About us
Every figure datedwith the day we last checked it
We're Nav and Vandana Sharma, a husband-and-wife team from Greater Noida. Nav has been travelling India since 2015. Vandana has been on the road with him since 2020. This page is who we are, how anything gets onto a page here, and what we do when we can't check something.
We split the work by what each of us notices. Every guide carries both our names and the date its facts were last checked.
Routes, costs and logistics
Travelling India since 2015
Nav does the driving when we go by car: our Baleno in October 2024, our Mahindra Thar in January 2026. In Goa in February 2026 he did most of the scooter riding. He covers the road, the timings and what a trip actually costs. When a fee looks wrong, he goes back to the office that issued it instead of copying it off another blog.
Stays, food, comfort and safety
On the road with Nav since 2020
Vandana covers where you sleep, what you eat, and whether a place feels safe. Whether the heater runs when the power goes. How far the nearest food is. What a room is actually like at that altitude in January.
A price without a date is not a price.
We've been travelling India since 2015 and for most of it we kept almost no record. No dated receipts, no day-by-day notes, no folder of bills. So we don't quote prices from those years: we couldn't prove the year, let alone the price.
Auli changed that. On the two trips we drove, in October 2024 and January 2026, we kept a spreadsheet: every hotel and what it cost, what we spent on fuel and food, and when we left and arrived each day. Those numbers are on the pages. For June 2025 we kept nothing, so that trip appears as where we went and how we got there, never what it cost.
Goa, in February 2026, we didn't log. So the Goa guides tell that trip from memory: where we went, in what order and on which days, and never what anything cost or what time it was.
Four rules, on every guide.
When something hasn't been announced yet, we say it hasn't. We link the page you should watch instead, rather than recycling last year's date and letting you assume it is this year's.
Why the local language matters. Every English guide we read said the taxi from Jyotirmath up to Auli had no fixed price. It did: Rs 1,500 one way, set on 29 December 2024, and reported in Amar Ujala's Chamoli edition, in Hindi. And on our Goa pages, the only report that the High Court had dismissed a challenge to the beach-shack policy, on 2 September 2026, was in Dainik Gomantak, in Marathi. No English report we found carried it.
The check
Every date, fee, rule and figure here is traced to a named source, the office that issued it wherever there is one.
Not the date we wrote the page. The date we last looked.
When we call or write to an operator, a hotel or a government office, we name them and give the date they told us.
District papers and government notices carry things the national English press never picks up: Hindi in Uttarakhand, Marathi in Goa.
We write down that we couldn't check it. Every guide carries the things we could not confirm, not only the things we could.
It's the box headed "What we couldn't verify" near the foot of every guide, and it stays open on the page.
Auli is the first place we have finished writing up, not the only place we have been. We have travelled a good deal more of India since 2015, and those places will come here one by one. One guide on this site takes weeks: the research, the Hindi papers, the check dates, and a review we run before anything goes live. We would rather publish a handful of pages you can rely on than a hundred you cannot.
Goa came next because we had been there, in February 2026, and because its map had changed. Since 31 December 2025 Goa has three districts, and Palolem, Agonda and Dudhsagar are in Kushavati, not South Goa district. None of the 18 South Goa places lists we read in October 2026 named Kushavati.
These are the trips behind the guides published so far: three to Auli, two of them in our own car and June 2025 by bus and shared jeep, and one to Goa. Where a guide describes one of our own trips, it says so plainly.
17 to 20 October 2024
In our Baleno, from Aligarh. Joshimath from the night of the 17th, Lower Auli on the 19th.
2 to 5 June 2025
Early summer, before the monsoon reaches the hills. By bus from Delhi to Jyotirmath, a shared jeep up the last climb, and our nights at GMVN at the top.
24 to 27 January 2026
That season's first real snow had fallen on 23 January. We reached Jyotirmath at 17:45 the next day, waited until 23:00 for the road to open, and checked in at 01:20 on the 25th at Sunil, below the top.
16 to 21 February 2026
Goa, six days, told from memory. We flew in to Mopa, stayed three nights at Calangute Residency and two at Palolem Casa, saw the coast on a hired scooter, moved south by taxi through Panaji and Old Goa, and left from Dabolim.
One thing our own trip does not prove. That week the road above Jyotirmath was open to four-wheel drives only, after a closure for skidding. Going up in a Thar is not evidence that an ordinary car could have made it, and the guides say so.
Where a guide doesn't describe our own trip, the material is sourced, and the source is named on the page. A fare read off a dated district order is worth more than a fare somebody remembers paying.
Nobody pays us for a good write-up. No fee will buy a mention or a kind word in a guide.
There are no affiliate links on this site today. If we add any, a commission won't change what a guide says, and a place won't get a better write-up for being bookable. If a stay is ever hosted or paid for, it is labelled at the top of that page, not in small print at the bottom.
How we make moneyTell us. Roads open, fares get revised, orders get withdrawn, and a page that was right in September can be wrong by December. Nothing on this site is finished the day it is published.
Say what it is and where you found it. We'll check it, fix it, and move the check date on the page. If we got it wrong, the page will say we got it wrong.
Email [email protected]Nav and VandanaGreater Noida
