Beyond Mere Four Walls

Travellers are increasingly becoming selective about where they stay while on the move. Cookie-cutter hotel rooms don’t cut it anymore, which is why the demand for speciality accommodation is on the rise.

- Satarupa Paul

A two-hour drive from Delhi to Samar Gopalpur village near Rohtak in Haryana brings you to Banni Khera Farm. It is not just any rural farm with acres of land ripe with the crop of the season stretching into the horizon and a farmhouse perched in the midst of it all. Banni Khera is, in fact, a pioneering farmstay accommodation in India that was started as a sustainable and community based rural tourism project in collaboration with Haryana Tourism. “We’re real farmers, living on a live farm and offering personalised hospitality—authentic farm life experiences with stays in a grand haveli or plush tents, coupled with interactive real-time activities, including farming!” says Kr K.V. Singh, Founder and CEO, Banni Khera Farm.

Most of the services here are provided by the local villagers, including yoga and meditation classes, workshops on pottery, painting, cooking, activities such as horseriding, tractor rides, folk dance shows and more. Singh says, “The main motto of the project is to promote our village as a sustainable tourism destination and open new economic opportunities for the locals, while promoting our culture and heritage and offering an authentic rural life experience to the visitors.”

Farmstay accommodation such as this is gaining popularity in India and abroad, as are many other kinds of speciality stays—from castles, forts, monasteries and convents to cave hotels, quirky hostels and homestays, university lodging, and many more. Travellers today are devoting as much interest to their stays as to their destinations. Cookie-cutter hotel rooms have been relegated to the most regular travel— business, quick trips, stopovers, etc. For any other holiday even a little extraordinary, the stay too needs to be out of the ordinary.

CREATING MEMORIES