To reach Shoonya, guests leave the road behind and take a short walk through village pathways and farmland. The small nature-led retreat sits in Letibunga village near Mukteshwar, Uttarakhand.
Mist hangs over terraced farms, the Himalayan peaks glow in the first light, and birdsong replaces the usual soundtrack of traffic and notifications. By the time guests arrive, the pace has already begun to change.
Spread across half an acre and designed for just a handful of visitors at a time, Shoonya encourages guests to leave packed itineraries and sightseeing checklists behind.
Here, they can spend time under the trees, watch the mountains change colour through the day, listen to birds, share long conversations, or simply sit still.
Nestled in Letibunga village near Mukteshwar, Shoonya invites guests to slow down and experience the mountains beyond sightseeing.
This slower approach to travel has struck a chord with people looking for a closer connection with nature. Behind it are Mahima and Rashmikant (RK) Jha, two NIFT graduates who left successful corporate careers to create a hospitality space shaped as much by biodiversity and community as by comfort.
They came for three months. Then they decided to stay.
In early 2023, shortly after getting married, Mahima and Rashmikant were looking for a temporary escape from city life.
At the time, Mahima was working as a Senior Growth Manager for a software company, while Rashmikant handled enterprise sales for TELUS International. The plan was simple: spend a few months working remotely from the mountains before returning to their lives in Gurgaon and Noida.
“We honestly wanted to move to South India first,” Mahima recalls. “But eventually we decided to look somewhere in the north and came across this property in Mukteshwar.”
The property had only one cottage then. The rest was open land surrounded by farms.
What began as a three-month experiment gradually changed how the couple spent their days and thought about their future.
“Life immediately slowed down for us,” says Mahima. “Instead of spending our free time on phones or laptops, we started taking village walks, talking to local people and noticing small things around us.”
At Shoonya, village walks, mountain views and time outdoors take precedence over packed itineraries.
Those walks and conversations also gave them time to think about the lives they had built in the city.
“We got a lot of time to think about ourselves,” says Mahima. “What we wanted from life, what we were doing, and why.”
For Rashmikant, the experience was transformative in a different way.
“The catalysts that nature provides through your senses are incredibly powerful,” he says. “You become more aware of yourself and your surroundings. That awareness becomes a daily practice.”
Instead of adding more rooms, Mahima and Rashmikant prioritised shared spaces for conversations, reading and time outdoors.
By the end of 2023, the couple had made a decision many around them considered risky. They would leave their corporate jobs and build a life in the mountains.
Why they chose shared spaces over more rooms
The first version of Shoonya was intentionally modest.
Instead of buying land and constructing a large hospitality venture from scratch, Mahima and Rashmikant approached the property’s owner with a proposal. They would lease the space, experiment with hosting guests, and see whether their ideas resonated.
The response was encouraging.
After testing the concept through Airbnb bookings, the couple quit their jobs in late 2023 and began transforming the property. Shoonya officially opened in April 2024.
One of their biggest decisions was about how much to build. Rather than expanding the accommodation, they wanted to give guests more room to spend time together.
“We intervened in the original plan,” Mahima says. “The owner wanted to build more rooms. We felt that shared spaces were more important.”
From reading nooks to a stargazing deck, Shoonya’s spaces encourage guests to reconnect with each other and nature.
The philosophy emerged from their own experience of living there. If the property had helped them slow down and reconnect with themselves, they wanted visitors to experience the same thing.
They began creating spaces where guests could gather, spend time outdoors, or simply be by themselves.
A glass room, a fire and space for conversations
At the heart of Shoonya is Kriti, a glass-walled community space that frames sweeping mountain views while offering warmth during Mukteshwar’s long winters.
Nearby sits Fire & Feast, inspired by the traditional Mithila concept of a dalaan (an open community space where people gather around food and fire).
“There is a culture of gathering around a shared space in villages,” explains Rashmikant, who grew up in Bihar. “We wanted to recreate that feeling.”
Inspired by the Mithila tradition of a dalaan, Fire & Feast offers a space for shared meals and conversations around a fire.
Other corners of the property encourage more personal moments. There is a stargazing deck, listening spaces where guests can simply sit with the sounds of nature, reading nooks stocked with thoughtfully selected books, and intimate pockets where couples or friends can retreat into conversation.
