Back in 2004, only 13 out of 300 van panchayat rights holders signed up, including Kamla. “People were sceptical as to why someone would choose to stay in our village over the hotels in the bustling Munsiari bazaar,” Kamla had told me when we first met.

Global and domestic visitors however, quickly became drawn to Sarmoli, both as a base for high-altitude treks in the Kumaon Himalayas, as well as for volunteer tourism, student trips and slow travel. 

By 2019, Himalayan Ark’s network had grown to 20 women-led homestays, managed by a roster system where priority is given to those who have no alternate source of income.

Twenty-five guides had been intensively trained in birding, high-altitude trekking and natural history, of which over half are women. Having travelled extensively in India, that is a statistic I constantly marvel at, for Sarmoli is one of the only places in the country where I have hiked with a female high-altitude guide.