N1QL replica read for resiliency?

That could be an approach, but it implies double the resources (sockets, etc…) in the SDK and more book-keeping/error detection/management in your code. If you want to only do idempotent queries (views or N1QL selects) from the backup cluster it might fit your need though.

Writes to backup cluster means bidi XDCR, and is probably much harder to get right.