Founded in 2025 by Sravanthi Edara, So Himalayas sources seasonal fruits like apricots, cherries, blueberries, nectarines, peaches, plums, persimmons, and strawberries from farmers across the Kullu district in Himachal Pradesh to make small-batch fruit preserves and dehydrated fruit chips. They also source raw honey directly from beekeepers in the region.
When Sravanthi moved to Rumsu, a village in the Kullu district, from Hyderabad in 2020, she realised that these fruits are often overlooked at local markets in favour of commercially cultivated crops like apples and pears. Seasonal fruits are delicate, and easily bruised or spoiled, making transportation from and within mountainous regions difficult. This, combined with limited demand, means that they usually end up being imported despite being grown domestically. As a result, farmers who grow these fruits are unable to find reliable markets for their produce. Sravanthi established So Himalayas in order to address this.
So Himalayas uses ripened fruit to make their preserves which keeps the flavour fresh and intact at the time of production. They also begin planning production two days in advance, keeping in mind the transportation time to the local mandis. Once procured, the fruit is slow-cooked—at their production facility in the Dobhi village—with sugar as the only preservative.
The Locavore Bite
TL Bite offers a glimpse into how a partner producer runs their operations, and reflects their core principles and values. The idea is to provide insights into their practices and highlight their positive efforts descriptively. We have identified seven key areas of assessment – origin and source of ingredients, composition and integrity of the products, workforce policies, production practices, community-related initiatives, approach towards preserving or celebrating traditional knowledge and the materials used in packaging. While this assessment may not be entirely comprehensive, we hope it helps you make an informed decision about why you might want to support them, and the ways in which to do so.
The information below offers you a snapshot of where So Himalayas stands on these parameters. We have put this together based on several rounds of conversations with Sravanthi Edara. Click on a piece of the pie below to find out more.
Why We Love So Himalayas
- Working with delicate, seasonal produce: So Himalayas works across seasons to preserve the fruit at its ripest, with the preserves having a shelf life of one year. They work with strawberries and cherries in May; plums, apricots, and blueberries in June; and peaches and pears in July. August and September are the busiest months in Kullu, with apples and pears flooding the mandis, whereas October and November—right before the harsh winter sets in—bring green apples, persimmons, and citrus fruits. So Himalayas also works with spruce tips, that only appear for a week in spring, to make their spruce tip-infused raw honey. Once the spruce tips are carefully foraged, they are steeped in raw honey for a month. The moisture from the tips enters the honey and a light fermentation begins, lending it a woody, earthy flavour.
- Utilising the natural ecosystem of Kullu: The orchards in Kullu are located in close proximity to forested areas, thereby attracting many bees and butterflies during the flowering season. Farmers tie branches of pollinators like Golden Delicious apples onto other apple trees like Gala, Red Hard, Tideman, and Royal, encouraging bees to visit different varieties across the orchard for pollination. While the farmers do use growth stimulants and pesticides to ensure a productive yield, they are also economical with their practices—using forest mulch as manure and weeds from the orchards as fodder for their cattle. They also try to encourage natural means of pest control, allowing spiders to thrive to keep the insect population in check.
- Documenting stories of the local community: Every package from So Himalayas is accompanied with a card introducing the people who have harvested the fruits: for instance, persimmons from Sohan, cherries from Meena, and blueberries from Pooja. To understand the region and local markets, Sravanthi also spends her time documenting the stories of the farmers and locals she works with on Instagram. For instance, Sanjay Upadhyay, who once had an orchard of 120 cherry trees, would sell his produce at only ₹30–40 per kilogram at local mandis. The cherry trees were slowly pruned and replaced with apple trees, owing to better market demand. Today, only three cherry trees remain on his farm. So Himalayas documents such stories to showcase the effort and resilience required to grow diverse, delicate fruits that are not always in demand.
Why is it important for So Himalayas to work with delicate, seasonal fruits? How is the climate crisis informing your production choices?
“The seasonal fruits that grow here are also the ones imported to our markets. For example, we mostly see imported options of blueberries in India but they grow in these mountain regions too. We just aren’t aware of it. This could be because supply chains are not well established within India and importing is much easier with systems already in place. So creating awareness felt important, along with rewarding the farmers who work extra hard to grow them.
The climate crisis already feels very real. With seasonal shifts, we have to keep track of harvests and work with fruits accordingly. Reduced yields drove prices high this time—cherries and apricots are priced 5-8 times more this year; the quantity was very low owing to snowfall during the flowering season. We see a direct impact on our products since they are fruit-heavy, but we are yet to have a plan to deal with these unpredictable challenges.”
—Sravanthi Edara, Founder of So Himalayas
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If you would like to learn more about So Himalayas, or try their products, check out their website. If you’re interested in supporting them in other ways, please contact us at connect@thelocavore.in.
At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of a producer transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
