Let’s help you
plan your journey
Explore responsibly, discover offbeat places, guided by locals, rooted in culture.
Let’s help you
plan your journey
Explore responsibly, discover offbeat places, guided by locals, rooted in culture.
Soumen Bhowmick
A slow traveller, road trip enthusiast, Soumen travels to understand how places breathe beyond maps and itineraries. A road tripper at heart, he finds meaning in country roads, small conversations, changing landscapes, and the quiet stories that unfold between destinations. That same instinct now shapes how he designs journeys for organisations, MICE, brand drives, product launches and CSR initiatives built the same way: around people, place and what's real, not what's scripted.
Responsible travel destinations in India are hard to choose, because the village with the best story and the village worth travelling to are often not the same place. Nine of them here are both, and reaching them takes planning, because several have no booking page, one closes for half the year and one needs a permit weeks ahead. What each village decided is the reason to go, and the season or the permit usually decides when.
None of them was built for visitors. That is the reason to go rather than a reason to stay away. A place that fixed something without needing tourists is one where your arrival is a bonus and not a lifeline. A few can be arranged in a phone call. One needs a permit weeks ahead. One of them is a warning about what happens when too many people take the advice.
Two things at once, and the second one is easy to lose sight of.
There has to be a reason to go. Something to see, walk, watch, eat, buy or take part in, that a person would travel for even if nobody had told them a good story about it. A check dam is not that. Neither is a windmill.
And there has to be a decision behind it. A limit the community put on itself, a right it went out and claimed, a thing it refused, or a practice it has held on to while nearly everywhere else let go.
Plenty of Indian villages have done remarkable things and have nothing at all for a visitor. Hiware Bazar in Maharashtra worked out how much water its land could actually give before deciding what to plant. That order, limit first and use second, is worth borrowing. It is a genuinely important place and there is nothing there to look at. Sending you to stand in a field would waste your money and their time.
The nine below have both. Where a place has only the story, reading about it is enough, and that is not a lesser outcome.
A committee decides instead of an owner, and the money stays in the village instead of leaving it. Hodka in Kutch is the clearest example.
Most community hosted stays are family homestays, a spare room and a household. A village-owned property is the rarer version, and it changes who carries the risk and who takes the profit.
Hodka sits in the Banni grasslands of north Kutch, about fifty-eight kilometres from Bhuj.
The resort is called Shaam-e-Sarhad, which means sunset at the border, and the border is close. It is owned and run by the village tourism committee. Not leased to an operator, not a partnership with a hotel group. The people who work there are from Hodka.
It began in 2004, when Hodka was picked for a government and United Nations project. The idea was called endogenous tourism, meaning tourism a community builds itself rather than one that arrives. The first version used tents. Hodka had been sent a great many of them after the 2001 earthquake and most were still lying unused. Guests slept in relief tents until the money came in to build properly.
That earthquake runs through this part of Kutch. It is the same one that destroyed Dhamadka and changed the water there, which is why the ajrakh printers moved and built a new village fifteen kilometres from Bhuj. One disaster, two villages, two entirely different second acts.
You now sleep in a bhunga, the round mud house of the region, with mirror and clay work on the walls. The craft villages of Nirona and Ludiya are close, and so is the White Rann.
Getting there. Fifty-eight kilometres from Bhuj, which has an airport and a station. Cars and shared taxis run.
When. It opens October to March and closes for the rest of the year. That is not a soft recommendation, it is the operating season, and turning up in May means finding it shut.
The Kutch to central Gujarat journey works this country.
Kokkarebellur in Karnataka has protected its birds for long, and it has done it without a boundary, a gate or an official.
It is in Maddur taluk of Mandya district, roughly eighty to ninety kilometres from Bengaluru on the road to Mysuru. Kokkare is the Kannada word for the painted stork. Bellur is the village. The birds are in the name because they were here first, or at least long enough that nobody remembers otherwise.
Painted storks and spot-billed pelicans nest in the tamarind and ficus trees inside the village, above people's houses and yards. Both species are listed as near threatened. Cormorants, ibis, grey herons and pond herons nest here too. The villagers do not tolerate the birds. They protect them, and there is a practical history behind it. The droppings are rich in potassium and were used on the fields as manure. Somewhere in that arrangement, birds that are usually skittish learned that this particular village was safe, and they now nest close enough to photograph without a long lens.
