In December 2015, we bought ten acres of semi-barren land 21 kilometres from the Khatia gate of Kanha Tiger Reserve. Locals called it satkata jungle. It held fewer than 300 trees. Dry, overgrazed, unremarkable. We fenced it, walked away, and let it breathe.
By the March 2025 tree census, the same land held more than 6,000 native plants and trees, over 3,500 of them taller than five feet, and 59 documented species of birds. We didn't plant a forest. We simply stopped standing in its way.
That patience is the whole story. Everything else - the mud walls, the self-help group, the kitchen, the guests - grew out of it.
Why Two Travel Guys Bought Barren Land Near Kanha
Surwahi Social Ecoestate is the work of two people who spent a decade building India's online travel industry, and grew steadily more uncomfortable with what they were watching it do.
Ankit Rastogi, our founder, has led product and marketplace roles at Goibibo, Stayzilla, Cleartrip and MakeMyTrip. Pradeep Vijayan, co-founder, is Director of Accommodation at Ixigo, previously at Cleartrip. Between them they have checked into over a thousand properties across India - luxury hotels, budget chains, homestays, BnBs, in every corner of the country.
When you travel that much, a pattern becomes impossible to unsee. Beautiful places hollowed out by their own popularity. Water tables dropping. Forests thinning at the edges. Communities living metres from a booming tourism economy and receiving almost none of it.
We were part of the industry doing that. In 2015, we decided to try building the opposite.
The concept came before the location: an eco-sensitive property resting on four pillars - agri tourism, rural tourism, wildlife tourism and wellness tourism - run as a Bed and Breakfast rather than a lodge. A large hotel insulates a guest from a place. A B&B puts them inside it.
Kanha followed naturally. Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board had forward-thinking policies for alternative accommodation, and the Kanha Tiger Reserve forest department is among the best-managed in the country.
Priyanka Rastogi joined later to lead hospitality training, skilling and operations - a travel veteran with stints at Air India, Goibibo and Stayzilla, a serial entrepreneur and debut travel author.
Building With Mud, Slowly, and Only With Local Hands
While the land regenerated, we looked for architects who shared our values. We found Mrinmayee Architects in Bangalore, guided by Professor Yogananda M.R. and Professor K.S. Jagadish of IISc Bangalore, with young architect Mohan Shiva assigned to the project full time.
Construction began in early 2019 using stabilised mud cob - roughly 10,000 sq ft of it - with minimal baked brick, steel, glass or cement. Roofs are insulated with recycled terracotta tiles salvaged from village homes, which is why rooms stay liveable when Kanha crosses 40°C in summer and drops to 4°C in winter, entirely without air conditioning.
Every worker on site was local. Electricians, plumbers, painters, potters, gardeners, masons. Two of those masons, Kaka and Kaji, were trained here in earthen construction and now use those skills independently.
The milestones, in order:
- October 2019 - Maikal Express, an eight-bed earthen dormitory, opens. India's first wildlife hostel of its kind, built around the idea of co-living in wilderness.
- March 2020 - Satkon (our common leisure area), the Kodo Kutki Kitchen and a zero-discharge evapotranspiration toilet block are completed. Then COVID stops everything.
- 30 December 2020 - Our first guest checks in, right after the first wave.
- December 2021 - Two family suites open: Jholar and Kariwah, named for two villages relocated out of the park in the 1970s. Both are wheelchair-accessible, with natural light and open sky visible from the shower.
Ten acres, and we build on two. The remaining eight stay fenced and untouched, permanently.
The Community Isn't Our Beneficiary. It's Our Co-Author.
When we arrived in Surwahi village in 2015, we were the outsiders. The Baiga and Gond families, the farmers, the women, the craftspeople had lived alongside this forest for generations. They understood the soil, the seasons, the water and the wildlife in ways no architect or consultant could.
So we hired locally from day one. Narendra Patle was the first - given real responsibility from the beginning, now our Estate Manager after ten years. Pradeep Uikey cooks food that carries the actual flavours and traditions of his community. Soham ji, our neighbouring farmer, takes guests into his fields during monsoon. Sanjay Pancheshwar, a Gond artist, doesn't perform for guests - he teaches them. Kaki Ji tends the trees and welcomes people to the estate.
In 2017 we helped 40+ village women organise the Deetya Jagriti Self-Help Group - built so they could save together, borrow together, and walk into a Panchayat meeting and be heard. That same year we began pushing for the Sandook stop dam through the local panchayat, a bureaucratic slog that finally gave the village a reliable water source.
More than seven people are employed directly today, every one from a surrounding village. Suraj and Lokesh joined as interns in 2024 and now run business development and reservations.
There was never a strategy document. Just one question asked every day for ten years: what does this village need, and how do we help without taking over?
Because the difference matters. A beneficiary depends on you. A partner outlasts you. If Surwahi closed tomorrow, the self-help group would keep meeting, the masons would keep building, the artists would keep selling.
What Ten Years of Leaving Land Alone Looks Like
The eight protected acres have quietly become something we didn't plan for. As tree cutting continues across surrounding villages, our patch has turned into one of the few places nearby where a forest still stands.
Arjun Pond, a rainwater reservoir roughly 100 x 60 x 5 feet, was dug as a water conservation measure. In summer, when water disappears across the region, it becomes a lifeline. Wild boar, sambar, barking deer and leopard have all been recorded drinking there. A water-harvesting project became a wildlife corridor by accident.
Butterflies are back, which matters more than it sounds - you cannot fake butterflies. So are bees, beetles and dragonflies. Snakes live here permanently, and our team is trained at the PfA Wildlife Rescue & Conservation Centre to handle them safely. The animals didn't arrive for the guests. They arrived because the land became safe. This is their home; we're all visitors.
Recognition Along the Way
The awards came without our chasing them - and each one belongs as much to the village as to us.
Major Awards
Government Recognition
- Recognised under Rural Tourism by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India
- Listed as a 'Showcase' B&B on NIDHI+, the Ministry of Tourism's national hospitality portal
- Featured by the Central Nodal Agency for Sustainable Tourism, Ministry of Tourism (April 2023 newsletter)
- MP Tourism Board approved B&B at Kanha Tiger Reserve
Certifications & Research
- TOFTigers PUG Quality Rating - certified Practicing Eco Lodge (October 2024)
- Two international research papers study SSEK as a case: one by IIM Sirmaur's Centre for Sustainability (2022), and one on "Sustainable Strategies of Ecotourism in Conservation Areas" by TERI and IIM Sirmaur researchers (March 2024)
Media Features
The Story Isn't Finished
The next five years are about making sure what we've built doesn't stay inside our fence. We're working towards training a young woman from the local community as Kanha's first female naturalist. We're taking our waste segregation and composting systems to other homestays across the region. We're opening the estate to schools and research students as a living laboratory, alongside our existing work with IITTM, IIM Sirmaur and TERI.
We're not trying to disrupt the tourism industry. We're holding up a different mirror - one where the forest is intact, the community is thriving, the guest goes home genuinely changed, and the person who made your bed grew up in the village next door and is building a career with dignity.