Village Stays in India.

Last Sunday, the Times Of India supplement, Times Life, carried an article on ‘Rustication’ or rustic vacations that urban dwellers are increasingly searching for. I am no different. Having been born and brought up in the Maximum City, Mumbai, I have discovered that my heart lies in rustic India, in the beauty of the small, unspoilt villages and mountains, more specifically. There is something so heart warming about staying in villages and farms, breathing the pure air, eating food fresh from the farm and the pristine surroundings. Here’s a round-up of some of the village stays I've experienced and each one has been memorable. Of course there are more to come. Maybe, I’ll do part two on village stays sometime.

I've listed these in no particular order, although I've started with places closer to home.

In the alpine pastures in Spiti.

Velas: I visited Velas in February this year to see the hatching of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles. I stayed at Amol Soman’s spicefarm. The sea, sand, turtles, climbing mango trees, lip smacking Konkani food and lush spice farm made this a memorable experience. The rooms are no-frill, very basic, since Velas is relatively new to hosting people from the cities. But to make up for that is the sea (which I had all to myself when I visited), just a ten minute walk from the home-stay, the verdant spice farm and the relaxed pace of village life, which has not yet become touristy. Room tariff is Rs 700 including food and accommodation if you go as a couple or Rs 1000 only for the stay if you travel solo.

New born Olive Ridley turtles in Velas.

I had the whole Velas beach to myself. 

Amol Soman's spice farm. 

Lunch under a mango tree. The taste increased manifold :-)

A raw cashew nut.

Shreeyog Paryatan: I had visited this sleepy village in Sindhudurg with my husband in January 2015. It was a road trip, passing through sugarcane fields, vendors selling heaps of the fiery Kolhapuri chilies on the road side and passing through the bumpy roads on the ghats. The home-stay is run by the elderly Kadams who will treat you like their own family member. Mrs. Kadam is an excellent cook and even allows you to decide what you want to eat for the next meal and cooks accordingly. 25 kms away is the peaceful and non-touristy Tarkarli beach. Read my review on Tripadvisor. I do not wish you give out their contact details on this forum. So if you are interested, contact me. Tariff is Rs 1200 onwards for food and accommodation.

The vegetable garden in Kadams' house.

Fresh farm produce being sold on the way to Tarkarli.

Mrs. Kadam is a cook par excellence. 

The Tarkarli beach only for us. 

Panchgani: I did not stay in Panchgani, but had gone for strawberry picking in January this year. But if an opportunity presents itself I would stay on a strawberry farm too, so I’ve listed it under village stays. Panchgani is the lesser known and non-touristy cousin of Mahabaleshwar, where people from Mumbai and Pune escape to, during parched summers. Panchgani has stays for all kinds of budgets. Think of leisurely walks, picking strawberries in the numerous farms, eating gavran (village) Maharashtrian thali and basically doing nothing but relax.

Strawberries by the heaps.

Picking strawberries on the farm.

Rows of strawberries.

Rainforest retreat: The Rainforest Retreat or the Mojo Plantation is situated in a village called Gaalibeedu, around 10 kms from Madikeri, in Karnataka. I had volunteered for vanilla hand-pollination and also did a wall-art in one of the cottages depicting the local bio-diversity. The 25 acres of the entirely organic plantation grows coffee, vanilla, cardamom, pepper and fruits like pineapple (the best I’ve ever had), papaya, bananas, etc. The owners Sujata and Anurag Goel will make you feel at home, talk about Nature and bio-diversity with such passion that you are bound to leave from there with more knowledge about the environment and be more awed by Nature’s intelligence. The staff is extremely sweet and courteous. They invited me to their home for coffee in the wee hours of the morning, since I was to leave at 6 am. Tariff starts from Rs 2000 onwards. Website: http://www.rainforestours.com/

Inside the Rainforest Retreat.

Misty mornings with the song of the birds.

Food was delicious to say the least. 

Ravi, one of the staff who was extremely courteous and extremely knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of the region.

This cutie pie of a calf took fancy to my bag and wanted to eat it. A refreshing change from the boring grass, you see! 

Sullia: A friend had invited us to his brother’s wedding. The venue turned out to be a 100 acre organic family farm. With sections devoted to swaying coconut trees, towering areca nut trees, square paddy fields, the farm is a peninsula of sorts, surrounded by a river on 3 sides, making the soil rich and fertile. The highlight was seeing and eating the flesh of a cocoa pod, drinking water from a well (ah, so sweet) and gathering arecanuts which  freshly plucked by the dexterous tree climber. The wedding was completely, what we urban people would call, eco-friendly, though for them it’s a way of life and they make no deal about it! This is a friend’s farm which we were fortunate to visit and stay in, so it’s not for visitors :-)

Inside the farm.

See how the decoration is entirely made with leaves, fruit and flowers.

Eating a cocoa pod.

Fresh okra. 

