While we pride ourselves on the experience we provide for our visitors, there is no greater joy than having them spread the word about their experiences or writing about us for travel publications.

Here is an article written by Bharati Motwani some years ago which was published in makemytrip.com as the Travel Story of the Week.

The Last Resort by Bharati Motwani       |       Jilling out with Steve by Jug Suraiya

Somewhere up in the mountains of Kumaon lives a wild-eyed renegade whose calling card reads - Steve Lall, Junglee Environmentalist - a handle that may be interpreted variously. The card invites you to his property named 'The Last Resort' - again open to interpretation!

Our curiosity piqued, we undertook the heart-pumping, muscle-wrenching, bone-tiring 40 minute climb up to The Last Resort. Here the junglee man has nurtured for himself a small piece of Eden - a hundred acres of forest, a patch of agriculture, cows, goats, sundry strange pets, fresh-faced villagers, a lovely Pahari wife, and a fiefdom all of his own. Here, Lall Sahab is doctor, midwife, tyrant, teacher and resident NGO. 'Simple technology' is his motto and he will apply that to everything, from flushing a toilet to delivering a baby.

We rediscovered unexpected and long-forgotten pleasures - like taking a bath out in the open with hot-water that smells of wood-smoke. For skin that hadn't felt the warmth of the sun since the time when, as an infant, my mother sunned me on a mat after my oil-massage - it's one of those things you can't put a price to.

Carrying the back-to-nature experience further, Steve Lall recommends meditating in the nude on the hilltop ridge, all the better to soak in the free-floating cosmic energies around! But we thought we'd let that one pass. While some visiting blonde babes did apparently take him at his word, and lived to tell the tale - we thought, the sight just might prove too much for a peace-loving leopard just wandering by, trying to mind his own business.

Anything can happen at The Last Resort. The place seems to restore you to yourself, sometimes to such an extent as to render you quite unfit for civilized company! While personally, I wasn't unduly surprised - I always knew my children were wild animals and that my husband secretly fancied himself as Tarzan - local gossip tells many a bizarre tale of strange behavior by perfectly normal-looking guests. When you have a host who has dug his own grave and goes and lies down in it from time to time, 'just to get used to the feel of it' - that's not surprising!

Fireside evenings with Lall Sahab normally entails having your back-teeth floating in rum n paani, while a couple of equally `happy' villagers swing their hips to 'Ber paako baaron maasa'. To this, Steve will add a bluegrass element on his mouth-organ or harmonize in tuneful tenor.

In the clear starlit night, made more luminous perhaps, by a few illicit puffs on the local weed, life is good indeed. Simple, sweet and slow.

Read 'Jilling out with Steve' by Jug Suraiya