The New Indian Express ·
Down to Earth High in the Hills
The first thing you notice at Terra Poetica is not that it is made of mud. It is that you could easily forget it is. Tucked into Gunehar village, a 10-minute drive from Bir, Himachal Pradesh’s paragliding hub, the house looks nothing like the unfinished huts or rustic cob structures that the phrase “mud house” conjures. It has soaring windows, sculptural furniture, books spilling across rooms and views that seem deliberately framed rather than simply revealed. On one side, the Kangra Valley stretches out in a patchwork of villages and paddy fields; on the other, mountains rise into the horizon. Water canals run along both sides of the house, their steady murmur becoming an unlikely soundtrack.
Saumya Kulshreshtha, who imagined and built Terra Poetica feels her relationship with mud was not always intuitive. Born and brought up in Delhi, she once dismissed the idea of living in an clay house. That thought changed after she reached Gunehar in 2021. Kulshreshtha initially ran rented homestays there. Three years later, she was certain she had found something more lasting: a place where she belonged and could be herself. A poet and singer, Kulshreshtha began to build a home that felt like an extension of those identities.
Terra Poetica’s name comes from that intersection of earth and art. “For the mud, we settled on terra, terrestrial, terracotta. Because I’m heavily invested in poetry, poetica became the logical second word,” she says.