Many of these spaces took shape as the couple worked on the property, rather than being planned in advance.
Shoonya recycles greywater for irrigation and composts organic waste to support the land around it.
“We were personally involved in everything,” says Mahima. “From working with carpenters to deciding where switchboards would go. A lot of it happened on the go.”
Guests often notice the attention to detail.
“They’ve really thought things through,” says Noida-based entrepreneur Nikita Kalra, who has visited Shoonya multiple times. “Sometimes you think, ‘I wish I had a walking stick for this hike,’ and then you open a cupboard and find one.”
Making room for trees, water and birds
The couple’s attention to the spaces guests use also extends to the land around them. Biodiversity has become an important part of how they develop and care for Shoonya.
The property already possessed ecological strengths before the couple arrived. An extensive rainwater harvesting system could collect between 80,000 and 90,000 litres of water, a significant advantage in a region where water scarcity remains a growing concern.
Over the last three years, Mahima and Rashmikant have expanded on that foundation.
More than 200 additional trees have been planted. Greywater from kitchens, sinks and showers is recycled for irrigation. Organic waste is composted and returned to the land. Development decisions are often guided by the realities of mountain ecosystems rather than convenience.
From reunions with old friends to evenings spent stargazing, Shoonya gives guests space to reconnect without a packed itinerary.
“You have to bow down to nature,” Mahima says. “If it’s raining, you can’t do certain things. If it’s too cold, you have to wait. Nature decides the pace.”
The couple say they have also noticed growing bird activity around the property. Their approach has been to restore habitat through native vegetation and water sources, rather than trying to attract wildlife artificially.
“They don’t need us to create something special,” Rashmikant says of the birds. “They just need trees, shelter and water.”
Guests value Shoonya for its thoughtful hospitality and opportunities to connect with nature and the local community.
Today, spotting birds has become an integral part of the Shoonya experience.
Seven old friends, a reunion and a night under the stars
Since launching, Shoonya has hosted more than 1,200 guests and recorded nearly 3,000 guest nights.
For some of these visitors, what stands out is the time they spent connecting with the place and the people around them. For Nikita Kalra, the biggest difference was the combination of hospitality and intimacy.
“Most mountain Airbnbs give you a house and a cook,” she says. “Here there was a genuine effort to help guests engage with the place and the community around it.”
For Gurugram-based guest Nitish Kumar, Shoonya became the setting for a reunion with six school friends after more than a decade. “We had nowhere to be, no peaks to climb, and nothing to do except spend time together,” he says.
One evening while stargazing, Kumar found himself reflecting on the retreat’s name. “‘Shoonya’ means zero,” he says. “For our group, it became a kind of Point Zero — a place where we could reset, reconnect and return to what truly matters.”
At Shoonya, the focus remains on creating space for people to reconnect with themselves, each other and nature.
Many guests speak of similar shifts. Some leave with a renewed appreciation for nature. Others begin taking slower holidays. Some simply rediscover the value of unhurried conversations.
“What stays with you is how honestly it’s built,” Kalra says. “You never feel like you’re being sold something.”
Why Mahima and RK are in no hurry to expand
For Mahima and Rashmikant, Shoonya grew out of a personal decision to rethink what they wanted from life. They hoped the retreat would give other people some of the space they had found during their own stay in the mountains.
The name itself is rooted in three values that guide every decision: self-awareness, compassion and creation.
Those principles emerged from their own journey of leaving behind familiar definitions of success and choosing a different path.
Today, the couple are exploring what comes next, though they remain cautious about rapid growth.
“We’re not in a hurry,” says Rashmikant. “Whatever we do next will come with a sense of timing.”
For now, the focus remains on nurturing what already exists: a small hospitality space where people can reconnect with themselves, with one another and with the natural world around them.
As evening settles over Letibunga, the mountains slowly disappear into the fading light. Guests gather around a fire, linger over conversations, or sit watching the stars emerge above the valley.
For Mahima and RK, these are the moments they hoped to make possible when they decided to stay in the mountains: time to pause, spend time with one another and pay closer attention to the world around them.
All images courtesy of Team Shoonya
