A romantic getaway in Himachal was the one thing I had never managed to plan, and I had a four year record to prove it.
My name is Arjun. My girlfriend is Mehak. We have been together four years, and in that time I have built a reputation I would like to quietly retire.
Valentine’s Day, year one. I booked a restaurant with a fixed menu. Mehak is vegetarian. The fixed menu had exactly one vegetarian item, a soup, and the waiter served it with great ceremony.
Year two I bought her a plant. It lasted eleven days. She still refers to it as a casualty.
So when she said something small in October, I paid attention for once.
We were washing up. She said, without looking at me: “I do not need anything big. I just want to feel like we are on the same trip.”
I dried the same plate for a very long time.
Why I Needed a Romantic Getaway in Himachal
That sentence rearranged something for me.
My mistake had never been effort. I had put effort into every disaster. The mistake was that I planned events, and she wanted a feeling. An event you can book. A feeling you have to find somewhere that already has it.
So I stopped trying to be clever and started looking for a place that would do the heavy lifting.
I wanted hills, because Mehak is happiest when there is a view. I wanted quiet, because we are both tired in the particular way of people who work in front of screens. I wanted a place where I could not ruin it with a bad idea.
I searched for a romantic getaway in Himachal for two evenings. Most results looked like each other. The same pool shot. The same couple on the same bench.
Then I found The Sirmour Retreat in Nahan.
Pine forest on every side. Valley views. A property near Jamta village that looked like it had been placed carefully among the trees rather than built over them.
I booked two nights in a cottage that same evening.
I did not tell Mehak where we were going. I told her to pack warm layers and trust me.
She said: “Is this another soup situation?”
I said it was not.
I was not completely sure.
The Drive Where She Fell Asleep
We left Delhi at six on a Friday morning. Nahan is around 290 kilometres from the city and the road stays ordinary for a long time.
Mehak slept until Ambala.
She woke as the road began to lift, rubbed her eyes, looked out of the window and said: “Where are we?”
“Somewhere with more trees than people.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the best answer I have.”
She watched the hills come in, slowly at first and then all at once. By the time we passed through Nahan town she had gone quiet in the way she goes quiet when something is working.
I did not say anything. I did not want to touch it.
From Nahan we drove about thirteen kilometres further along the Nahan Renuka road. The pines thickened. The air changed so clearly that I rolled down my window just to be sure I was not imagining it.
We turned into the property and the whole valley opened below us.
Mehak did not speak.
She reached across and took my hand.
That is all. No dramatic reaction. But after four years I know exactly what that means, and I knew I had finally done something right.
What a Romantic Getaway in Himachal Looks Like at The Sirmour Retreat
We were shown to our cottage.
I will not pretend to be a hotel reviewer. I will say that the moment we stepped inside, Mehak went straight to the window and stood there for a long time with her coat still on.
The window held the pines and the valley behind them, and I understood, standing behind her, why I had been wrong about plants and soup and fixed menus.
Some places do the romance for you. They do it with distance and trees and a silence that makes you speak more quietly. All you have to do is arrive and not ruin it.
The Sirmour Retreat has several cottage types, Mountain Trail, Bird Trail and Woodhouse among them, and ours was the Bird Trail Cottage. By the first evening I understood the name. There was birdsong everywhere, and Mehak spent twenty minutes at the window trying to identify one.
“That is definitely a kingfisher,” she said.
I said I thought it was a crow.
We still argue about this.
“A romantic getaway in Himachal does not need a big plan. We needed a place that held us the right way, and The Sirmour Retreat did that without being asked. The pines, the quiet and the valley did all the romance. I only had to put my phone down.”
Mehak, guest at The Sirmour Retreat, Nahan
The Evening a Romantic Getaway in Himachal Pays For Itself
On the first night we had dinner on the rooftop.
The Sirmour Retreat has a rooftop restaurant with a 360 degree view of the surrounding hills, and I had mentally prepared for it to be a nice room with a nice backdrop.
It was not that. It was the hills themselves, in every direction, going slowly from gold to blue to dark while we ate.
The food was Himachali. Simple, warm and made with obvious care. Mehak, who is usually wary of hill station menus, ate with real concentration. She paused halfway through and said: “Okay. This is actually good.”
I took that as a review.
When the light was gone the valley below had a few scattered lights in it, villages tucked into the dark. We stopped talking for a while. It was not an uncomfortable silence. It was the kind you have with someone you do not need to impress.
Then Mehak said: “Why do we never do this?”
“Do what?”
“Sit somewhere and not talk. Just be here.”
I thought about it honestly.
“Because we always bring the city with us,” I said. “Phones. Messages. Whatever is due tomorrow.”
She nodded slowly.
“Put yours away?” she said.
I took my phone out of my pocket and put it in the cottage drawer when we went back.
That was the only plan I made that weekend. Everything else, the place handled.
The Day Nothing Happened, Beautifully
The second day, we did not do much.
That is not laziness. It was the goal.
We woke without an alarm. We had breakfast slowly. We walked among the pines near the property, taking the kind of small, aimless steps that you cannot do in a city because someone is always behind you.
In the afternoon we found the pool. It was warm enough, the hills were close, and Mehak, who swims like a competitive athlete when she thinks nobody is watching, challenged me to a race.
I lost by two lengths.
I regret nothing.
We lay on the edge afterwards, looking at the pines, dripping onto the stone. She said: “This is what I meant. Not a big thing. Just this.”
I wanted to say something clever. I said: “Yes.”
It was the best thing I could have said.
What to Know Before Planning a Romantic Getaway in Himachal
If you are the sort of person who ruins plans with ambition, here is what worked for me.
The Sirmour Retreat is in Jamta village on the Nahan Renuka road, around 13 kilometres from Nahan town, and about 290 kilometres from Delhi. From Chandigarh it is roughly 100 kilometres. Leave early. The drive is part of the experience if you let it be.
Choose a cottage if you want privacy. Ask the team which one suits what you have in mind. They know each setting better than any photograph does.
Do not over schedule. Two nights is enough to feel the place, three is enough to forget the city. Leave at least one afternoon completely empty.
The best months are March to June and September to November. We went in November and the evenings had just enough chill to make sitting outside feel like a decision.
If you want ideas for the days around your stay, our anniversary trip guide and our post on luxury cottages in Himachal cover more of what the property offers.
And put your phone in a drawer. It helps.
The Romantic Getaway in Himachal I Did Not Plan
We left on Sunday afternoon.
On the way to the car I stopped near a pine tree and picked up a pine cone. I do not know why. It felt like the sort of thing you take when you cannot take the place.
I gave it to Mehak without a speech.
She looked at it, and then at me, and then she smiled the way she smiles when something has landed.
“You are improving,” she said.
“At what?”
“At whatever this is.”
She put the pine cone on the dashboard and it rode with us all the way back to Delhi.
It now sits on her desk. She has named it. She will not tell me the name. I suspect it is something rude about the soup.
What I know is that it has lasted much longer than the plant.
A romantic getaway in Himachal did not fix four years of bad ideas. It did something better. It showed me that I did not need ideas at all.
I needed the right place, a quiet window and the sense to stay out of the way.
We are going back in February.
I have already told her. She said: “Good. This time I will bring my own book and ignore you for an hour.”
I said that sounded wonderful.
I meant it.
