Wildlife experts have opened a new eco-lodge in India that offers comfort and calm, as well as a chance to spot big catsThe early morning sun is bright on the long grass, the shadows are shortening and my wife Anne-Sophie, and our 10-month-old son Victor are sitting beside me on a small sandy spur above the placid river Ken. We are at a new eco-lodge, the Sarai at Toria, 400 miles east of Delhi, near the Panna national park and the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. The journey overnight on the train from the capital to the town of Khajuraho (famous for its 11th century temple complex) and the taxi trip through 15 miles of deep rural India, were smooth. We are relieved to be away from the traffic-choked, polluted, often angry city where we live. Breakfast is being served, there are birds in the trees and buffalo in the river. In the background I can hear that classic sound of rural India: the soft repetitive hoot of an irrigation pump in the fields behind us.The lodge opened last year and is the creation of wildlife photographer Joanna Van Gruisen, originally from Northumberland, and Raghudandan Singh Chundawat, one of India's best-known wildlife biologists."We chose the place because of our 10-year association with the area," says Joanna. "It had immediate potential as a lodge site because it is in an under-recognised but tourist-destination-rich beautiful part of the country; besides this there is plenty of potential for research ? on wildlife and on climate change ? and great need for development and economic stimulation." Profits from the venture are being channelled into local projects.Six spacious cottages with thatched roofs and open verandas have been built just behind the small spur. Trees, a few paths, a small creek and enthusiastic and conscientious local staff make the nine-acre plot seem larger than it is and homely.Many of the "eco-lodges" springing up around India are nothing of the sort. In cut-throat competition for foreign tourists, hoteliers soon worked out that a bit of green marketing works wonders. So dozens of establishments claim that, because they are in rural settings, have a lot of local textiles draped over the beds and offer trekking, they are "ecologically responsible".Joanna and Raghu, however, are very serious about conservation and the environment. Both have devoted much of their lives to the study and preservation of India's wildlife, and they are not the sort to slap a green label on anything that does not deserve it, however much it might help with marketing.Solar panels are planned for next season, water comes from a well, heating is designed to minimise consumption, biogas is used for cooking and the thick mud walls of the cottages mean there is no need for air-con. The Sarai shuts for the hottest part of the year ? April to early autumn, when temperatures climb well above 40C ? and reopens on 1 October, two weeks before the Panna Tiger Reserve.Joanna has sourced the soap from a women's cooperative in neighbouring Bihar state. Only local ingredients are used for the excellent food, mainly variations of the classic north Indian dishes of spiced, boiled vegetables but using, for example, a wild herb that grows only in these parts.Almost every evening we take a short walk, baby strapped to my chest, through villages near the lodge. This is a dirt-poor part of India, with worse poverty than in much of sub-saharan Africa, but the men and women squatting to cut the chickpea plants offer them to us with a smile. Victor, as ever in India, is quickly surrounded by curious crowds.If you want to understand what is happening on the ground, nothing beats walking in rural India. We pass a ruined fort, a more prosperous village, with houses of brick, the all-important "tank" or reservoir, then the settlement where the lowest castes live, away from the others, in homes of mud.On the other side of the river from the lodge is the national park, a long forested ridge that rises in stepped plateaux. Indian national parks are not very visitor-friendly: there are few of the activities you find in their European or US equivalents. The infrastructure just isn't there ? and anyway, much of the Panna national park is unreachable or off limits to tourists, to allow the wildlife space to roam without disturbance. Visitors can take jeep or elephant rides into the north-east of the park, starting from the villages of Madla or Hinouta.Raghu is the author of one of the most detailed investigations of tigers recently published in India and knows the story of the park's big cats better than anyone. His opinion of the local forestry department officials is largely unprintable. Only seven years ago, there were around 40 tigers living in the park, fewer than in the past but a sustainable population. Since then they have all died, many poached, in one of the worst local examples of the continuing failure of India's tiger preservation policies. More recently, a pair of tigers have been reintroduced, one of which we miss by minutes on our first morning in the park.No matter. The focus on tigers distracts from everything else there is to see. From my perch atop a jeep, protected by a blanket against the chill of early morning, the forest is spectacular in itself. Then there are the long-tailed langur monkeys, deer, antelopes, mongoose and boars. And the birds: shockingly blue rollers, majestic vultures, peregrine falcons and more ? all pointed out with enthusiasm by guides armed with binoculars, books and tea in a Thermos.But the place where the birds are most impressive is not in the park at all. I've never been much of an ornithologist ? too distracted by the easy excitement of bigger game ? but here I am converted. When my son is sleeping and the surface of the river at dusk is as smooth as the pebbles by its banks, I am paddled between the rocks and the storks, the herons, the pair of giant owls, the cormorants, the snake-necked darters and the kingfishers in their coats of colours that would put a Punjabi pop star to shame.It is a moment of tranquillity that is rare in the chaotic country that I cover for the Guardian. Even the horns of the country buses rattling through the villages along the bank of the river seem to have fallen silent.Jason Burke is the Guardian's south Asia correspondent IndiaAsiaGreen travelConservationEndangered speciesWildlifeJason Burkeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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