For a person who had worked for 17 years with NGOs and its funding agencies such as Actionaid and Christian Aid, and grassroots women's organisations, it didn't take long to realise that Indian villages with their natural beauty, simple lifestyle, warmth and hospitality were best suited to host tourists.

And then Gouthami, founder and CEO of Travel Another India, got the opportunity to work in a joint project of the UNDP and the Ministry of Tourism where 36 Indian villages were selected for their crafts and linked to tourism. Hodka in Kutch, Gujarat, was one such village. A local committee formed with panchayat members and craftspersons successfully hosted guests and bowled them over with their hospitality and unique crafts.

Gouthami, a graduate from IRMA (Institute of Rural Management Anand), while working on the Hodka project found the village community unique. “If Gujaratis are enterprising, then Kutchis are doubly so,” she says. So when she returned to Chennai in 2009 after two years of this work, she decided to set up Travel Another India, which offers travel packages to Indian villages, where the stay and other services are handled by village committees, which get a sustainable income from both hosting the guests as well as selling crafts.

Cartier award

Gouthami has recently bagged the Cartier Women's Initiative Award, an annual exercise that rewards women entrepreneurs from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. Apart from the monetary award of $20,000, each winner gets mentoring and coaching support for her business for a whole year.

Says Gouthami, “For the Cartier award, I had to give myself some title, so I now call myself CEO. Till then I was the person who did everything!”

Returning to Hodka, the initial attempts to involve women in the tourism project did not work because of a “huge purdah system operating here and the men refused to allow the women to come out to work with us. Even I couldn't speak to the women.” So the committee was formed with men. But now that the project has taken off and tourists are pouring in — Hodka is full for the entire season till March — and substantial profits have been made, the men involved in the village tourism committee have given Rs 2.5 lakh to the panchayat and said: ‘Please hire a teacher to educate our girls'.

Initially, in the 36 villages identified by the UNDP, home stays were planned. But most of the villagers didn't want strangers to stay in their homes, so a guesthouse, separate from village homes, was built. The Hodka guesthouse has 11 rooms built out of mud and locally available material, and there is no air conditioning for sustainability and environmental reasons. So people can visit Hodka only from October to March and no packages are on offer in summer. “Anyway, in Kutch, tourists wouldn't be able to step out of the room and the point of a holiday to explore village life is lost,” says Gouthami.

Cost of a holiday

Coming to the cost, in Hodka, where two kinds of accommodation — cottages and tents — are available, the daily rate is Rs 3,000 a couple for the cottage and Rs 2,200 for the tent and this includes all three meals. Banavasi in Karnataka is the cheapest; a two-night-three-day package costs Rs 2,000 with Rs 150 a day per person for all meals.

Only vegetarian food is on offer, because, as Gouthami points out, “handling meat in a place when you are not sure of continuous power supply is a problem.” But those who wish to have non-veg food, “say a special biryani ”, can get it organised at one of the village homes.

But the focus is on the village crafts and her company chooses villages that can be converted into tourism destinations. “They have to be safe, accessible, and with a 4-6 month season and, most important, a village community that is interested in enhancing their income through such a venture.”

Crafts galore!

The idea is to offer tourists a range of activities and, not surprisingly, a Kutch village such as Hodka has crafts in plenty. “Within an hour's radius you'll get embroidery, leather work, weaving, thatching, pottery... there is so much that people go crazy shopping here. In the city, you'd pay three times as much for the articles you can buy here,” says Gouthami.

Crafts workshops are organised too; “unless I try weaving or making pottery, or plant paddy in a field, I won't realise how difficult it is, and will hesitate before bargaining at craft bazaars,” says Gouthami.

Hodka can accommodate 26 people in 11 rooms and two tents. “After Amitabh Bachchan's Gujarat campaign, I've been trying to get bookings for my friends but it is full. A committee member told me tourism here is doing so well that he has taken a loan and built his own five bhungas (mud and thatch houses) for guests. But I wasn't able to get bookings with him either! Now that was unexpected.”

Initially she thought more foreigners would be interested in holidaying in rural India, but “about 70 per cent of visitors at our destinations are Indians between aged 25-40. They are starting a family and one of our guests put it very nicely: ‘When we were kids we visited our grandparents in the villages, ran wild, stole mangoes from trees, but now all the grandparents are in cities!'”

Apart from Hodka, she has started such facilities in Channapatna and Banavasi, near Hubli in Karnataka, and also Ladakh. In Leh, a package for the wheelchair-bound is offered by a group of handicapped people. “We've tied up with a mainstream hotel that understands the concept and has made necessary modification to host such guests.” She partners only with people who understand responsible tourism and the impact on the environment. The foreign visitors come mainly from the UK and the US, with a sprinkling from France and Germany.

No TV, but clean toilets!

Gouthami hopes for a greater response from city dwellers ready to try out rural destinations. “We get people saying I can't live without a TV, but also some who are happy to keep their kids away from TV for three days! But there are people who go through our Web site, see this is offbeat tourism and yet want mainstream kind of stuff.”

At present she offers only nine destinations but hopes to “grow rapidly to at least 50 destinations by next year.”

That means extensive travel to assess the suitability of villages and meeting village communities and panchayats to partner with her. “I need somebody who will take the responsibility. Now we are getting a lot of requests; initially I used to chase them, but that has changed.”

The responsibility she is talking about has to do with fresh and clean bed linen, safe drinking water, running water and, above all, clean toilets.

“We offer basic comforts like a clean western toilet; I go and clean the toilet myself to ensure that they understand what we're talking about. Those in charge are trained by a person from a star hotel in serving food and on the importance of cleanliness, that you don't spit here and there.”

Guests are also told they can walk into the kitchen and cook, as most kids don't want to try bajre ki roti ! In Banavasi, typical north Karnataka food is offered; “initially people are a little hesitant but later ask for recipes,” she says.

While mosquito repellents and nets are in place, guests are also told to watch out for snakes during the monsoon season. “But the first time I saw a snake was a great experience… one person in a group was interested and knowledgeable about snakes. He just picked it up and showed it to everybody. That is the kind of people we get... with a little different perspective and expecting a different experience, so they don't get flustered,” she says.

The Cartier award was set up to encourage social entrepreneurs. “I applied because I was at the stage of writing a business plan and this gave me a deadline.” This award is a huge motivation as it has “given me a lot of confidence and recognition for the work we're doing… I was thinking of going to the foreign market after two years, but now suddenly I'm there already.”

But it is the love and warmth she gets from the local people in places such as Hodka and watching their incomes go up very quickly, that acts as a greater motivation. The income comes not only through crafts and crafts classes but also food. “Of course, I have to constantly tell them: ‘Be careful how much oil, chilli or other spices you use, and let me see if your nails are clean'.”

Last year her turnover was Rs 9 lakh and she hopes to see profits in the third year.

Does she hope to make it big one day?

“Of course, or else I wouldn't put my life into it,” says Gouthami, who is now scouting for women travellers. A group in Switzerland has asked if this would be safe for women. “I told them women can't be safer than in rural India!”

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