From The Latest Issue: The Rural Detour

Does the word “palmyra” bring to your mind the historic palm-leaf manuscripts? In Tamil Nadu, it is also becoming a way to experience rural life. You can climb palm trees, taste palm fruit and learn the craft of palm weaving. These experiences are rooted in community, ecology, and cultural knowledge, and for the regular urban dweller, they might sound like an unusual way to spend a holiday. But for Puvi Arasan of Outdoor Being, an immersive travel experience company, the central question is whether the community is comfortable sharing a part of its life with visitors.

The usual sightseeing itinerary is beginning to change. Travellers are looking beyond popular monuments and established tourist centres for experiences that let them participate in local life—learn how a craft is made, take part in agricultural processes or forage in a forest. Intimacy is difficult to find through conventional sightseeing. But once you become part of someone else’s everyday life, another question comes up: who decides what aspect of that life can become part of your travel experience? Arasan stressed, “The community should have the ability to say what they are comfortable sharing, how it is presented and when something should not be shared at all.”

Booking.com’s “Travel and Sustainability Report 2026” suggests that local and community-based experiences form part of this growing interest. Ninety-six per cent of Indian travellers say sustainable travel is important to them. The report also found that millennials (40 per cent), Gen Z (39 per cent), and Gen X (35 per cent) had participated in a tour or activity that involved learning about or interacting with local, indigenous people or cultures. A similar proportion of travellers also reported contributing to the health or conservation of local ecosystems or wildlife.

Going Local

But what does this interest look like when you actually get there? For Shreyas Danappa, founder of Map My Stories, a community-centric enterprise that promotes slow travel in northeast India, simply wanting this kind of experience is not enough; travellers need to submit a statement of purpose. “The traditional form of tourism is susceptible to reducing them as mere elements of a human safari. Participation is necessary for both the communities and the traveller. Therefore, the statement of purpose. Knowing the ‘why’ serves as a filtration process for who is coming into this ecosystem,” said Danappa.

So, if you were asked to write down your purpose, what would get you selected? Danappa said he considers what kind of traveller you are, what you are looking to learn, and how you like to spend your holiday. The basic requirement is knowing why you want to be there. Map My Stories, after all, has no instant booking button.

One of his experiences takes you into the Elopa-Etugu Community Eco-Cultural Preserve, a 75 sq km indigenous-led conservation area in Arunachal Pradesh’s Lower Dibang Valley. Established in 2022 by four clans of the Idu Mishmi community, it is named in their language “a place we left a long time back.” Over eight days, you learn about local crafts and agricultural processes, understand the forest through local community rangers and help set up scientific camera traps, among other activities. The itinerary is designed to provide insight into a way of life and forest conservation not available elsewhere in the country.

The revenue generated by these experiences is distributed equally among all households in the community. The idea isn't to escape into the countryside. It is to spend enough time there to understand a different way of living.

Rural Stories

From Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh, this approach takes us to Madhya Pradesh, where community-first rural tourism is growing, with ample government support.

Under the Responsible Tourism Mission, Ladpura Khas was the state’s first rural tourism village. “The village is now the destination, not simply a place to be visited briefly from a nearby tourist centre. The idea is simple: each destination should tell its own cultural story, while the communities who preserve that story also benefit from sharing it with travellers,” said Ilayaraja T., Secretary to the Chief Minister; Secretary, Tourism, Government of Madhya Pradesh, and Managing Director of the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board.

The state now has 110 rural and tribal villages under its rural tourism programme, with more than 3,000 young people trained in tourism-related roles. Stay in one of these villages, and you can experience rural life up close, rather than simply passing through it on your way to somewhere else.

Further west, about three hours from Gwalior, Agara is a village in Sheopur district, on the edge of Kuno National Park. Here, several Saharia Adivasi villages have come together to share their story through Salai, a community-immersive experience developed with Samrakshan Charitable Trust and Adharshila, NGOs run by Asmita Kabra, who also teaches environmental studies at Ashoka University.

At Salai, you walk through fields and village landscapes with local nature guides. You visit Khajuri and Ladar, spend time around farms and water bodies, discover local crafts and eat food shaped by the season.

For Kabra, even the language used to describe these encounters matters. “We call it an immersion, instead of tourism. Tourism still keeps the tourist as the focus and creates the expectation of a curation centred around them. Salai offers an understanding of the nature-culture relationship and how different seasons determine livelihoods dependent on nature.”

Seasonal Lives

But there is another thing you have to give up when you travel this way: predictability.

Come to a Warli village around Mumbai during rice sowing, and your experience will be different from one during harvest. Crops are seasonal, landscapes change over time, and even crafts and building materials vary across the year. When Anurag Karekar, founder of Naturalist Explorers, was curating his rice cultivation experience here, he could not promise a tour that would remain the same no matter what.

Your experience depends on when you visit—sowing, transplanting, or harvesting season. Since farming relies heavily on unpredictable monsoon rains, the timing and cultivation patterns can vary. Visit at the right time, and you may get hands-on experience while seeing how closely farming is tied to the rains. Karekar said, “Travellers are made part of the livelihoods of people here; hence, it has to be focused on them. We cannot hamper the agricultural cycle only because we have promised a certain experience.”

Rural travel, then, leaves us with a question rather than an answer. As more travellers step into these landscapes and livelihoods, how much will our presence become part of the story of the place itself?

Experiences At A Glance

• Bhaat Lavni at Aarey, Maharashtra: Wade into muddy fields and learn to hand-plant rice seedlings alongside local farmers. urbanaut.app/about-natex

• Into The Dibang: Elopa-Etugu Exploration Arunachal Pradesh: Learn wilderness survival from Idu Mishmi traditions through fishing, foraging, outdoor cooking and research. intothedibang.com/elopaetugu

• Salai, Madhya Pradesh: Explore Sahariya Adivasi life through bicycle rides, birdwatching, stargazing and nature experiences along the Kwari River. Contact: +91 9958949310, or kunosalai@gmail.com

• Palmyra Tourism, Tamil Nadu: Climb palms, meet local artisans and farmers, explore villages, and taste traditional palm-based foods. outdoorbeing.in/experiences/palmyra-tourism

• Bahour Village, Puducherry: Experience village life through the crop calendar, traditional water management and local festivals rarely found in tourism brochures. outdoorbeing.in/destinations/pondicherry

• Tourism Villages Ladpura Khas, Radhapur & Bagan, Madhya Pradesh: Experience rural life through organic farming, cattle milking, bullock ploughing and home-cooked regional meals. mptourism.com/rtm_village_detail.php/tourism-village-LadpuraKhas-Radhapur-Bagan

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