Rajasthan luxury camp, India

Developed by the royal family of Nimaj, our camp is set atop a 100 year old reservoir. The camp has successfully revived the traditional water harvesting system here and has also given 300 acres of land back to the nature, this in turn has succeeded in creating wilderness that is inhabited by some 200 species of birds, antelope and other animals locally found in the areas.

Local produce:
Though the camp is self sufficient with its own vegetable farms, we encourage the local women to grow vegetables and flowers in their farms and sell them to the camp, this is practiced by the camp only to make the women financially independent without going anywhere else to work.

The camp has its own dairy, hence the milk quality is of high standards and all cows are fed organically grown fodder.

All the furniture at the camp is made by the local carpenters and the guests can also visit the village carpenter's workshop.

Environmental practices:

• We have proper disposal areas for kitchen waste.
• The wood for camp-fire and kitchen-fire is all collected by shedding the acacia branches and not by cutting any trees. Acacia branches grow back and the same tree can provide fuel for generations.
• We keep the lightings in the public areas to bare minimum to avoid heavy fuel consumption; candles are used where ever possible.
• We try and minimize the consumption of fuel by using special silent generators.
• We use a filter system for the waste water, after filtration the water is used to irrigate the forest trees.

School:
The settlement our guests visit has a middle school run by the state Government. The camp contributes towards furnishing all the class rooms as the government only provides constructed area without furniture. We also provided electricity to the school.

Children are given lectures on the environment and the abuse of plastic. There are projects to clean the village of the disposed plastic. Children who can not afford the government fees or uniform and stationery are funded by the camp. We do not raise any funds from the guests as we have adopted the school and by staying at the camp one has already contributed towards the cause.

Benefits to the Village:
The idea is to keep the village as pure and free from urban evil like excess consumption of tobacco in pouch – like Rajnigandha etc. This can only happen by giving proper education and we conduct such programs. Projects are carried out on water harvesting and developing their agriculture land. The youth is educated about various job opportunities. The government has various projects and we try and make the village benefit from them.

The camp has adopted a village inhabited by two local communities – Seervis (farmers) & Gujjars (shepherds). The camp aids their school and extends help in whichever way they need.

In co-ordination with the government medical aid, the camp management works on one to one basis in providing knowledge regarding health and hygiene.

Staff
To maintain a balanced economy within the area and to make the locals feel part of the camp, the entire staff for the camp is sourced from the adjoining village & farms and is trained personally by us. They are mostly shepherd and farmers and are owners of most of the agriculture land around the camp, hence take great pride in looking after the guests.