Almora is a town of about 35,000 in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand, built along a horseshoe-shaped ridge at roughly 1,600 metres. It was founded by the Chand kings in 1568 and it is the cultural heart of Kumaon: a place of writers, painters and paved stone lanes rather than a resort.
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What Is Here
The Mall and the Lal Bazaar are the town itself. The old bazaar runs along the ridge in flagstoned lanes too narrow for cars, lined with carved wooden shopfronts, and it is one of the best preserved hill bazaars in India. Almora is known for its copper work, its woollens and a sweet called bal mithai.
KASAR DEVI IS WHY MANY FOREIGNERS COME. A temple on a ridge 8km above the town with an enormous view of the Himalaya, it drew Swami Vivekananda, later Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens, and it still has a small resident community of long-stay visitors. The sunset from the ridge is the local event.
The weather coming over the hills is the second image here, and it is the daily rhythm of the place: clear mornings, cloud building through the afternoon, and the high peaks appearing and vanishing.
ON A CLEAR DAY THE SKYLINE IS THE REASON TO BE HERE: Trishul, Nanda Devi and the Panchachuli group are all visible from the ridge above the town. October and November give the best odds by a wide margin.
Jageshwar is the best excursion, 35km away: a valley of more than a hundred stone temples under deodar cedars, dating from the 7th century onwards, and one of the quietest important sites in north India.
Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary is 30km up the road, with oak and rhododendron forest, a viewpoint at Zero Point and leopards that are present and rarely seen.
When to Go
October and November are the best months: clear air, visible peaks, comfortable days and cold nights.
March to June is pleasant and hazier, and is when Indian families come to escape the plains. Rhododendrons flower in March and April.
AVOID THE MONSOON, JULY TO MID SEPTEMBER. Uttarakhand gets heavy rain, the views disappear for weeks, and LANDSLIDES CLOSE THE HILL ROADS, sometimes for days. This is the single most important timing fact for the whole state.
December to February is cold, clear and quiet, with occasional snow on the ridge and frost at night.
Getting There
By train to Kathgodam, the nearest railhead, then about three and a half hours by road. The overnight Ranikhet Express from Delhi is the usual choice.
By road from Delhi, roughly 10 to 12 hours for 360km, which tells you about the last stretch.
By air, Pantnagar is the nearest airport with limited services; Delhi is the practical one.
The hill roads are narrow, winding and shared with buses. Shared jeeps and taxis run from Kathgodam and between the hill towns, and hiring a car with a driver is normal and not expensive.
Is Almora Safe for Women?
Almora is a conservative, quiet hill town and is generally easy. The hazards are the roads, the altitude of the excursions and the monsoon. The FCDO does publish advised-against areas for India, and being precise about them matters more than a general warning. It advises against all travel to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, except air travel to and movement within the city of Jammu, and against all travel within 10km of the India-Pakistan border, where the Wagah-Attari crossing is closed. It advises against all but essential travel to the state of Manipur, including Imphal. None of that is anywhere near this destination, and it is worth knowing which parts of a very large country the warnings actually describe.
THE ROADS ARE THE REAL RISK IN THE HILLS. Narrow, winding, often without barriers, with buses and trucks taking the centre. Travel in daylight, do not use a driver who has been at the wheel all night, and refuse a ride that feels fast. Road accidents are the commonest serious incident for visitors in Uttarakhand by a long way.
Landslides are a monsoon certainty rather than a possibility, and a closed road can mean a day or more. Build slack into any schedule between July and mid September.
Dress conservatively, which here means covered shoulders and knees. This is a temple town and a traditional one, and it matters more than in Delhi or Goa.
Nights are genuinely cold and many guesthouses have no heating.
The Almora Packing List
A 1,600 metre ridge: warm days, cold nights, unheated rooms, and a monsoon that closes roads.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women solves three problems here at once: it covers your shoulders and arms, which is the dress expectation in a Kumaoni temple town, it handles a 22C afternoon and a 4C night without a change, and it can be worn for several days between washes, which matters when hot water is a bucket. From October to March add a heavyweight merino base layer, because unheated rooms at this altitude are the thing visitors underestimate.
A Columbia Powder Lite insulated hooded jacket for evenings and for Binsar's Zero Point, and a Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket in any month.
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots with Darn Tough merino socks. The bazaar is flagstone, the Kasar Devi ridge and the Jageshwar valley are dirt and stone, and all of it is slick in rain.
A rechargeable headlamp, which earns its place because power cuts are routine in the hills and the lanes are unlit.