Here is the part worth understanding before you go. Kokkarebellur is a community reserve, and it has no boundary, no entry gate, no visiting hours and no ticket. Karnataka Tourism says so plainly. You walk into a village and look up. Local people will show you where to look.
That is the opposite of a national park. There is no gate to tell you where the rules start, so the care has to come with you.
Getting there. Off the Bengaluru to Mysuru highway, turn towards the village after Channapatna and before Maddur. It is an easy day trip from either city. The nearest hotels are in Mandya, about twenty-six kilometres away.
When. The birds arrive around November and are gone by about June, and the young are easiest to see between December and February. Accounts of the arrival month differ, so ask locally before you fix dates rather than building a tight itinerary around one week.
The coastal Karnataka and Western Ghats journey works the state.
The rule has no exceptions in it, and that is the only kind of rule a forest survives. Mawphlang in Meghalaya is the easiest place to go and see one.
A sacred grove is a patch of forest a community has kept intact because it is held to belong to something other than them. There are thousands across the country under different names. Mawphlang is a short drive from Shillong. The forest is old, dense and dark, with trees carrying moss and orchids on their trunks, and the floor thick with leaf litter that has been building for a very long time.
The rule is what makes it worth the walk, and it is the same arrangement that keeps the groves of north Kerala standing while the forest around them went. Nothing may be taken out of the grove. Not a leaf, not a stone, not a fallen branch. People will tell you what is said to happen to those who try, and whether or not you believe the story, the forest is standing and the ones around it are not.
You go in with a local guide, which is how it should work. The guide is not a formality. The grove is a place with rules, and somebody has to tell you what they are.
Getting there. A short drive from Shillong, on the way towards Cherrapunji.
When. Meghalaya is at its wettest in the monsoon, which is worth planning around unless rain is what you came for.
The seven day Meghalaya journey crosses this country.
Dzongu in north Sikkim is the clearest case. The Lepcha community there spent years refusing hydel projects proposed on the rivers running through its own land.
It is a reserved area below Kanchenjunga. Most of the villages here are on this list for something they built, and Dzongu is here for something it turned down. The opposition included hunger strikes lasting months. Some projects were scrapped. Others were not, and the argument has been going for years.
That matters more than any success story above. Saying no once is easy. Saying no for years, while the project is still being pushed, is not.
What you go for is the place. Cardamom under the trees, hot springs, rivers, homestays run by families, and the mountain when the cloud lifts. It is quiet in a way that has not been arranged for anybody.
Getting there. North Sikkim, reached from Gangtok. Dzongu is a protected area and you need a permit, which is arranged in advance rather than at the gate. Your homestay host or whoever is planning your trip applies for it, and it is not something to leave until you arrive.
Where to stay. Family homestays, several of them long established. There is no hotel, so every bed here is a community hosted stay by default.
The Darjeeling and Sikkim journey works these hills.
Menar in Rajasthan has two lakes that fill with birds every winter, and nobody official is guarding either of them. It sits in Udaipur district, on the road towards Chittorgarh. Flamingos, cranes, waders, ducks in numbers. What makes it different from a sanctuary is that nobody official is guarding it. The villagers stopped hunting, and they stop others. The birds came back because a village decided they should be allowed to. There is no warden, no fee and no fence, which is the same arrangement as Kokkarebellur and the same responsibility on whoever visits.
Getting there. Within a comfortable drive of Udaipur, which has an airport and a station.
When. Winter, when the migratory birds are on the lakes. Outside that window there is water and not much else.
The eleven day Rajasthan journey works this state.
Kumbalangi, on the backwaters just outside Kochi, is the version most people can reach easily.
It was set up as a model tourism village, with the idea that the income should stay inside the village. What you see is a working place rather than a display. Chinese fishing nets, crab and prawn farms in the backwater pens, coir being made from coconut husk, clams, and mangrove along the water.
