A 1924 Victorian stone house on an acre-and-a-half of forested hillside in Landour, 260 trees, a family of books and photographs and antiques, and a cottage born of a snowstorm. The Puri family came here to fulfil a father’s retirement dream. The dream outlived the father. The cottage carries it forward.
Every year, when the monsoon sets in, ferns begin to grow out of the oaks. This is the most ordinary of mountain facts — moss and fern colonising the bark of old trees in the seasonal damp — but at Fern Oaks Estate in Landour, it is the founding image of the whole place. The estate is named for it. The cottage within it is named for it. And it is, in the way that the most resonant names are, precisely accurate: this is a place where things grow from old things, where new life emerges from what has been standing long enough to provide it shelter.
The story of the Fern Cottage begins with Ratindra Puri, a retired investment banker whose childhood was rooted in this part of the Uttarakhand hills — his family had a long legacy at the Doon School in Dehradun, and the forested ridges above the Doon Valley were, in the deepest sense, home. When he retired in 2015, he knew he wanted to come back. The search for the right property took years. In 2018, Ratindra and his wife came across Fern Oaks Estate in Landour — a Victorian-era stone house dating to 1924, sitting on an acre and a half of forested hillside, with 260 fully grown trees and a history that had previously belonged to one Saroj Kapadia, a teacher at the Woodstock School. The house had great allure not just for its location and aesthetic, but for the weight of the history surrounding it.
The family settled into the estate in 2019. Ratindra Puri passed away before he could fully inhabit his retirement dream. His son Karam — a Delhi-born photographer, writer, entrepreneur, and trekker who had lived in New York studying photography before returning to India in 2008 — continued the project in his father’s name and spirit. The estate became the Puri family home. Karam and his wife Priya Kapoor, a publisher at Roli Books, filled it with the curios and artefacts of their global travels, their books, their artworks, their combined creative lives.
And then, in 2021, a snowstorm changed the plan.
The Snowstorm and the Cottage
A massive tree came down in the storm and collapsed on the outhouse of the estate, damaging it badly enough that renovation was required. Karam looked at the wreckage and saw an opportunity. The outhouse — once a secondary structure on the estate grounds — was rebuilt not just as a functional annexe but as a two-bedroom cottage for guests. The design philosophy was clear from the start: follow the language of old colonial hill homes, with the sensibilities of old English cottages. Stone from old homes in the area was repurposed into the structure. Wood came from the rafters. A fireplace was included for the Landour winters. The interiors were left honest: antique furniture, the design sensibilities inherited from Ratindra Puri, the particular quality of a space assembled by people who value beautiful things and know how to live with them.
“If you love reading, writing, painting or simply waking up to birdsong,” says Karam, “this is perfect. It is for the discerning traveller.”
That description is precise. Fern Cottage is a two-bedroom homestay. It is not a resort. It is not a boutique hotel. It is a carefully made space within a family estate, managed by a family that lives next door in the main house and understands, from the inside, what makes a place feel genuinely inhabited rather than merely presented.
The Cottage
The Fern Cottage is part of Fern Oaks Estate — a three-tiered Victorian structure with four bedrooms, a kitchen, dining area, study, wine cellar, sunroom, and family room in the main residence where the Puri family lives. The guest cottage is separate: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a terrace with garden views, a fully equipped kitchen, flat-screen TV, free Wi-Fi, free parking, and à la carte breakfast available daily.
At 7,000 feet, the cottage is cocooned by dense oak forests — the same oaks that sprout their ferns every monsoon. The Victorian-style architecture carries the stone, the pitched roof, the proportions of a house built for a Himalayan hill station in the era when British administrators regarded Landour and Mussoorie as their summer refuge. The interiors warm it up: antique furniture, the collected books of a family that reads seriously, artworks and curios from decades of travel, the particular quality of a home that belongs to a photographer and a publisher.
Landour Itself
The Fern Cottage’s greatest advantage is its address: Landour, not Mussoorie. The two are joined by a road and a few kilometres, but in character they are entirely different. Mussoorie is a hill station in full commercial expression — crowded, busy, tourist-dense. Landour is the quiet British cantonment above it, where the roads are too narrow for most vehicles, where Char Dukan’s four shops have been serving tea and snacks to walkers for a century, where the Landour Bakehouse has become something of a pilgrimage destination, and where Ruskin Bond has lived and written for most of his adult life.
