Sanjay Narang ’81 and Rachna Narang ’82 make the Highlands feel like home

After going from ASL to Cornell to a self-made hospitality empire in India, siblings Sanjay and Rachna Narang took an unexpected leap nearly a decade ago—to the remote Scottish Highlands. There, they founded Black Sheep Hotels: a trio of boutique properties set amid one of the world’s most breathtaking landscapes. With Sanjay at the helm of business operations, Rachna leading on all things design, and a trusted team that has slowly but surely joined the pair in making the India–Scotland move, their Highlands venture is thriving—and it’s only getting started.

There is a one-lane road that runs 60 miles southwest of Inverness, sketching a wide arc between the Moray Firth, which cuts deep into the map from the northeast, and the Firth of Lorn, which does the same at the other end of a decisive gash through the country’s north: the Great Glen Fault. 

The long way around avoids the double-lane traffic and monster-watching that comes with the more direct, Loch Ness route. It features wide, grassy fields and hills dotted with brown and white sheep; undulating moors and peatland; spiky yellow gorse bushes in full bloom beneath sun showers and the odd rainbow—depending both on the time of year, and the minute one happens to be passing through. 

“If you don’t like the weather in the Highlands, just wait five minutes,” are the oft-repeated words to the wise. “It’ll change.”

Siblings Rachna Narang ’82 and Sanjay Narang ’81 own three Highlands hotels, all under the Black Sheep Hotels brand, which they established—with the help of several core members of their dedicated, longtime team—in 2019. The three properties are nestled relatively close together (by sweeping Scottish standards) amid craggy lochs and glens. Winding roads and English–Gaelic road signs abound. 

Sixty miles southwest of Inverness, the long way around, lies The Whispering Pine Lodge—the largest and, for now, highest-end of the Black Sheep Hotels’ offerings. And if it’s drizzling over at the Cluanie Inn, or hailing just a few minutes east at Rokeby Manor, chances are decent that it feels “downright tropical” (think cloudy and 55ºF) just down the A82 at The Whispering Pine.

Sanjay, Rachna, and several colleagues of theirs relocated from Landour, a Himalayan hill station of similarly breathtaking natural beauty and significantly higher elevation, in 2017, leaving behind a series of hotels and eateries across that region, and India more broadly—many of which the Narang family still own, and visit often.

In addition to the three Black Sheep Hotels, the siblings own a pizzeria in the heart of nearby Fort William (whose 5,700 residents make it quite the big-Highlands-city); the popular Landour Bakehouse, which shares the name of a much-loved bakery back in the Himalayas; and, most recently, an Inverness hotel, currently under renovation, which they envision as a “luxury boutique hotel with old-world charm” for travelers to use as their “gateway to the Highlands” once it opens later this year.

Rachna and Sanjay come from the hospitality world—the family business—and it shows. The pair are thoroughly skilled at bringing people together. Their Highlands home plays constant host to guests from every area of the siblings’ lives (including, recently, close ASL friends from four decades back!), and is the backdrop for regular dinner parties and long lunches where the Narangs’ neighbors, houseguests and colleagues—many of whom have been working with Sanjay and Rachna for well over a decade, moving from India to Scotland at various points over the past eight years—meet and mingle. Sanjay and Rachna’s is a family business that exudes “family,” far past the point where the actual blood relations end.

As children, the Narangs lived across continents. Sanjay spent most of his childhood and adolescence at the Woodstock School in Landour, before joining his younger sister, Rachna, at ASL for his last two years of high school. Rachna, meanwhile, attended ASL from Grade 5 through graduation, and frequently cites her Eagle years as among the best of her life.

After graduating from ASL, Sanjay enrolled at Cornell University’s hotel administration school, which his parents saw as a natural fit. Rachna followed her older brother to Ithaca a year later, and studied liberal arts for two years, after which she, like Sanjay, returned home to Bombay—where the pair dove into the hospitality sector in earnest.

A well-synchronized duo from the start, the siblings made their first real marks on the Indian hospitality industry with a brilliant two-pronged food business. Sanjay was revitalizing the in-flight catering unit of a larger hospitality group, while Rachna launched a patisserie with an Indian twist (“Croissants etc”), which quickly became a sensation across Bombay. Though produced by separate teams, Rachna’s croissants (etc.) were crafted in the same facility as Sanjay’s in-flight meals, creating a shared foundation for the pair’s success.

In the mid-1990s, Sanjay and Rachna founded their own hospitality group, Mars World, and kept growing—fast. “At one point, we had about 25 cake shops, four hotels, and three airline catering units,” Sanjay says. Most properties were in Bombay; about 20 percent were spread across India. When an American investor got in touch looking to buy many of Mars’ holdings, the siblings’ decision to sell was a relatively easy one.

“What’s the use of having 75 hotels if you’ve had a lousy life, just working all the time?” Sanjay asks. “After five hotels, if you can sell them and you’re doing well, go enjoy your life; do something good!” 

In 2000, the siblings visited Scotland for the first time, on vacation. Driving down an open road, Rachna was taken by the beauty of a passing loch and the hills that hugged it, and stopped to pose with the view. In the photo, which is softly focused and rich in deep blues and whites, she beams at the camera. Snapping the photo, she and Sanjay never imagined that the ensuing quarter-century would find them purchasing some of the very land visible in that image, and turning it into their home. But in 2017, the pair packed the contents of their Himalayan home into shipping containers, and, armed with a grand vision of Highlands hospitality, did exactly that.

