Fredy's Bungalow

The bungalow was home to Fredy Smetacek Jr. and is located in a large forest estate where his father, Fredrick Smetacek Sr. (a German from the Sudetenland - now in the Czech republic) chose to live with his wife and raise their six children. Smetacek Sr. had arrived in Calcutta in 1939 and moved to the hills closer to India’s independence. Raised as the son of a Forest Warden in Europe, he was irresistibly drawn to the cool forested hills and green lakes, moving first to Naukuchiatal (at a time when travelers rode up on horseback along a mule-track from Kathgodam) and then to Bhimtal in 1951. In Bhimtal, he developed and honed a passion for studying butterflies, starting a collection that grew to over 10,000 specimens and is renowned in India and beyond. Much of this collection is housed in Fredy’s Bungalow and the rest is displayed at a close by Butterfly Museum.