Bhujodi: There was no farm here, but the warmth and love of my hosts at Bhujodi village, where I painted a wall, made this a wonderful experience. The simplicity and down-to-earth nature of these award winning handloom artists, Vankar Dayabhai Ala, his son, Ashok bhai and family makes me want to go back and visit them again sometime. I was kept well hydrated with copious quantities of buttermilk to beat the heat, simple, scrumptious rustic food grown on their farm (which I couldn’t visit), and stories and anecdotes from their lives as artisans. A bonus was watching the entire process of weaving apiece of cloth as the artisans hummed and sang Kabir bhajans.  Since I was painting the wall outside theirhouse, they hosted me.

A cow staring at me in Bhujodi. 

Ashok Bhai posing in front of my wall art. 

Homely food at Ashok Bhai's house.

Kukma: This was another village where I stayed during my Kutch trip. I was put up in a rustic-chic guest house at KHAMIR, an organization that promotes Kutchi handicrafts, and excellently so. I used to wake up before sunrise, grab some masala chai in an earthen cup (kulhad) and walk around the campus being amused and entertained by birds chirping on a high decibel, getting ready to fly off in different directions for food and admiring the gorgeous sunrise on the barren landscape with sparse trees. I painted a wall here too. See the pictures here. The food is simple and delicious and the staff is very helpful. The buildings are made entirely out mud, which keeps the interiors cool in the desert summer and the décor is simple yet elegant. They also arrange for cultural tours in Kutch. Tariff starts at Rs 750.

The simple yet elegant guest house at Khamir. 

Cups of masala chai over sunrise.

Spiti: Well, in trans-Himalayan Spiti, you will be spoilt for choice when it comes to village stays, because except Kaza, the small town, there are only villages everywhere. I stayed at 5 different villages in Spiti. In Langza, I stayed the longest, volunteering in my host’s green peas farm. The job mainly involved weeding. Also helped with some cooking. Then I went to Komic, the highest inhabited village in Asia at the height of 5150 meters above sea level. In 2013, when I had visited there were only 13 houses and the total population of the village was 32 people. Next was Demul, Lhalung and then Tabo. Spiti is spectacularly beautiful from any village, so take your pick. Many backpackers and trekkers just  walk up to a village, knock on a door and ask to stay. Home-stays charge from Rs 150 to 300 for food and accommodation. The toilets are dry compost, owing to the dry, arid land and fragile ecosystem. The people are unbelievably kind and simple, because they have not yet been corrupted by people outside, but that may change soon with the promotion of tourism.

The entrance to Spiti. 

That's me pulling outs weeds on the farm. 

Spiti has many monasteries, their bright, lively colours contrasting with the browns and greys of the arid landscape. 

The highest inhabited village, Komic, as seen from the Komic monastery.

Ruhil Dhar and Kharapthar: I wanted to volunteer for apple harvesting last year so I visited a friend’s apple orchard in Himachal Pradesh, which his family has been managing for many generations. Both are remote villages, so you may not have heard of it. The work was hard for a city girl like me, but I managed to put in 5 hours of work everyday. The workers taught me how to climb trees, balance myself on slender branches, pluck the apples, without destroying the buds, collect them in the bag hung on my shoulder/neck and pass it down to the person standing below, successfully, without falling down. I enjoyed every bit of it. That together with the scrumptious, lesserknown traditional Himachali dishes like siddu, mash ke vade, etc made by my friend’s loving grandmother and served with liberal amounts of ghee, had me return with lovely memories.

The beautiful surroundings at Kharapathar.

Walking through the clouds and fog. 

A fully laden apple tree.

Variety of Himchali/Pahari delicacies. 

There are so many more villages to visit in so many other states in India, I've barely scratched the surface. Hope to visit many more soon. My aim is to visit at least one village in each state :-)

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Note on the Pottery of Kutch.

Thalis and pans with intricate designs at Khamir.

After visiting the Dastkari Haat in Pune, where artisans from all over the country come to sell their wares, it occurred to me to put together this short note on the art of Pottery in Kutch. My visit to Khamir, in Kutch, had fortunately coincided with a pottery exhibit of the region. I had never known that vessels made of clay and mud could be used for regular cooking. While I lost quite a lot of photos which I had taken of the exhibit due to some error, I have managed to salvage some and I have tried to compile details from my memory too.

Prof. R.S. Bisht giving a talk on Pottery of the Indus Valley Civilization. 

The art of Pottery pre-dates recorded history, as even before the discovery of metals, it was mud and clay that was easily available and used for fashioning vessels/containers for cooking and storing. During my stay at Khamir, I was also fortunate to attend a talk given by none other than the chief Archeologist, Prof. R.S Bisht, who led the excavation of the ruins of Indus Valley civilization, at Dholavira, in Kutch. 

Pictures of slides of the pottery excavated at Dholavira.

The disc with fish motif inspired me. 

He showed us slides and photographs of remarkably well-preserved pieces of pottery, with exquisite designs and patterns which he had excavated. The most interesting part is that the same motifs and patterns are used even till this date in the pottery of Kutch. One thing that particularly caught my attention was a disc with motifs of fish. And the colour of the design was blue. The Prof said that oxygen supply was cut off to the kiln to lend the items that colour. Later during my stay, when the Director of Khamir, Meera, asked me to do a mural in their campus, I incorporated the same fish motif and other patterns of pottery.