The interesting thing is that almost nothing there was built for you. The nets were fishing before anybody thought of selling a look at them. You are watching people work, which is a different experience from watching people perform.
Getting there. A short drive from Kochi, which is easy to reach from anywhere.
Where to stay. Community hosted stays in the village, and Kochi itself is close enough to be a base if you would rather have a hotel.
The Kerala journey reaches this coast.
At Chizami in Nagaland it goes to the weaver, because a collective pays her for the work. In most places a visitor sees the shop and never the loom.
Chizami is in Phek district, in Chakhesang country. Weaving in Nagaland is old and it is everywhere, and most of what a visitor sees of it is a shawl in a shop. Chizami is the other end of that. Women in and around the village weave on backstrap looms as paid work, and the money reaches them directly.
Raghurajpur is the older proof of it. A craft survives when somebody can live on it. The difference between a craft village and a craft shop is whether the maker is being paid properly.
Getting there. Phek district, reached by road from Kohima. It is a long drive and the roads are what they are.
Before you go. The collective has to be asked in advance, by you or by whoever is planning the trip. This is a workplace rather than a showroom, and a day in the middle of an order is a day when nobody can stop.
Sittong spreads its rooms across households rather than putting up one property, which decides who earns. It sits in the hills below Darjeeling, on the way down towards the Teesta.
Sittong grows oranges on terraced slopes, and in season the fruit is on the trees all around the houses. The rest of the year it is a quiet cluster of hamlets with pine, cardamom, birds and a view. What is worth knowing is how the tourism there is arranged. The community hosted stays are spread across households in several hamlets rather than concentrated in one resort. That means a family with two rooms earns from a visitor in a way they would not if a single property had been built on the ridge.
Getting there. From Siliguri or New Jalpaiguri, by road, a couple of hours into the hills.
When. The orange harvest is winter. The hills are green and wet in the monsoon and clear in autumn.
Mawlynnong in Meghalaya earned the title and the title brought the buses. It is the one place here where how you visit matters more than whether you visit.
The village is in the East Khasi Hills. Bamboo bins, composting, and a habit of sweeping that belongs to the community rather than to a campaign. There is a living root bridge nearby at Riwai and a viewing platform in the trees. Then the label arrived, and with it the day-trippers, in numbers that a village of a few hundred people was never built to absorb.
Here is the problem, and it is the one that matters most. A community's own achievement became the reason crowds arrive, and the crowds are what make the achievement harder to keep. People come to check whether the claim is true, photograph the lane and leave, and the village is left with the cleaning.
So the community has restricted day visitors at weekends, which is when the pressure was worst. That decision is worth understanding rather than working around. It is the same kind of limit that Kokkarebellur and Menar keep, made by the people who have to live with the result.
Mawlynnong is worth visiting, and it rewards the version where you stay the night rather than pass through. An ordinary weekday, a room in the village, a meal bought there. The place is at its best when it is not full, which is worth knowing when you pick the date.
The same Meghalaya journey passes both this and Mawphlang.
Somebody has to arrange it weeks ahead, because almost none of these places has a reservation system or a number that answers first time. That somebody is either you, with patience and a working phone signal at both ends, or whoever is planning the trip for you.
What replaces the booking page is a person who is expecting you. A homestay owner who has kept the room free, a collective that has put you down for a day when the looms are running, a village committee that has said yes. Getting to that person is the slow part. The request goes to a panchayat office or a committee rather than to a desk. Replies can take a week, and whoever answered last year may have handed the job on.
Three things decide whether it works. The village has to be asked rather than told, because these are working places and a collective mid-order or a household mid-harvest has nothing to spare. The date has to fit the place rather than the itinerary, which the next section covers in full. And the trip needs more days than a normal one. The nearest airport is often several hours away, the last stretch of road is the slowest, and a village that takes a day to reach is not one to leave the next morning.
If somebody else is arranging it for you, whether that is us or anybody else, there is a separate set of questions worth putting to them.
This is what care-based travel means in practice. The work happens before anybody travels, so that the person who arrives can simply be there.
In several of these places the thing you came for is only there for part of the year, and no amount of planning moves it. The seasons are not a matter of comfort.
