Svanir Wilderness Ecostay started out as a love story for Indrani Chakraborty and her husband Soumya Mukherji. They left their MNC jobs to pursue the love they have for the property, a legacy of the Mukherji family. The land surrounded by nature and the scent of the forest caught their attention. With their eco stay, they begin the day by hearing the distinct delicate call of a sunbird or by knocking a Golden Oriole at their window and they get to meet people from all walks of life and hear their inspiring stories. With Svanir, the couple aims to use homestay as an option to inspire ecotourism in the interior of Odisha as the places there are beautiful but don’t have enough places to stay.
Santal Houses inspire the cottages of the Svanir eco stay as Indrani’s father was fascinated by the simple and beautiful design of those houses.
A homestay business
“With the project being bootstrapped, me and Soumya designed the place ourselves instead of hiring an architect. Also, since the stay is built near villages, it was hard to convince the villagers that we were not building an industry. Which the villagers did not believe,” says the homestay host Indrani sharing about the initial challenges. She continues, “But once we started living there and started to employ people from the village, they understood the real reason behind the place.“
Svanir has four spacious cottages, which are made up of locally available raw materials. This helps in giving the eco stay a traditional tribal architecture and makes it ideal for tourists who look for such experiences. The small area of the stay makes it closer to nature and the homely food gives the guest a good experience and a glimpse into the nature-filled beauty.
The way of ecotourism
Svanir tries to reduce its wet waste by composting it naturally. The homestay business also follows other eco-friendly ways of drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting and greywater harvesting. There are no showers in the rooms – another way to save and recharge groundwater. The team also makes sure that every week they carry the solid waste into the city for recycling.
During the construction of the cottages, no trees were cut; instead, the structures were adjusted according to the shape of the trees.
Indrani sheepishly adds, “The funny part is that before coming to Svanir, I hadn’t seen vegetables grow on plants. So you can imagine what kind of fiasco we have had in our garden. Ecotourism done with the involvement of the local communities has a very high chance of success. Such projects are self-sustainable and avoid the pitfalls of mass tourism.”
An ecofuture ahead
The Svanir team strives to make every guest feel special and enjoy their time in nature. To relax, and refresh their body, mind, and spirit. They even encourage their guests to dine together in a common space and let conversations and ideas flow.
The main motivation is to provide a non-virtual interaction among the guests. In a time when online spaces have increased and people are almost always using their devices, eco stay provides relief from pseudo-digital interactions. Additionally, the local community directly gets the payment the more people stay in such homestays.
“Since the local community is known for having a traditional way of life, which is usually sustainable, it is important to support them as much as possible. So that they continue with such a lifestyle,” adds Soumya.
The people working in this eco-stay are from the adjacent village, including six families whose main income is from this work. The Svanir team aims at making the lives of the villagers easier by giving them work near home rather than making them migrate to cities. They provide a good income upon that which makes it easier for the villagers to choose to stay back home and parallelly continue with their farming.
So, the more guest stays in the Svanir eco stay, the more they enjoy nature and help in promoting a sustainable lifestyle. And more guests may also help more employment opportunities for the villagers.
