In the Kullu Valley, a young architect from Shimla came home with a radical idea — that the best way to save a thousand-year-old building tradition was to live in it, work in it, and invite the world to stay. What he built is unlike any homestay in India.
There is a building in Naggar made of reclaimed wood and stone, plastered in mud, that has already survived something most modern structures never will. When flash floods and cloudbursts battered Himachal Pradesh in recent years — claiming hundreds of lives and damaging thousands of buildings — homes built in the Kath Kuni tradition stood unmoved. Horizontal beams, interlocked at corners without nails or mortar, absorbing the shock of the earth moving. Ancient engineering, still working.
This is the building that Rahul Bhushan chose to make his home, his office, his studio, and his homestay. And this is the story of NORTH.
The Man Behind It
Rahul Bhushan grew up in Shimla watching the city change around him — concrete rising where timber once stood, modern structures replacing vernacular ones, the particular character of Himachali towns being slowly smoothed away by the uniform logic of contemporary construction. He studied architecture at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, specialising in crafts, technologies, natural building, and design thinking. He then taught Adaptive Reuse and Himalayan building practices at CEPT’s Faculty of Design. And then he came home.
“Part of the reason was the rapid growth of the city,” he has said, “and part was the increase of tourism around these parts. I had always intended to return and do something to remind and highlight the vernacular architecture of the state.” What he returned to build was not just a homestay. It was NORTH — a Himachal-based collective that is simultaneously an architecture studio, a research node, a workshop campus, an artist residency, and a place where guests can stay and understand, from the inside, why all of this matters.
The Campus
NORTH’s campus spans 1.2 acres in the heart of Naggar, surrounded on three sides by Deodar forest and including a working orchard. Approximately 60 percent of the land is maintained as wild, open green space — a deliberate choice that mirrors the Kath Kuni philosophy of building only what is needed and leaving the land to do what it does best.
The centrepiece of the campus is the main Kath Kuni building — constructed from reclaimed wood of an old Kath Kuni house, filled with stone and plastered with mud, in the traditional horizontally layered style that has made these structures among the most earthquake-resilient buildings in the subcontinent. It houses NORTH’s team, a community kitchen, and the two guest rooms that form the homestay. An open studio — where the team conducts ongoing research into local villages, crafts, antiques, and architecture — is accessible to guests as a co-working and learning space.
The views are, as one would hope in this part of the Kullu Valley, extraordinary. The campus looks out over the Beas River and the Dhauladhar range beyond — misty Deodar forests in the foreground, snow peaks in the distance, the kind of vista that makes concentration difficult and contentment easy.
Staying Here
The homestay at NORTH is deliberately intimate — just two guest rooms within the main Kath Kuni building, sharing the campus with the working team, the studio, and the orchard. This is not a coincidence. Rahul and his team are committed to a form of immersive hospitality that is fundamentally different from conventional tourism. You are not a visitor here. You are, for the duration of your stay, a participant.
Each room is built in the Kath Kuni tradition — cosy, warm, naturally insulated by the wood-and-stone walls that have been keeping mountain people comfortable through Himalayan winters for a thousand years. The campus kitchen prepares meals sourced from local ingredients, given a contemporary touch while remaining rooted in the flavours of the region.
The experience of staying at NORTH is shaped as much by what you encounter outside your room as in it. Guests are encouraged to explore the open studio’s archives — documentation of local villages, traditional crafts, Himachali antiques, and vernacular architecture that represents years of careful research. Conversations with Rahul and his team, who are working on projects across the Himalayan region, tend to begin over breakfast and continue well into the evening.
What to See and Experience
NORTH curates experiences that are rare in the context of Himachali tourism. Heritage walks through the surrounding villages bring the living Kath Kuni tradition to life — you see not just the buildings but the knowledge systems behind them, the craftspeople who carry them, the communities that have built and maintained them across generations. Honey-tasting workshops, traditional craft demonstrations, and natural building sessions connect guests to the material culture of the region in ways that no museum visit can replicate.
The Roerich Art Gallery, dedicated to the extraordinary Russian painter Nicholas Roerich who made Naggar his final home, is within easy reach — a contemplative space of great beauty in a village already full of artistic history. Naggar Castle, a six-hundred-year-old fort that now houses a small museum, offers a commanding view of the entire valley. The Poonam Art Gallery and the surrounding village temples are worth slow, unhurried afternoons.
From Naggar, the Chandrakhani Pass trek — ascending to glacial meadows and alpine lakes where local deities are said to gather — is among the finest high-altitude walks in the Kullu Valley. Rumsu village and the newly established Sharan handloom village, where local weavers are reviving traditional textile production, are both accessible on foot or by short drive.
Why It Matters — and Why It Stays With You
NORTH is not trying to be a resort. It is not trying to be a heritage hotel. It is trying to demonstrate, through lived example, that the best future for the Himalayas is one that understands and builds on what was already here. Every Kath Kuni house restored, every artisan trained, every guest who leaves Naggar understanding what an earthquake-resistant mud-and-timber wall actually means — these are the metrics that matter to Rahul Bhushan.
Staying at NORTH means sleeping inside a conviction. It means waking up in a building that carries a thousand years of knowledge in its walls and looking out over a valley that is still, in spite of everything, astonishingly beautiful. It means spending time with people who came home because they believed the place they came from was worth fighting for.
That is not an experience available in many places in the world. Naggar is one of them.
Plan Your Visit
Address: NORTH Collective, Naggar, Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh — 175130 Email: livenorth360@gmail.com Instagram: @live_north (119K followers) Founder: Rahul Bhushan (Architect, CEPT University Ahmedabad) Booking: Contact directly via email or Instagram for availability and booking
Rooms: 2 guest rooms in the main Kath Kuni building. Shared community kitchen and studio spaces. Experiences offered: Heritage walks · Honey-tasting workshops · Traditional craft demonstrations · Natural building sessions · Open studio access · Artist residency programmes · Volunteer stays
Getting There — Kullu–Manali Airport (Bhuntar) is approximately 30 km from Naggar — around 45 minutes to 1 hour by road. Taxis are readily available from the airport. — From Manali: approximately 21 km south — around 45 minutes by road or local bus to Naggar. — From Delhi: approximately 510 km via NH 3 (Chandigarh–Manali Highway) — around 12–13 hours by road, or overnight Volvo bus to Manali followed by a local taxi to Naggar. — Naggar is accessible from the main Kullu–Manali highway by a switchback road that climbs approximately 4 km up from the valley floor. Local taxis and shared cabs run regularly from both Kullu and Manali. — The nearest major railhead is Joginder Nagar (narrow gauge) or Chandigarh/Pathankot (broad gauge). From Chandigarh, road travel to Naggar takes approximately 7–8 hours.
Nearby — Roerich Art Gallery: 1 km · Naggar Castle: 1 km · Poonam Art Gallery: 1 km · Chandrakhani Pass: 14 km trek · Rumsu village: 3 km · Sharan village: 8 km · Manali: 21 km · Kullu: 30 km · Bhuntar Airport: 30 km
Best Time to Visit: April to June for clear skies and trekking · September to November for post-monsoon green valley and golden light · December to February for snow and deep winter solitude.
Note: NORTH is a working collective as much as a homestay. Guests who are curious, engaged, and willing to participate in the life of the campus will get the most out of their stay. Artist residencies, volunteer programmes, and extended stays are welcomed — enquire directly.
