I’ve recently returned from a fascinating two weeks in India where I spent part of the time trekking between villages located in and around the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary in Utterachand Province,. The holiday was booked through VillageWays, a small, specialist tour operator (www.villageways.com) that is wholly Indian owned and whose primary purpose is to help develop responsible tourism in communities that to date have been bypassed by tourism development, and where there are few other opportunities to generate income. The project was three years in the planning and since they started accepting customers in 2008, some 3,000+ people (mainly middle-aged, middle class Brits) have spent time enjoying the views, wildlife and of course hospitality of this wonderful part of the world. One starts and finishes the trip near Almora at the Khali Estate, originally a mountain retreat for the British government’s representative in the area and subsequently one of the earliest ashrams established by Mahatma Ghandi. Indeed, one of Khali’s proud boasts is that three Indian Prime Ministers – Nehru, Indira Ghandi and Rajiv Ghandi – have stayed there (the other boast is that it has been an entirely vegetarian estate for more than 60 years).
Having met our guides – in our case two local villagers called Deepak and Kheem - we spent the first evening planning the next six day’s walking. There is a range of routes within and around the Sanctuary suitable for walkers of all abilities and fitness levels. During the trip we averaged around 4 hours walking a day which was well within our capabilities despite the altitude (up to 2,450 metres) and temperatures of 20 to 25 degrees.
Arriving at our day’s
destination by early afternoon allowed us time for lunch, a rest and afternoon tea before taking a tour of the village, visiting people’s homes, spending time wandering through the fields and, on one memorable occasion, joining the local boys in a game of cricket on an abandoned agricultural terrace – to get four runs, you had to hit the ball down four terraces!
The accommodation in each village has been purpose-built by the villagers themselves, and is styled on local houses although instead of space for animals in the ground floor, there are basic but perfectly adequate bedrooms for the walkers. Each guest house takes a maximum of 6 people so the villages are never over-run by tourists, which seems to be a very important aspect in terms of minimising some of the undesirable impacts that are often associated with tourism in emerging destinations.
Food is entirely vegetarian throughout the holiday, the ingredients are locally sourced wherever possible and are almost exclusively organic. To suit the palates of their guests, most of the curry dishes are milder than would normally the case although we were given the opportunity, as we got to know our guides better, to ‘spice up’ the food.
All of the cooking, cleaning and porterage services are carried out by local people who are paid at rates agreed by all community members and that are, reportedly, higher than the industry average. More interestingly, every family and landowner receives a payment of 50 rupees per visitor, per night. Some 80% of this is retained by the family or landowner and the remaining 20% is paid directly into a village fund where it is used to finance projects that benefit everyone in the community such as providing an electric fence to keep boar and deer out of the best agricultural land, or upgrading the local school facilities.
A key aspect of this holiday is the chance to get to know the local people on their own terms – although we were very much paying tourists, there was a sense that we were invited guests and hence the framework for interaction wass very different than on a ‘normal’ trip. For instance, in one village – Satri – some of the local women came to the guest house one evening to sing whilst our guide led the dancing. But we too were expected to perform – a dance or a song – and did so happily (if a little out of tune at times). After six days of walking on narrow forest tracks, often strewn with red rhododendron petals, and having seen some wonderful views, it was a real shock on the final day to arrive in a small town and see metalled roads, cars, buses, cafes and shops. We finished this first part of the holiday with a trip to the important Hindu temple complex at Jageshwar where we gave thanks for a wonderful, safe trip and sought blessings for the next phase of the holiday, a stay in the Corbett Tiger Reserve. More of that later......
