritance

“What is your vision for this beautiful inheritance?”

“For most of us, growing up in densely populated and crowded cities around the world, access to pristine forests and wide-open mountain spaces may seem more of a dream or fantasy than a present reality. Pressed by the demands and urgencies of modern life, we have gradually, without even knowing, become alienated from our own deeper roots in the beauty of nature and the magnificent web of life that truly sustains us at the core,” she remarks. 

“Aranyaka Upanishad is a forest retreat centre set in the Himalayan foothills outside of Mussoorie. The defining vision of this unique wilderness is of an ‘Ithaca’ or a place where one could have the possibility of coming home – home to soul, to the beauty of purest nature, and to body, spirit, and mind. By venturing into a pristine forest setting such as this, I believe, a person can feel deeply restored, relaxed, replenished, and emerge centered in a ‘self’ that is part of a greater web of life. It is such a reconnection and recognition of the deeper significance of forests and wilderness for our urban post-modern world,” she says. 

Cottages of varying sizes dot the landscape. People travel from many parts of the world to live here and to practice meditation and yoga. Every year, groups of young yoga enthusiasts travel to Mussoorie and Aranyanka Upanishad from many parts of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. A large yoga hall awaits month long sessions.

Frugal Simplicity  

The cottages are fully equipped.  Antique furniture pieces scrounged from demolished Anglo-Indian homes find themselves refurbished, repolished and resplendent. Yet a frugal simplicity pervades the place. Dr. Anusuya Kumar also runs a forest school for children from nearby villages. The school welcomes gifts of books, computers and toys!  

The Garhwali people are hardworking, skilled, and disciplined. I watched them each day as they trooped in to start their workday at Aranyaka Upanishad. Laying pathways, building walls, painting, and adding artistry to them – lighting the Bukhari to warm us up, collecting firewood, cooking delicious meals. The mountains bind you to a routine. You learn to follow the sun. Hail, rain, storm, or sunshine, work never stops.

The forest centre is also a place of ‘deep ecology.’ The pandemic has reduced human traffic and allowed the forest a chance to breathe. Now that human voices are mostly silent, other species can be heard. Here you can decolonise from the city. Painful as such fragmentation may be – with all its familiar symptoms of depression, anxiety, disease, aimlessness, ennui, and sadness – it cannot, however, be absolute.

Easy Healing

One can no more separate from the profoundly woven web of life and nature than from one’s own essential being. It is a question of recognising inner longings and genuine needs and of responding to them. Healing then can occur naturally and easily – like water finding its own level.

Like the traditional goals of ‘yoga’ and meditation, Dr. Anusuya Kumar believes that a personal reconnection – however brief and intermittent- with nature and wilderness forests, offers a chance to reunite with one’s own deeper being without much deliberation or effort.

It is a reconnection that can often occur spontaneously, silently, and unexpectedly, just from being in a forest setting.  This can bring a quiet kind of healing and relaxation to body, mind, and soul on both conscious and subconscious levels.

Such openings and expansions – when they occur – can also affect the deeper nervous and subtle systems and restore our natural capacity for deep living and joyfulness. It seems that the rishis of the Vedas were aware of such effects on the human psyche.

Camping Facilities

A network of mountain trails leads up and into the forests. An hour and a half hike can take you right to the top of the hill to look down upon the stunning mountain ranges from the ‘Pari Tibba’ peaks. There are overnight camping facilities and guides to take you for a more complicated trek.

You must take the time to feel the presence of the forest and to observe the flora and fauna that surrounds – the forest-floor, or the bark of an older tree… The forest speaks in many ways, and one has but to listen and be aware – so nature may enter.

I let nature enter me as the stars stuck out in the inky black night sky. Like hard pieces of uncut diamonds. In the forest and hills I felt the stealthy feet of the bagheera. We heard the forest whisper and feel its breath on our tingling skin. The mild fragrance of forest blooms tickled our noses. This is a place one must return to. Not once, but many times.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus returned to Ithaca in the garb of a beggar. Let us do the same if nature must embrace us in all its healing ways.

Photos by the author