Early in my career as a travel writer, I began to realise how often tourism is designed around the traveller, with little thought for the people who live in a destination. In popular places across India, that can mean local cultures being reduced to performances, natural resources coming under pressure, and communities receiving little of the economic benefit tourism creates.
Over the years, I discovered another kind of tourism built around local communities,which can create livelihoods while preserving living cultures and landscapes. These experiences have offered me a deeper way of travelling through India.
Women Guides In Himachal
I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve hiked with a female guide in India. In the wilderness around the Great Himalayan National Park, I went on an overnight trek with an all-women team of guides and cooks supported by Himalayan Ecotourism, which is creating space for rural women in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
We hiked 14 km along the Tirthan River, past mountain villages, under rhododendron and chestnut trees, across rickety wooden bridges, and camped amid dense wilderness. Together, we foraged edible ferns and wild berries used in traditional cooking.
I’ll fondly remember that night, sitting around the bonfire, exchanging stories about our everyday lives over camp-cooked siddu and hand-ground walnut chutney.
For many mountain women, carrying heavy loads over long distances is part of daily life, yet cultural norms have often limited their role in tourism. Trekking with them goes beyond adventure. It creates livelihoods and offers travellers a deeper connection to the place.
Siddi Women In Karnataka
The Siddis are communities of African descent whose ancestors arrived in the Indian subcontinent over several centuries and through different routes. Today, Siddi communities live in parts of Karnataka, Gujarat and along India’s western coast. Curiosity about their lives led me to Damami, a community-run stay near Yellapur in Karnataka’s Western Ghats, operated by 13 Siddi women from the Nisarga Sparsha Self-Help Group.
During my time with them, we foraged for wild produce for lunch, exchanged stories and folk tales, watched misty sunrises over the hills, danced to tunes passed down across generations, and watched in awe as their husbands and brothers climb slender areca palms to gather nuts.
Living Cultures In Odisha
Koraput in southern Odisha presented another question: how do you visit communities whose cultures are already under pressure without turning them into spectacles?
I found one answer in Desia Koraput, a responsible tourism initiative in Bantalbiri village that works with local communities and is designed to keep economic benefits within the region.
I cycled through mango orchards to nearby villages, rode pillion on motorbikes farther afield and spent time at weekly haats. Staying at Desia, where many team members come from surrounding communities, created opportunities for conversations that went beyond a quick photograph or passing encounter.
These journeys have changed the question I ask when I travel. Instead of only wondering what a place can offer me, I find myself asking who created the experience, whose story is being told and where the benefits of my visit will go.
For me, that has become a different way of experiencing India: not simply travelling deeper into a place, but trying to understand what it means to be welcomed into it.
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