Hodka is open October to March and shut the rest of the year.
Kokkarebellur has birds from about November to June, with the young easiest to see between December and February. Ask locally before fixing dates.
Menar is a winter place. Outside the migration there is water and not much on it.
Sittong has oranges in winter, cloud in the monsoon, and clear air in autumn.
Dzongu needs a permit arranged in advance, which is a lead time rather than a season.
Meghalaya, for both Mawphlang and Mawlynnong, is extremely wet in the monsoon. Some people go for exactly that.
Kumbalangi and Chizami are less season-bound, though the Kerala monsoon is heavy and the roads into Phek are better in the dry months.
By spending where the work happened, and by not being the reason it becomes harder.
The first half is easy and most people already understand it. Stay in the village rather than the town. Eat where you are staying. Buy the thing from the person who made it. Pay a guide properly. Hire the local person rather than bringing one.
The second half is harder because it asks you to think about everybody who comes after you. Mawlynnong is what happens when a good story travels faster than a place can absorb the people it brings. Kokkarebellur has no gate, no warden and no rules posted anywhere. The only thing standing between the birds and a bad day is the behaviour of whoever turns up.
The question worth carrying is a simple one. Will the place be in the same condition, or better, for whoever arrives next month?
These nine villages each decided something and then lived with it. That is most of what makes them worth the journey.
Places with both a reason to travel and a decision behind them. Hodka in Kutch, Kokkarebellur in Karnataka, Mawphlang and Mawlynnong in Meghalaya. Dzongu in Sikkim, Menar in Rajasthan, Kumbalangi in Kerala, Chizami in Nagaland and Sittong in West Bengal. Many well known sustainable villages in India have a good story and nothing at all to see. Going to those wastes your money and their time.
A protected area held by a community rather than run by the forest department. Kokkarebellur in Mandya district, Karnataka, is one, where painted storks and spot-billed pelicans nest in trees above people's houses. It has no boundary, no entry gate, no visiting hours and no ticket, which is very different from a national park.
The birds arrive around November and are gone by about June, and the young are easiest to see between December and February. Accounts of the arrival month differ, so it is worth asking locally before fixing dates. Early mornings are the most active time.
A community hosted stay is any arrangement where the people who live in a place put you up. The money reaches a household or a village body rather than an outside owner. A homestay is one form of it, usually a family with a spare room. A village-owned property like the one at Hodka is another, where a committee rather than a family holds it.
Yes. It is owned and run by the village tourism committee of Hodka, with staff from the village, rather than leased to an outside operator. It started in 2004 under a government and United Nations project, and the first guests stayed in relief tents left over from the 2001 earthquake. It opens October to March and closes for the rest of the year, so arriving outside that window means finding it shut.
Yes. Dzongu is a protected area reserved for the Lepcha community and a permit has to be arranged in advance rather than on arrival. A homestay host or a Sikkim operator normally handles it, and it is not something to leave until you get there.
At Mawphlang in Meghalaya, yes, with a local guide. The central rule is that nothing may be taken out of the grove, including leaves and stones, and the guide is there to explain what applies. Not every sacred grove is open in the same way, so it is worth asking before entering any of them.
Chizami in Phek district, where women weave on backstrap looms as paid work through a collective, with the money going to the weavers rather than to an intermediary. It is a workplace rather than a showroom, so it is worth approaching the collective before arriving instead of turning up unannounced.
Kokkarebellur is a day trip from Bengaluru or Mysuru. Kumbalangi is a short drive from Kochi. Mawphlang is close to Shillong and Menar is close to Udaipur. Hodka, Dzongu, Chizami and Sittong all need longer, and Dzongu needs the permit lead time on top.
Treat the absence of rules as a reason to be more careful rather than less. At Kokkarebellur and Menar there is no gate, no warden and nothing posted, so noise, crowding and getting too close are entirely down to the visitor. Ask before photographing anybody, and accept a no.
More than a normal itinerary would use. The nearest airport is usually hours away and the last stretch of road is slow, so a night in each is the shape of trip that takes very little and leaves very little. Two or three villages across ten days works better than nine across three weeks.