She left a Rs 24 lakh corporate job to turn her 100-year-old home into a homestay

For nearly seven years, Tarana Chauhan's career looked like the conventional definition of success.

She had worked as a Senior Business Analyst at Tata Consultancy Services and later moved to Anheuser-Busch InBev, where she worked in analytics and business roles. She had an MA and BA in Economics from Panjab University, as per her LinkedIn profile.

But somewhere between promotions, spreadsheets and a growing salary, she began asking a question that had little to do with work -- what kind of life was she actually trying to build?

In an interview with Hindustan Times, Chauhan said she had gone from earning around Rs 7 lakh a year early in her career to nearly Rs 2 lakh a month when she eventually left. Yet the financial progress did not automatically translate into fulfilment.

Her answer was not to quit immediately. Instead, she started building something on the side.SHE STARTED WITH THREE ROOMS IN AN OLD FAMILY HOME

During the pandemic in 2020, Chauhan returned to her home in Rohru, Himachal Pradesh. Being back in the mountains made her reconsider the city life she had been chasing.

She began refurbishing the family's old ancestral house and experimenting with the idea of turning it into a homestay.

Her own Instagram account shows how gradual the transformation was.

"I started with refurbishing these 3 rooms, then I built those 2, and then now I'm also building a yoga sala on top," she explains in one reel, pointing to the line of rooms on the first floor of her beautiful two-storey ancestral home.

The important part was that she did this while still holding her corporate job.

Her LinkedIn profile says she ran the venture alongside her full-time work for nearly two years, designing systems, automating operations and testing whether the business could actually sustain her.

That overlap became an important aspect of the entire career switch plan.SHE DIDN'T QUIT UNTIL THE SIDE HUSTLE COULD STAND

By the time Tarana left corporate life, the decision was no longer a blind leap.

According to her conversation with HT, Chauhan had reached a point where the homestay had become stable enough to support the transition. She has now been running Nirvana Homes full-time for almost three years.

The income, however, is nothing like a fixed monthly salary. Some months, she makes over Rs 5 lakhs, while in others, she doesn't even make Rs 1 lakh, she notes in the interview.

For someone accustomed to a predictable corporate paycheque, that could sound terrifying. For Chauhan, it is part of the trade-off.

She says she gained something she valued more: control over her time, where she lives and the kind of work she builds.THE MOUNTAIN LIFE IS NOT AS PEACEFUL AS INSTAGRAM MAKES IT LOOK

There is another side to the dream that Chauhan is unusually open about.

Running a homestay does not mean spending every morning drinking coffee against a mountain backdrop.

One of her Instagram captions lists the reality: answering calls with a fever, fixing a leaking pipe, unclogging drains, arranging gas cylinders and dealing with power cuts.

"There are no departments here. There's just me," she writes. That means she has to play host, receptionist, housekeeping, customer service, maintenance, procurement, and occasionally, even plumber and electrician.

Her journey also involved problems that have little to do with picturesque mountain stays. When she tried to put the property on Google Maps, there was no existing location. Establishing and getting the location approved took almost a month, she told HT.

Her lesson was simple: when you build from scratch, there is nobody else to hand the problem to.SHE DIDN'T BUILD A HOTEL. SHE BUILT A DIFFERENT KIND OF WORK LIFE

Today, Nirvana Homes has hosted more than 200 guests, as per her LinkedIn profile. She has also expanded into Nirvana Experiences, centred on slow and experiential travel.

The century-old ancestral property has become more than accommodation for her. Her Instagram describes it as a "physical manifestation" of freedom, with an emphasis on slow living, community and immersive experiences.

But perhaps the most interesting part of Chauhan's story is not that she quit a good job. It is that she did not romanticise quitting.

"I don't think everyone needs to quit their job," she told HT. "Quitting without a plan can be a very expensive form of courage."

Her advice is to learn the skill, start the side project, test the idea, save money and understand what the alternative actually looks like.

She did exactly that. She did not choose between a salary and a dream overnight. She spent nearly two years building a bridge between the two.

And when she finally left, the mountains were not offering her an easier life. They were offering her a life she felt she had chosen.- EndsPublished By: Roshni Published On: Sep 12, 2026 19:47 ISTRead | Tarana Chauhan, Nirvana Homes, Himachal Pradesh homestay, corporate job, career change, quitting corporate job, entrepreneurship, ancestral home, hospitality business, RohruRead | How homestay tourism is key to empowering tribal communities