When you trek with Indiahikes, you’ll often hear us say, “Leave the mountains better.”

That thought guides almost everything we do, from how we manage waste on treks to how we cook, clean, camp, and now, how we’d like trekkers to snack.

That’s how Urjino was born, a Trek Foods division of Indiahikes.

Why We Started Urjino 

Over the years, we’ve noticed a recurring problem in the mountains. Trekkers often carry chocolates, protein bars, or packaged snacks to sustain energy levels during their climbs. These are convenient, yes, but they come wrapped in multi-layered soft plastic, a material that is impossible to recycle.

Even when trekkers bring these wrappers back responsibly, they eventually end up in landfills, because soft plastic cannot be recycled. And when they’re left behind in the mountains, they get trapped behind rocks or washed into river valleys, where they stay for hundreds of years, slowly breaking down into microplastics.

At Indiahikes, we wanted to change that.

We wanted to make trail snacks more sustainable.

That’s how Urjino was born: a sustainable food brand by Indiahikes, created to give trekkers healthy, tasty, and environmentally conscious food for the outdoors.

What we have at Urjino

Under the Urjino brand, we create foods designed for trekking, foods that energise you naturally, travel well, and leave no harmful trace behind.

Our range includes:

* Energy bars made with dates, nuts, seeds and muesli

* Trail mixes rich made with seeds, nuts and berries

* Cookies baked fresh with local ingredients for your sugar cravings

All of these are made in small batches by our kitchen teams and packed in compostable, paper-based materials, a far cry from the plastic-wrapped energy foods flooding the market.

The Urjino Café — A Trekkers’ Haven at Base Camps

You’ll also find Urjino in a more tangible, delicious form at our Urjino Cafés in Indiahikes base camps.

These cafés have quickly become a favourite among trekkers. After a long drive to the mountains, there’s something comforting about stepping into a warm, wooden space that smells of freshly brewed coffee and baked cookies.

But more than that, we know the deep cravings for food after a trek (no matter how good our Indiahikes Kitchen Team is!) We’ve been there ourselves. So trekkers love the sandwiches, hand-crafted pizzas, 

brownies, tea cakes, and lattes and hot chocolates. Depending on where you are, you might even find local delicacies like siddhu, prepared by our kitchen teams.

Each café runs on the same principles that define Indiahikes: local sourcing, minimum waste, and responsible operations. Affordability too. It’s a space where trekkers can refuel and reconnect, not just with food, but with the idea of mindful munching in the outdoors.

How We Ensure the Quality of Urjino Foods

Our Urjino division is headed by Manish Pasad, one of the senior-most members at Indiahikes, who has spent 14 years at Indiahikes. All recipes are designed by him, in consultation with expert bakers. He himself has learnt the art of baking from a baking school in Delhi. 

Not just that, we are extremely mindful about the ingredients we choose to add to our foods.  

Take the TWF flour we use for cookies, for example.

• Every batch starts with carefully selected grains: chosen for quality, nutrition, and taste. Not the mass-market stuff that prioritises quantity over flavour.
• No additives, no bleaching, no preservatives. Just pure, natural flour that keeps all its goodness intact.
• And it’s ground to order. Unlike commercial flours that sit on shelves for months, ours is milled only after an order is placed. That means maximum freshness, better flavor, and perfect texture in every cookie.

We also make sure to use top-quality brown sugar and essences by Ossoro, a premium food flavour brand. 

Our trail mixes and energy bars are sourced from specialised health food partners, and made to order for Indiahikes, based on the nutritional needs of trekkers. 

Every ingredient and recipe is critically looked into, which is why it has taken us over a year to arrive at the best trail foods. 

The best compliment for us? Most trekkers who taste our trail mixes on their treks want to order large quantities for their homes. It’s an option we don’t have yet, but trekkers want it nevertheless. That says a lot about the taste and quality of the mix. 

How we keep Urjino foods low on plastic

When you’re serving food on the move, packaging becomes critical: the food has to stay fresh, intact, and hygienic.

Over the past year, we’ve experimented with butter paper wrappers for our energy bars and white paper pouches for high-protein muesli and cookies. These worked to some extent, but they came with limitations in moisture resistance and durability.

So our approach has been clear: food safety first, sustainability right behind it.

We’ve now rolled out a new sustainable packaging material for Urjino energy bars across our slopes.

This packaging is a paper-based, compostable material developed by Pakka.com, a company based in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.

It comes with a lab certification and a composting certificate, proving it’s 92–93% compostable within 170 days, regardless of weather conditions.

For now, our muesli and cookies still come in butter paper and brown paper, but the plan is clear: to move all trail snacks to sustainable packaging in the near future.

It’s a constant process of learning, testing, and improving, but one that’s deeply worth it.

How to Order Urjino Trek Foods for Your Trek: 

If you’re a registered trekker with Indiahikes, you will find Urjino foods in the add-on division on your Profile. Add everything you need and pay at checkout (We recommend the pack of 5 cookies and a packet of trail mix.) It’s best to place your order in advance so that we keep the goodies ready for you. 

We also have Urjino Trek Foods available at the base camp, which you can buy on location. But this is subject to availability. It’s best to place your order online in advance. 

As for the Urjino Cafe, it’s open to anyone who enters if and you will find a lovely menu for the day at every Urjino. All we can say is “Enter at your own risk,” because this is how trekkers feel: 

A step towards cleaner mountains

With Urjino, we’re not just making good food. We’re addressing a problem that has plagued the mountains for years: soft plastic waste. We’re also addressing the mindset of “Pahadon waali Maggi,” which is a harder barrier to break through. 

But the impact is real. Every Urjino product replaces a plastic wrapper with a compostable one. Every café replaces packaged snacks with locally made food. And every trekker who chooses Urjino takes a step toward keeping our mountains clean.

Urjino is now present across most of our slopes — Kotgaon, Sari, Raithal, Lohajung, and Karchi.

We want trekkers to see that you can have food on the go and still think about the planet. Trekking demands it. 

We hope trekkers back Urjino, but it’s bigger than just us. We want to see more brands like this: thoughtful, sustainable, mountain-friendly. This is the food culture we want to grow, especially in the mountains.