Diwali in Himachal was not how either of us had planned to spend the festival.
My husband Tarun had imagined it the way he has imagined it every year for thirty four years. His mother’s house in Pitampura. The drawing room full of relatives. Diyas on every surface. His nephews running between rooms with sparklers.
We had done it exactly that way for seven years of marriage.
Then the air quality index in Delhi crossed 400 on the Monday before Diwali and Tarun’s mother called us unprompted.
She said: “Go somewhere. Come back after. I will save you mithai.”
She has never once suggested we spend a major festival anywhere other than Pitampura.
We booked The Sirmour Retreat in Nahan that same evening.
Why Diwali in Himachal Started Making Sense
I want to be honest. Neither of us felt completely good about leaving.
Diwali is not just a festival. It is a set of associations built since childhood. The sounds. The smells. The specific feeling of a night when the whole neighbourhood lights up and you are inside it with people you love.
We drove out of Delhi on Diwali eve and the city was already in full preparation. Strings of lights on every building. Flower sellers at every corner.
Tarun was quiet for the first hour.
By the time we crossed Ambala and the air changed, something had shifted in him that I could see even from the passenger seat.
He took a long, slow breath.
Then he said: “I forgot air could smell like this.”
The Drive Up and What the Hills Did
The road from Delhi to Nahan takes five to six hours. We had left early to arrive before dark. Tarun wanted to see the property in daylight before the evening began.
Past Ambala the landscape transforms gradually. The flat plains give way to the first gentle rises and then to the specific quality of hill air that no city produces regardless of what the air purifier manufacturers tell you.
Nahan appeared mid afternoon. A town doing exactly what it always does, completely on its own terms, with diyas in some shop windows and strings of lights in the market. The same preparations we had seen in Delhi but quieter. More like the festival was being observed rather than performed.
The Sirmour Retreat sits above the town in the Shivalik hills and the approach to it in late afternoon Diwali eve light was something I had not anticipated.
The hills were golden. Not decoration golden. The specific shade the Shivalik range goes in the last two hours of daylight that has nothing to do with festival preparation and everything to do with altitude and the angle of the sun.
We stepped out of the car and neither of us spoke for a moment.
What Diwali in Himachal Actually Feels Like
The team at The Sirmour Retreat welcomed us with warmth that felt right for the occasion. Not a corporate welcome. Not a festive performance. Warm enough to feel genuine and restrained enough to not overwhelm.
There were diyas on the terrace. Not hundreds. Enough.
Our room looked directly over the valley. The Shivalik range in every direction. Nahan below, beginning to light up as the evening arrived, the lights appearing one by one the way lights appear in hill towns when people start remembering a festival is happening.
Tarun stood at the window for a long time without looking at his phone.
That is how I measure the quality of a view for him.
“It looks like Diwali from up here,” he said.
He was right. It looked like Diwali the way a painting of Diwali looks. Distant and beautiful and entirely without the smoke.
We ate on the terrace. Himachali cuisine made with the patience The Sirmour Retreat kitchen applies to everything. The Madra. The Siddu. Tarun has strong opinions about bread and the Siddu produced the specific silence that means something has exceeded expectation.
At some point he called his mother.
She picked up from the middle of the Pitampura gathering. We could hear his nephews in the background. His sister laughing at something. The particular sound of a large family in a small drawing room on Diwali night.
He talked for twenty minutes. Then said happy Diwali and hung up and looked at the valley.
“She sounded happy,” he said.
“She always sounds happy on Diwali,” I said.
“I know. So do I, actually. That is surprising.”
“Diwali in Himachal at The Sirmour Retreat gave us something we had not thought to look for. The festival arrived exactly as it always does, lights and food and calling the family and the warmth of an auspicious night. But it arrived without the noise that usually sits alongside it. The hills took the festival and kept everything good about it and quietly removed the rest.”
Tarun, guest at The Sirmour Retreat, Nahan
Why Diwali in Himachal Beats the City
I want to say this carefully because it is not a criticism of city Diwali.
City Diwali is its own thing. The density of it. The shared experience of a neighbourhood doing the same thing at the same time. There is nothing wrong with it. We have loved it for seven years.
But Diwali in Himachal gave us something the city cannot.
Space to feel the festival rather than be inside it.
From the terrace above Nahan, the festival was visible below us rather than surrounding us. The lights. The sounds, softened by altitude and distance into something that sounded less like an assault and more like punctuation. All of it present. None of it overwhelming.
The hills give you the festival with perspective. Not absence. Just enough distance to actually see what you are celebrating.
The Morning After
Diwali morning in Delhi means grey sky and firecracker paper on every road.
Diwali morning at The Sirmour Retreat was different in every possible way.
The valley completely clear. The Shivalik range visible in every direction. The small circles of wax on the terrace railing where the diyas had stood.
Chai arrived without being asked for.
Tarun came out and stood at the terrace edge and looked at Nahan below, completely still in the morning.
“I want to do this every year,” he said.
I said we would have to tell his mother.
He said she would understand. She was the one who had told us to go.
What You Should Know Before You Book
Diwali 2026 falls on November 8. The long weekend runs from approximately November 7 to 10. Book now. The Sirmour Retreat fills up during festive weekends and the valley facing rooms go first.
Nahan is 290 kilometres from Delhi and roughly 100 kilometres from Chandigarh. Leave by eight in the morning to arrive in the afternoon with daylight to settle in before the evening begins.
Diwali in Himachal at The Sirmour Retreat works best for couples and small groups who want to celebrate without the density of a large gathering. Tell the team it is Diwali when you book. The terrace at dusk with diyas and the Nahan valley lit below is something they know how to hold properly.
Make the family call. Make it long. Then put the phone down and look at the valley.
The hills will still be there. The lights of Nahan below will still be doing what they do. The night will still be Diwali.
Just quieter. Just more beautiful. Just exactly right.
One Last Thing
Tarun’s mother called the next morning.
She said the mithai was in the fridge and to come when we were ready.
She asked how it was.
Tarun looked at the valley and said something that made her laugh.
“Ma, I think we found a better way to do Diwali.”
She said: “Good. Next year I am coming with you.”
We have already looked at the dates.
