Brij Anayra

Some hill hotels hand you a view through a window. Brij Anayra hands you the whole slope. It sits in working tea gardens on the edge of Dharamshala, with the Dhauladhar range filling the sky behind the lawns and the Kangra Valley dropping away in front. The brand describes it as a 161-year-old tea garden estate, and the history here is not set dressing. The house was once known as White Haven, lived in by tea planters and explorers before it served as a residence for British Viceroys. You feel that long lineage in the vintage wallpaper, the wooden floors, and the names carved above the doors.

A working tea estate, not a stage set

Mornings start slowly. You wake to birdsong and, in the hotel's own words, tea plantations spread "across 16 acres of land". You can walk out among the bushes while the pluckers work, watch tea being brewed live in front of you at a sunrise breakfast, then do very little for the rest of the day. This is the estate's real pleasure: it asks nothing of you. If you want to switch off completely, the hotel offers a private sound-healing session with gongs and singing bowls.

Rooms named after the people who came before

There are twelve suites and rooms, and each carries the name of someone who shaped this corner of the Himalayas. Viceroys get the grand ones. The Dalhousie Heritage Suite has wooden ceilings, a fireplace and a private deck looking over the very gardens your tea was picked from. Explorers and tea planters get the rest, from the open-plan Barkley Suite framing the Dhauladhar range to the Jameson Room, named after William Jameson. Expect king beds, private sit-outs onto the lawns, writing desks, and in several rooms a bathtub to soak off the mountain chill. Families are well served too: the two-bedroom Clara Heritage Family Suite sleeps up to four.

Food with a colonial accent

Dining centres on the Duchess Lounge, where the menu leans, as the hotel puts it, into "a delightful fusion of Anglo-Indian and international cuisines, inspired by the region's colonial past". That means proper English high tea alongside Pan-Asian and Tibetan-influenced plates, eaten indoors or out on the deck. The set-piece meals are worth planning around: a five-course candle-light dinner, and a sunset high tea laid out at a viewpoint with a village on one side and tea gardens on the other.

Days you can fill, or leave empty

The estate is a genuine base for the whole of the Kangra Valley. You are roughly seven kilometres from McLeod Ganj, the seat of the Dalai Lama, with its Tibetan monasteries, markets and momos, and about three and a half from the Dalai Lama Temple. For soft adventure, the beginner-friendly Triund trek climbs from nearby Dharamkot, and paragliding launches are within reach of the famous Bir Billing sites. Cricket fans can catch a match at the mountain-ringed HPCA stadium; history-minded guests can head to Kangra Fort or ride the narrow-gauge Kangra Valley Railway. Or you can ignore all of it and stay put on the lawn with a pot of estate tea.

The feel of the place

Anayra is not a slick resort and does not pretend to be one. It is a slightly old-fashioned, restored hill home where staff learn your name and the loudest sound is usually the wind through the deodars. There is no swimming pool, and the pace is unhurried. This is somewhere to unwind into over a few nights, not tick off.