About Hisalu

Hisalu takes its name from a wild berry — known as the golden Himalayan raspberry in English. It grows across Uttarakhand on thorny bushes along trails and field edges, and ripens golden in early summer. It is too soft to travel far. You will not find it in a city market. To taste it, you have to be there.

Most of pahad is like that. The festivals, the crafts, the food and the people who make them — very little of it travels, and only a small part of it gets the attention it deserves. Hisalu exists to carry it a little further. We write about this culture, photograph it, and celebrate it.

We publish stories and photographs from the hills. We also make things — prints, apparel, small objects. They are one more way of bringing pahad closer: the part of it that can sit on your wall or go where you go.

Hisalu is for pahadis in the hills, pahadis away from them, and anyone who feels the pull of the mountains.

We are young and small. If you know a story we should tell, a craft we should see, or a person we should meet, write to us. If we get something wrong, tell us that too. It will make Hisalu better.