Why We Started Ettiq

Ettiq is the attic.

That quiet, sunlit corner of a Himachali homestay — where the roof meets the mountains, where the day slows down, where you think thoughts you didn't know you had. No phone signal. No agenda. Just the sound of the valley below and the particular quality of light that only exists at that altitude, at that hour.

Every great journey has a moment like that. An hour on a ridge. A fire after a cold summit. A breakfast with people you met four days ago and already trust. We built Ettiq around finding that moment — and making sure people don't accidentally miss it.

How it started

I started travelling seriously in 2012. By 2016 the Himalaya had become the only place I wanted to be. That first extended Himalayan route — I won't say it changed everything, because that's what everyone says — but something shifted. I came back every year since.

By 2019 I was taking friends, then friends of friends, into routes I'd scouted myself. No business. Just people who needed the mountains and didn't know exactly how to get there. We'd pile into a Tempo Traveller, drive overnight from Jaipur, and figure out the rest on the trail.

It worked. Not perfectly, and not always comfortably, but in the ways that actually matter.

What I kept noticing

The people who came with me had different experiences from people who went with big operators. Not just better — structurally different. They came back changed in ways that group-of-forty-on-Kedarkantha tourists don't.

Part of it was the group size. Six to fourteen people, not more — the group dynamic is half the experience. Past fourteen, it breaks.

Part of it was the routes. We weren't going where everyone else went. We were going to places that still had something to give — Nagini Lake, Tilung Kho, Phulara Ridge, routes I'd scouted on foot and couldn't find on any operator's catalogue.

But the biggest part was the intent. We curated for people who wanted to actually be somewhere. Not photograph it. Not tick it. Be in it.

The Jaipur angle

Jaipur is a strange city to run a mountain company from. There are no mountains for five hundred kilometres.

But there's something about Jaipur — old money and new ambition, a city always between worlds — that produces exactly the kind of person who needs the mountains as a counterweight. Not as a holiday. As a recalibration.

That's our crowd. That's who I was at 22, the first time I stood above the treeline and understood why people talked about the Himalayas the way they did.

What the attic means

I thought for a long time about what to call it. Not a trekking company — we do road trips, moto rides, river journeys. Not an adventure company — some of our best journeys are slow. Not a travel agency — we don't book flights and hotels.

Then I thought about the attic.

Every great Himachali homestay has one. The room where the family keeps their things, where the roof slopes down, where the light comes in at an angle through a small window. Not grand. Not designed. Just quiet in a way that city spaces never are.

That's what we're trying to give people. A version of that room. The moment when the noise falls away and you're just somewhere, fully.

Ettiq is built around finding it.

2026

We launched with 53 journeys across Garhwal, Kumaon, Himachal, Spiti, Lahaul, Ladakh, and Kinnaur. Routes scouted personally or by local leaders I've spent years finding and vetting — a Kumaoni guide for Roopkund, a Kinnauri local for Chitkul, a certified mountaineer for the glacier crossings.

The Go Wild / Go Slow system came from watching people try to figure out what they actually wanted from the mountains. Some want physical challenge, elevation gain, the achievement. Others want to stop. To sit in a meadow for two hours with no agenda. Both are legitimate. Most operators don't distinguish. We try to.

This is the beginning. The routes are scouted. The groups are small. The attic is waiting.