Not linked and worth packing: A SCARF OR LARGE SHAWL, which covers your head in temples and your shoulders everywhere; THERMAL BOTTOMS for December to February; A WATER PURIFICATION METHOD or bottled water, since tap water is not drinkable; and REHYDRATION SALTS. Cash is still king in the hill towns, and ATMs exist in Almora but not beyond it.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Almora
Emergency numbers: 112 is the single national emergency number and works from any phone. 100 reaches police directly, 108 ambulance and 101 fire. 1091 is the national women's helpline and 1098 the child helpline.
Road accidents are the commonest serious incident for visitors in the Uttarakhand hills, by a wide margin. The roads are narrow, winding and often unbarriered, with buses taking the centre: travel in daylight, refuse a driver who has driven through the night, and say something if the speed is wrong. THE MONSOON FROM JULY TO MID SEPTEMBER BRINGS LANDSLIDES THAT CLOSE HILL ROADS, sometimes for days, so build slack into any schedule. DRESS CONSERVATIVELY: covered shoulders and knees, and a scarf for temples. NIGHTS ARE COLD AND MANY ROOMS ARE UNHEATED. Tap water is not drinkable. ATMs exist in Almora and essentially nowhere beyond it.
US State Department travel advisory: the India advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/india, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: the Base Hospital at Almora and the district hospital handle routine and emergency care, with serious cases referred to Haldwani, about three hours away, or to Delhi. Dial 108 for an ambulance, which in the hills can be slow. Carry comprehensive insurance that covers road evacuation. Healthcare in the large Indian cities is genuinely good in the private hospitals and variable in the public ones, and the private sector expects payment or a direct insurance guarantee up front. Carry insurance with a high medical limit and repatriation cover, and carry proof of it. The commonest problem by far is not dramatic: it is stomach upset, so drink sealed bottled or filtered water, and be more careful with raw salad and cut fruit than with hot food cooked in front of you.
Official health authority: the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. covers the Uttarakhand state health service
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in New Delhi.
Official tourism authority: Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism's official site. publishes the Binsar sanctuary permit arrangements, the Jageshwar temple timings and road status updates during the monsoon
Takeaways
October and November for the peaks. The rest of the year they hide.
Walk the Lal Bazaar. It is the best preserved hill bazaar in Kumaon.
Go up to Kasar Devi for sunset, and out to Jageshwar for the temples.
Avoid the monsoon. Landslides close the roads, not just the views.
Solo women safety assessment: Almora is one of the more comfortable Indian hill towns for a woman travelling alone, and the long-stay foreign community around Kasar Devi means a solo western woman is neither a novelty nor a spectacle. It is conservative rather than restrictive: dress covered, as local women do, and the staring that tires visitors elsewhere in north India is noticeably less here. 112 IS THE SINGLE NATIONAL EMERGENCY NUMBER and works from any phone, with 100 for police, 108 for an ambulance and 1091 the national women's helpline. THE FCDO'S INDIAN REGIONAL WARNINGS DO NOT REACH KUMAON: the all-travel prohibition is Jammu and Kashmir, the all-but-essential one is Manipur, the Naxalite advice concerns Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and the 10km India-Pakistan border strip is a thousand kilometres west. THE DANGER IN UTTARAKHAND IS THE ROAD AND IT IS NOT A FORMALITY. The hill roads are narrow, winding, frequently without barriers, and shared with buses and trucks that take the middle; the commonest way a visitor is seriously hurt in these hills is in a vehicle, not by crime. Travel in daylight, never take a driver who has driven overnight from Delhi and is continuing into the hills, and be willing to say that the speed is too fast, which drivers here generally accept without argument. THE SECOND THING IS THE MONSOON, from July to mid September, when landslides close roads for hours or days: that is a scheduling risk rather than a safety one if you leave slack, and a real safety one if you try to beat it. THE THIRD IS SIMPLY COLD, because a 1,600 metre ridge in December is near freezing at night and a great many guesthouses have no heating at all, so the warm layer is for indoors as much as out. Medical care is adequate locally and three hours away for anything serious, so insurance that covers road evacuation is worth more here than almost anywhere.
Reading On
Almora is Kumaon, and Uttarakhand's hill towns run along the same ridges. The Mussoorie packing list and Rishikesh packing list cover Garhwal to the west, with the Haridwar packing list for the Ganges plain below. Further west the Shimla packing list, Manali packing list and Dharamsala packing list cover Himachal, with the Spiti Valley packing list and Ladakh packing list for the trans-Himalaya. East, the Darjeeling packing list and Gangtok packing list cover the eastern hills, and the Delhi packing list the city most trips start from. For the country the India travel guide for women and the India packing list carry the transport, the dress expectations and the practical material in full. For why wool can be worn for days between washes, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
