- Nayantara Chauhan left her corporate law career during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- She moved to Manali and embraced outdoor cooking as her new profession.
- Her Instagram features traditional dishes cooked by riverside using rustic methods.
In a fast-paced world of deadlines, meetings, racing clocks and burnout, a city girl decided to stop "going with the flow" and build a life she truly wanted. Corporate lawyer Nayantara Chauhan visited Manali on a solo trip during the COVID-19 pandemic and never really came back.
In 2021, she left law and found her true calling in the mountains: cooking, particularly outdoors.
One look at her Instagram feed, and you may be tempted to pack your bags and head to the riverbed where she records herself cooking fresh delicacies. From idiyappam cooked over a firewood stove to sarson ka saag on a portable stove, Chauhan has cooked it all by the riverside.
The lawyer-turned-outdoor chef has now spent around four years living in Manali and has taken it a step further, with a two-month stay in Leh. Nayantara is currently documenting and sharing her life in Leh, complete with pahadi food, glimpses of daily village life and stunning mountain views.
However, life in the mountains comes with its hurdles. In one of her posts captioned "not a neat success montage", Nayantara shared that since 2021, she has "tried a few things, dropped a few more, cried in cafes, smiled in riverbeds, considered going back, kept going forward anyway."
Even during her time in Leh, the former lawyer documents the hardships of village life - from securing water supply to managing basic sanitation facilities.
Nayantara's journey to the mountains is clearly both internal and physical, one that may take you farther from the city, but also bring you closer to who you are.
