On the Thal road into Munsiyari, a once-barren hillside now blooms with imported tulips every spring — planted and run by local youth through the forest department's eco park. A gentle, unusual stop that doesn't need a trek.
Photo: Pramod Nagher, CC BY 3.0
Not everything worth seeing around Munsiyari is a mountain or a lake. A short way along the Thal road, on the edge of town, the Munsiyari Nature Education and Eco Park Centre has spent the last few years turning a weed-choked hillside into a flowering garden — tulip bulbs imported from the Netherlands, planted and tended by local youth through the Munsiyari Eco-Development Committee. For anyone staying at SamathaStay who wants an easy, low-effort outing between longer days out, it's a genuinely different kind of stop.
The project was the idea of Dr. Vinay Bhargav, the Divisional Forest Officer for Pithoragarh, who set out to clear the weeds from a patch of degraded forest land starting in late 2018. Around 7,000 tulip bulbs arrived from Holland in March 2019 and were planted that April — seven varieties across five colours, with names like Parade, Denmark and White Proud. The bulbs then had to survive their first Himalayan winter buried under snow for more than three months before the first blooms opened in April–May 2020. All of the groundwork — soil preparation, planting, irrigation — was done by members of the Eco-Development Committee, largely unemployed local youth who now help run the park.
Alongside the tulips, the park has been planted with other flowering species — irises, foxgloves, daffodils, liliums and wild roses among them — so there's usually something in bloom beyond the main tulip season. The site is also being developed as a birdwatching spot, with well over a hundred species recorded in the surrounding forest. Entry is a modest ₹50 per person, with the park open from 8am to 5pm (it closes one day a week for maintenance, so it's worth checking locally before a special trip).
The tulips are the main draw and they bloom in April–May, so that window is when the garden looks its best and busiest. Outside of those weeks there's still the park itself, the other flowering plants, and the birdlife to walk around for — a quieter, shorter visit rather than the main event. Either way, it's the kind of stop that fits easily into a morning or afternoon without needing a trek or a packed lunch.
SamathaStay in Sarmoli is a short drive from Munsiyari's Eco Park and Tulip Garden — ask us about timing your visit for the spring bloom.