Bond’s house is a short walk from the Fern Cottage — close enough that guests occasionally encounter him on the Landour Chukkar, the circular walking path that rings the ridge and is one of the finest gentle walks in the Uttarakhand hills. The Landour Language School, the Woodstock School, and the various churches and chapels of the cantonment give the area its distinctive, unhurried, educational-spiritual character.
Lal Tibba — the highest point in the area, with panoramic views of the Himalayan peaks on clear mornings — is a short walk. The Landour Bakehouse, Cafe Ivy, and the other establishments of Char Dukan are within walking distance. Kempty Falls and the Jabarkhet Nature Reserve are within easy driving distance for those who want to get off the ridge.
The Estate and Its Trees
The 260 trees of Fern Oaks Estate are the hidden centrepiece of the guest experience. These are not ornamental plantings — they are a mature forest, old enough to support a rich and diverse birdlife that guests encounter from the first morning. The estate is, in the words of everyone who has spent time here, a nature lover’s quiet paradise. Monkey sightings in the trees are regular. The birdsong at dawn is continuous and varied. The ferns on the oaks, in season, are their own slow-motion spectacle.
The estate’s sustainability approach is integrated into its construction: stone from old local homes was repurposed rather than quarried fresh, the garden is maintained with the mature trees as its anchor, and the design choices throughout favour durability, natural materials, and the aesthetic of preservation over replacement.
Why It Stays With You
The Fern Cottage works because of the people behind it. Karam Puri is a photographer’s eye brought to the task of making a place beautiful, combined with the trekker’s understanding of what landscape means when you live inside it. Priya Kapoor is a publisher’s sensibility brought to the selection of books and the curation of a reading space. Ratindra Puri is the father’s dream, still present in the estate he found and loved before he could fully inhabit it.
The cottage guests sleep in was born of a snowstorm. The stones in its walls came from old houses that no longer stand. The ferns on the oaks outside grow fresh every monsoon from roots that have been there longer than the house. This is Landour at its most essential: a place where the past is always growing something new.
Plan Your Visit
Address: The Fern Cottage, Landour, Mussoorie, Uttarakhand — 248179 Instagram: @the_fern_cottage Booking: Via Booking.com (search “The Fern Cottage Landour Roamhome”) · Also available via SundaysForever
Hosts: Karam Puri (photographer, writer, entrepreneur) and Priya Kapoor (publisher, Roli Books) Estate: Fern Oaks Estate — built 1924, purchased by the Puri family 2018, settled 2019 Cottage opened: 2022 (following 2021 snowstorm renovation)
Accommodation: 2 bedrooms · 2 bathrooms · Fully equipped kitchen · Flat-screen TV · Terrace with garden views · Free Wi-Fi · Free parking · Fireplace · Antique furnishings · À la carte breakfast available daily Estate: 1.5 acres · 260 trees · Victorian-style stone architecture · Repurposed stone and timber · Mature oak forest with resident birdlife
Getting There — Dehradun Airport (Jolly Grant): approximately 55 km — around 1.5 to 2 hours by road via the Mussoorie Highway. — Dehradun Railway Station: approximately 38 km — around 1.5 hours by road. — From Delhi: approximately 290 km — around 5.5–6 hours by road. The Shatabdi Express from New Delhi to Dehradun (approximately 5.5 hours) is the most comfortable rail option, followed by a 1.5-hour taxi. — From Mussoorie Mall Road: approximately 3–4 km by road, then a short uphill walk. Landour is best accessed by taxi or personal vehicle to the cantonment, then on foot. Most vehicles cannot proceed beyond certain points on the narrow Landour roads. — Note: Coordinate exact directions with Karam after booking, as the Landour road network requires local knowledge for precise navigation.
Nearby — Char Dukan: 10-minute walk · Landour Bakehouse: 15-minute walk · Lal Tibba: 20-minute walk · Ruskin Bond’s house: 5-minute walk · Jabarkhet Nature Reserve: 5 km · Kempty Falls: 12 km · Mussoorie Mall Road: 4 km · Dehradun Airport: 55 km
Best Time to Visit: October to June for clear skies and mountain views · December to February for snow and fireplace evenings — the Victorian cottage in Landour’s winter is as close to an old English hill-country fantasy as India gets · March to May for the rhododendron bloom and the pre-monsoon light · Monsoon (June–September) for the ferns growing from the oaks in real time — and the most lush, atmospheric version of the estate.