The fish motif I used for my wall art at Khamir. 

The exhibit had vessels for everything, right from kulads for drinking beverages from, to pots and pans for cooking anything ranging from lentils (daal) to rotis (flatbread) in. Even the skillet for making rotis were made in different sizes, the largest being used by the nomadic tribes to make bigger size rotis as they would have to walk a lot before the next break for food. There were pots stacked one of top of the other in decreasing sizes, starting from bottom, used to store grains, cereals, and grocery. Then there were pots for storing buttermilk, curd and other beverages. There was even a particularly shaped pot which could be used for transporting water and beverages during travel. Sorry I don’t have the picture of that.

Different items for various purposes.

Pottery had an important role to play even during rituals and rites of passage. The pots and clay items presented to the bride during the wedding were shaped differently from the ones used during a funeral. But there was one thing common to all the items made, and that was the intricate patterns on the items.

Items used for auspicious occasions. 

You will also notice that different items are of a different colour. Some are whitish, whereas some others are red, brown, and so forth. That's the colour of clay sourced from different places. The choice or colour of the clay used depends on what the end product would be used for and the availability of the same locally. The clay is then moulded into the desired shaped either on a wheel or by hand and allowed to air dry for a while. The patterns on the items are made using a thin brush and using a watered down clay of a different colour, commonly known as a ‘slip’.  Then the coloured slip is applied of the desired pattern and design. This is then baked in a kiln. The temperature of the kiln is also set depending on what the end product would be used for. You must be aware that some pots are used as musical instruments. For such and other purposes requiring durability and strength, the clay items are baked at a higher temperature and for some others not very high. In earlier days people used wood fired kilns, but now-a-days, electric kilns are used, like the one I saw at Khamir. In the electric ones, the temperature can be set between 400 to 1500 degrees Celsius depending on the type of clay and the product.

The kiln at Khamir- the temperature can be set anywhere between 400 to 1500 degrees Celsius. 

Clay vessels and pots are not only beautiful and as old as civilization itself but it’s also the most eco-friendly. In today’s markets, flooded with cheap plastic goods, the potter community is steadily shrinking and also struggling to keep their art and skill alive, as their children move to the cities in search of well paid jobs. As soon as I returned from Kutch, the first thing I did was go and buy an earthen pot for storing and drinking water from, which I had never done before. That was the least I could have done to support the potters of India.

Contemporary designs- Flasks and water jugs made of clay. 

Volunteering for Wall-art at Bhujodi, Kutch.

One of the reasons I went to Kutch was with the idea of volunteering for wall-art. I didn't know how and where but just knew I wanted to and that I would! Luckily the Director of Khamir, Meera, put me in touch with one of the more influential people in Bhujodi village, called Chaman Bhai, and I was all set for my wall-art there.

I went around with Chaman Bhai exploring different options of walls which could be painted and also talking to the village people about what they would like to see on the wall. I wanted an expansive canvas for wall-art and finally found one: the facade of the house belonging to Dayabhai Ala, an award winning weaver. The wall was painted with an advertisement of JK Cement which I got white washed. There was also a notice board on the wall and it was the main wall of the village where people would gather for important meetings and to read instructions/notices, etc, on the notice board.

The wall was 22 feet wide and 13 feet height and I completed that in 4 days. At the end of it, each muscle of mine was sore, and I had tanned 5 shades, but every bit was worth it. I stood on a drum to paint the upper parts of the wall, with a constant buzz of inquisitive children, village elders and wandering cows, who tried to chew the cardboard box in which I had kept the paints, twice.

Bhujodi is a village entirely of handloom weavers. And they also follow the legacy of the 15th century saint-poet, Kabir. So some of the motifs they wanted on the wall was Sant Kabir, a loom, a doha of the saint, and the motifs used in weaving which is typically geometric patterns, as you will see in the images. The doha the village people wanted was 'Patta toota daali se, le gayi pawan udaye, abke bichhde kab mile, dur padenge jaaye', which means leaves fall from trees and the wind carries them far away, and that is the way of life too. In the earlier days, the weaver community  had a symbiotic relationship with the nomadic Rabari community of shepherds. The shepherds would provide wool for weaving to the weavers and the weavers would in turn provide temporary shelter to the nomads. So I also incorporated motifs of the nomadic tribes in the wall-art. Let me take you through the images.

The completed wall. 

Vankar Dayabhai Ala, the house owner and award winning artisan/weaver.

Peacock and bird motifs used in embroidery by the nomadic Rabari community.

The Rabari herdsman with a camel and goat. The cactus represents the vegetation of the region. 

The Tree of Life made with weaving motifs. 

Sant Kabir and his tanpura. 

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The sun and the clouds.

Sant Kabir's doha, Patta toota daali se, le gayi pawan udaye, abke bichhde kab mile, dur padenge jaaye, which means leaves fall from trees and the wind carries them far away, and that is the way of life too. 

The loom. 

That's me beaming that the mural is finally over.