HolIdays in Rural India, and Friends
The ‘we’ used throughout this website is both a we for all the incredible people I work with; and a slightly embarrassed royal we for me, Sophie Hartman.
Sophie Hartman
My first visit to rural central India was on a trip to Chhattisgarh for Dussehra in 2003. I had been a regular visitor to India for the fifteen previous years, but going back to university as a mature student and studying Hindi as part of my MA in the Languages and Cultures of South Asia opened a door through which I’d only previously been able to peep. In 2006 I met John Ash, founder of the extraordinary Bastar based travel company Green Gondwana. After his sad early death, I was asked by the all Indian team to take on the company.
The benefit of entering the world of tourism through this route, knowing absolutely nothing of the business, has been that I have been dependent from the beginning on the knowledge of my Indian friends and colleagues. At the start these were all Hindi/Gondi (not English) speaking members of mainly minority communities. Their kind guidance and willingness to show me the way, to tell me where I might do harm and where I might do better, is the foundation of this company. Holidays in Rural India grew in rural India, not in an office in the UK, or even in Delhi. I still don’t really know all the tourism acronyms (the FITs and the DMCs and the MAPs) but this hasn’t, thus far, posed a problem. What I do know is how to put together a comfortable, carefully tailored holiday, which is also an enriching learning experience, and one that aims to benefit local communities.
Holidays in Rural India has been shortlisted for the Outlook Indian Responsible Tourism Awards (2020); and I’ve been a speaker at the Indian Responsible Tourism Awards in Bhopal in 2022 and at the Global Responsible Tourism Summit in Kumarakom, Kerala in 2023.
Katie and Jehan Bhujwala, Shergarh Tented Camp
I have been sending guests to Katie and Jehan Bhujwala at Shergarh since 2010. Over the years our friendship and business relationship has grown deeper, with with us pondering ideas for a different kind of Kanha tourism. Katie and Jehan have always encouraged guests to engage with life outside the park as well as in it, and had led several cycle trips into Chhattisgarh. Most people come to Kanha for safaris though, and with children to raise, and their family home being run as a homestay in Bhuj, there wasn’t a lot of time for developing longer cycling expeditions and other extended activities outside the park. Covid, despite all its horrors, did give Katie and me time to recce cycling routes. During those quiet months we cycled hundreds of kilometres in Chhattisgarh and MP and have put together some exceptional routes. Next season we will be offering full day walks between lodges. More and more guests, whether cyclists or not are choosing to stay for six or more nights at Shergarh, plus a few nights in lodges within a 12-70 km distance (ie within walkable or cycle-able) distance of Shergarh.
Pashoo Pakshee
Always a wildlife enthusiast, the brilliant Savini Sonavaria, founder of Pashoo Pakshee actually started out as an engineer. For her MA she chose a cross functional thesis with the Nature Conservation Foundation to write an algorithm on bird call recognition. During the project she interacted conservations scientists and learned about the issue of human animal conflict and the need to provide alternative livelihoods to communities who shared space with wildlife.
Having noted a lack of tasteful and ethical souvenirs in wildlife lodges she came up with the idea of involving communities living close to national parks in making ethical wildlife souvenirs. She left the safe promise of an engineering career to become a social entrepreneur and now has 100 women (and some men) working in her centres in Pench, Kanha and Panna. She also provides design support, and purchases and sells handmade items from other community initiatives like the Hargila Army. Women working at her centres are increasing their household incomes by between 50 and 70 percent.
Savini has expanded to designing and making branded products for lodges and businesses. Her team in Madla, Panna make my guest folders; and the Kanha team the bag charms that all my cycling guests are given as an end of trip reward.
Since 2022 Savini has also had her team leading workshops from their centres. These is something very special about these. The guests make a bag charm but also get a chance to chat (through a Hindi and English speaking guide) to the women and learn a little about their lives.
Earth Focus
Long term visitor to Kanha, Vipul Gupta, was well aware that although the income generated by Kanha Tiger Reserve benefitted some of the communities that had been relocated, it by no means reached all. Many were left with fewer resources and with their children in school systems that didn’t reflect their ways of life.
Vipul set up Earth Focus with the aim of supporting previously forest dependent communities in finding sustainable farming methods. He also established a supplementary school scheme for children from the Kanha area communities. In both schools and aaanganvadis (kindergarten/crèches) a Montessori type educational programme has been developed with all sorts of small tweaks, like the names of fruits and flowers reflecting those the children have in their own homes and gardens.
For each visit to a school programme Holidays in Rural India donates sufficient funds to cover the education of a child for a year. I constantly ask if our visits disturb or disrupt and am repeatedly told that they are motivating for the teachers and that it is good for the children’s confidence to interact with people from elsewhere. Certainly the children’s focus, despite our presence, seems almost miraculous; and the fun when guests join in with the song and dance aspects of the sessions a source of general hilarity.
FRANK WATER CHARITY
Katie Alcott, now MBE, founder of FRANK WATER charity (UK reg charity 1121273) first made contact with Holidays in Rural India in 2016. Frank Water works with partners that operate in both MP and Chhattisgarh helping provide safe sustainable access to water. Since 2017 Holidays and Rural India has facilitated guest/supporter visits to Frank’s projects in Dhar, MP and Kabirdham, Chhattisgarh. We’ve led fundraising walks and cycle rides. These have raised in excess of £50,000 and the benefit of guests seeing Frank’s work in action has generated a number of long term loyal supporters.
Frank also supplies the stainless steel bottles we give to guests to steer them away from the purchase of plastic water bottles.
