Katie Bhujwala
Shergarh is a friendly, family-run camp.
The owners Jehan and Katie Bhujwala reside in camp with their two young children, hosting guests in an informal manner along with their team of managers, naturalists and local junior team.
As a small camp of just six cosy tents, Shergarh can accommodate up to 12 guests, each of whom receive personalised attention.
The camp is centred around an attractive waterhole, fed by two natural springs that flow through the property. The water attracts kingfishers, cormorants and the seasonal breeding of hundreds of egrets.
While Shergarh is primarily a tented camp, providing high quality wildlife experiences to travellers visiting the area, it is also an ongoing project for the owners. The aim of this project is to demonstrate how tourism can aid conservation, and can primarily be used as an effective tool to help local communities with employment and other much needed benefits.
Twenty acres of degraded and misused land were selected to build Shergarh, with the intention of nurturing the land back to a thriving forest with indigenous species, as supposed to selecting excellent forest and marking an imprint.
The village in which Shergarh is situated was the primary source of labour at the time of construction, and the first port of call for recruitment. Shergarh is proud to employ a team of 100 per cent local junior staff, all of whom had no previous experience of the tourist trade. One local manager is also employed.
Masonry, carpentry, plumbing and electricals have been sourced within a 20km radius in almost all circumstances – which ensure a few quirks here and there, giving Shergarh character but more importantly, acceptance and respect by the community.
Waste is segregated and managed as well as possible given the rural location, and various composting techniques are followed using leaf mould, kitchen, cattle and poultry waste, grass cuttings, newspaper and fire ash.
The main focus at Shergarh is to provide high quality wildlife experiences.
While the knowledgeable team work hard to show guests India’s most charismatic symbol, all visitors are briefed that even a fleeting glimpse of a tiger is a privilege in his ever-fragile environment, and game drives are designed to take guests on quieter trails, exploring the jungle’s full diversity and secrets. Naturalists enjoy taking guests on forest walks, where one is exposed to enthralling species that cannot be identified from jeep: seasonal flowers, elegant butterflies and even snakes.
The hill ramble behind the camp is highly recommended as the view goes over the forest and villagers within, returning to camp through the village, stopping in at the neighbours and local school.
Mountain bikes are available for use at Shergarh, and they have identified cycling routes, following local pathways that traverse forest tracts connecting villages.
A trip to the weekly tribal market is a fascinating experience. One witnesses trading that has barely changed in centuries, while indulging in a glass of sweet chai, or daring your smoothest ever shave in a very unique location.
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The Bhujwalas say: It is very exciting and a great privilege to have the opportunity to make a livelihood in such a historic, scenic and pristine habitat such as Kanha Tiger Reserve. Our enjoyment of the outdoors and natural habitat is what initially lured us to this part of India, where we met and later married.
It is through our experiences of personal travel and our desire to preserve nature as it was originally intended, that has led us to create Shergarh as an environmentally sound and worthwhile project.
Every decision we make, we first consider the environment and community. For example, we wouldn’t build a traditional swimming pool that has to be chemically cleaned, while our staff still have to use the village well for all of their needs, in their homes.
The wonderful and fulfilling experiences we have enjoyed from this place make us want to give back a little of what we have taken. Within the next couple of years, we intend to employ at Shergarh one member of every household from our adjoining village.
Working with village communities, and helping the day to day needs of our neighbours is one way of proving how responsible tourism and conservation go together.
Our encounters with the wildlife we have in and around the forests of Kanha are so rich and vivid in our memory, that trying to pick out a few as highlights of our experiences is an extremely difficult task.
The supremely exhilarating experience of watching a tiger in his natural habitat stalk his prey, the surreal sense when late one evening the forest reverberated with the deep bellowing of a male tiger calling for a mate, or the wintry morning sunrise over the mist filled meadows with the Barasingha rutting in the distance, are all scenes that come rushing back besides many others.
Memories of encounters that we and our young children (aged 3 and 1) have had the privilege of experiencing with all creatures great and small including snakes and scorpions, butterflies, frogs and toads, and monkeys besides the larger inhabitants of the jungle are all unforgettable episodes of life in the wilderness.
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