The Black Sheep Hotels’ motto, printed in small black cursive beneath their brand name, is “for the comfort of travellers.” Beyond all else, the comfort and pleasure of guests is at the beating heart of the hotels—which allows the marketing to take care of itself. “We believe that word of mouth is the best; it’s always worked for us,” says Rachna. “People come, and you have your bloggers who stay, and this and that. But basically whoever comes is so impressed, and likes it so much, that they just keep posting, or telling their friends about their stay.”

When Rachna and Sanjay first started visiting local hotels and restaurants, by contrast, they were shocked by what they found. Among other things, they couldn’t find a restaurant they would happily visit in the stark, sparsely populated place they now called home.

The Narangs’ original vision for their Highlands hospitality venture comprised a purpose-built village of accommodations and restaurants made from scratch in a completely virgin stretch of wilderness. Strict zoning laws quickly made it clear that such an undertaking would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. So once the siblings had seen what the Highlands had to offer by way of lodging and food for tourists—and residents, like themselves—Sanjay explains, “We said, ‘We better go buy hotels.’” Over the course of a single whirlwind week in 2018, they bought three.

Rachna, who heads the creative and design operations of all of the siblings’ projects, had to work quickly to turn the three hotels around, and bring them up to company standard, as soon as they were acquired. Within a year, the team had refurbished all three properties.

At present, The Whispering Pine Lodge, with its 25 rooms, eight lochside cabins, spa, fitness center, brasserie, bar, and outdoor games area for children, probably hews closest to the Narangs’ original vision of a utopian village, built from scratch, in a Scottish paradise—but soon so might the Cluanie Inn, which currently caters mostly to committed trekkers and travelers en route to the majestic Isle of Skye. 

The Narangs and their team are considering an overhaul and expansion over at Cluanie. Earlier this month, the first Highland cows and sheep arrived at the property, where a small farm will aim to draw in more families, and perhaps keep hikers around for longer stays. Also in the works: an on-site gin distillery, and a fitness center and spa to rival those at Whispering Pine—a tall order, but Sanjay, Rachna and their team are in the business of executing the impossible.

Rokeby Manor is the stately yet cozy Victorian manor that sits between the other two Black Sheep Hotels on the map, and is home to Emily’s Byre, the only “proper” Indian restaurant of the Narangs’ in the Highlands. 

“When we started these hotels, we kept one Indian dish on each menu, because we like Indian food,” Sanjay says.

“Butter chicken,” Rachna chimes in. 

“But then we saw 70 percent of people eating that one item,” Sanjay says, still incredulous. “We couldn’t believe it. Now, half the menus have become Indian!”

The food across all of the Black Sheep Hotels is truly excellent, which should come as no surprise. Sinclair Pinto, the corporate chef, worked in Michelin-starred restaurants for more than 15 years prior to joining the Narangs in Scotland. At a Black Sheep Hotel restaurant, a north Indian dal makhani dinner paired with a local Scottish whisky and followed up with a luxurious sticky toffee pudding just makes sense.

Morning starts early in the high northern summertime; early June sunrises, even those muted by low-slung clouds over the loch peek through thick tartan curtains well before 4:30 am. From 7:30 until 10:30, each hotel’s kitchen and dining room is abuzz with the din of families, couples and solo adventurers enjoying full Scottish breakfasts, Scandinavian pastries, French toast, Canadian maple syrup, and more. Breakfasts are included in the cost of a stay, and heavy carb-loading before summiting any breathtaking local Munro or Corbett is well advised.

If morning starts early, evening ends late. Facing southwest on the banks of Loch Lochy at 9 pm, on a small, pebbled beach a few meters in front of Whispering Pine’s cabins, the water’s surface glints as it ripples in the not-quite-yet-golden-hour sunlight and evening breeze; the hotel, white and balconied on its loch-facing side, is easily visible in the center of a thicket of brush and its namesake pine trees. 

After Whispering Pine, the lake stretches another five miles in either direction, with mountains and trees and water the only other things visible on the horizon to the southwest. To the northeast, a single, small white house sits quietly on the shore. Maybe a boat or two glides across the loch; likely, none do.

Rachna and Sanjay don’t, strictly speaking, need any more hotels or restaurants than they own currently. At this point, each new hotel is “just for the fun of it.” They continue to open and improve their hotels and eateries because it’s enjoyable; it creates jobs; it brings people together and lets them experience all that the Highlands have to offer. 

For Rachna, the artistic eye behind every project, each new property represents a chance to delve even deeper into local history, about which she is passionate. “I’ve learned a lot about Scotland—I had only seen Braveheart, like everybody else,” she laughs. “But I love art history, and so I did a lot of research, and found out everything about Scottish culture and heritage,” which is showcased in the hotels’ interiors.

As part of her decorating process, Rachna regularly peruses local antique stores and charity shops for accents that make the hotels feel deeply rooted and considered. Scottish culture is on full display at the Black Sheep Hotels, and no two rooms are the same. “We’ve always had boutique hotels, and I’m lucky that I’ve always been able to do what I want, because it’s a family business; it’s Sanjay and me,” says Rachna. With no formal training, she says her designs “tell a story and recreate the past. The Black Sheep Hotels are a nod to the Highlands.”

So, as Sanjay and Rachna consider next steps—a charitable foundation being at the top of their list—they continue to do what they love: making and perfecting beautiful hotels, for the comfort of travelers.