Chaubatia Orchard, Ranikhet

Visitor Information

  • Famous For: Natural beauty, healthy atmosphere, experience.
  • Entrance Fees: No entry fees charged for anyone.
  • Visiting time: Mainly during the daytime.
  • Visit Duration: 1 to 2 hours typically.

Chaubatia Orchard, Ranikhet, India is a green haven in the midst of today’s urban landscapes. It is a very large enclosure chock filled with important fruit bearing trees on one side, and a jungle trail and trek trail extending through to the other sides. It is in close proximity to the Himalayan ranges, and tourists can walk around exploring the gardens or trekking along the mountain trail. It presently houses the prestigious Horticultural Research Institute of India, and comes up with a lot of native produce tourists can buy. It also produces important research data on the behaviour of agricultural components.

Ranikhet
Ranikhet, Photo by Kapilkumar Ingle, CC BY 2.0

Traveller Tips

  • Do take the long walks around, the exercise and clean air will greatly benefit your body.
  • Do not undertake the jungle trail if you have family or friends with you who would not be physically up to the task.
  • Indulge in photographing the beautiful and fresh natural scenes all around you.
  • Do not bring pollutants into the gardens.

Things to Do

  • Find out the important uses of the plant varieties inside the gardens.
  • Indulge in a little local shopping in the markets nearby.
  • But before you do that, make sure to have the coffee and fresh fruit juice the cafe of the park sells you!
  • The Himalayas, preferably snow covered, are in plain magnificent sight of the gardens, make sure to go click happy!

Availability of Guides

Guides are a very important component of this tour, and the management realises that. Therefore, you can hire guides right at the venue, who charge Rs. 100 for an instructive tour of the plant varieties in the garden, their uses, etc., and a further Rs. 100 if you want a guided tour of the jungle trail stretching away from the gardens.

Best Time to Visit

Uttarakhand is an, unusually for India, pleasant place to visit all the year round. Here summers don’t make you feel like you’ll melt, nor do winters make you feel like you’ve already frozen. But even then, if you had to pick the most ideal time to pay the gardens a visit, it would be between April and May, being blooming season of the millions of flowers.

How to Reach

The airport in closest proximity to Chaubatia is the Jolly Grant Airport of Uttarakhand, and the nearest railway station is the Kathgodam Rail Station, just under 50 kilometres away. After you arrive at any of these, you can hire cabs or other conveyance to reach the gardens, about 11 kms from the city heartlands. Also, buses sometimes ply to and fro between this and other cities.

Interesting Facts and Trivia About Chaubatia Orchards

  • This is one of the oldest garden orchards surviving from the British colonial times of India.
  • The plants here are mainly used to yield medicinal ingredients.
  • The Bhalu Dham nearby is a popular tourist attraction.
  • In prime season, this garden sees around a thousand plant species in full fruition.
  • You can avail of golfing opportunities near this place.

Nearby Attractions

  • The popular Bhalu Dham, a reservoir.
  • The famous Mansa, Maya and Chandi Devi temples which comprise the Shakti Peetha in Uttarakhand.
  • The Har Ki Pauri Ghat.
  • The Zaroori Bazaar for essential trinket shopping.

Nearby Restaurants

  • The West View Hotel, cooking up several flavours of delicious storms like Indian, Thai and Chinese specials.
  • The Tea Lounge, which serves snacks as added bonus, and enchanting views to taste.
  • Queens’ Court, where the food is first class, and the hotel decor is royal in style. There is opulence throughout.
  • The Chevron Restaurant, another high-end eatery with spacious, well-lit and comfortably grand interiors, and good hospitality.

Whenever you feel like you need a break from city life, which is bound to happen a lot of times given today’s lifestyles, your mind should wander to Chaubatia Orchards in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand, which provides healthy lifestyle options galore. You can walk long treks uphill or trails on the ground, breath fresh air and enjoy the company of trees and drink fruit juice. Needless to say, it is an entrant every traveller’s checklist must feature as a priority.

About Rohit

An architect by profession, Rohit Agarwal is a curious traveller, seeking out the minutest detail about the places he travels to, and that’s what one will find in his writings. His writings have appeared in various blogs, he’s currently trying to bring forth as many different places a traveller who shares the same level of curiosity like him would like to visit through his writings.

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