Haryana - Rural tourism comes to India

soulfood

"When was the last time you chased chickens. Roamed in the fields with pure wind on your face. Found yourself jiggling up and down to the thrills of a bullock cart or a tractor ride?. Farm tourism seeks to awaken the child in you…to experience the unforgettable whiff of the countryside…plant baby seeds...enjoy the delights of organic food and experience many spontaneous joys of nature that you may have never known before."

- from a Haryana Tourism brochure that seeks to promote Farm Tourism in India, for the first time.

Full story: http://www.expresshotelierandcaterer...ective01.shtml

SHIMLA

This excellent concept was initiated by Haryana Tourism an year back; seems to be taking shape now !

Personally, I look forward to ravishing the charms of rural Haryana next winter !

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lonelyaztec

Hi

I went to Coorg in Oct last yr. Stayed with the Coorgi family...in their estate. it was great.

Home food, and lots of fields and estate to walk through. No TV and therefore, had to sit under the sky and gaze at the stars.

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soulfood

Coorg and home stay....I just wrote about it yesterday in another thread!

beach

This is not an all that new concept.

The'Cow Tourism' has been there for some time

Similary there has been this 'Nature Walk' in kerala (going to plantations, spice gardens etc )

Also there are a number of 'old' houses in Kerala welcomes people as guests. Not exactly in the tourist sense....

rangers

We have been dreaming on this kinda travel since long..Wish everyone cherish this way to travel

shere

Should have said. could have arranged for a few to visit a few "real" villages in northern Haryana and you could have stayed and lived like real farmers. Could even have arranged for people to sleep at the tubewells at night so they could water the fields.

Hippie at Heart

Problem with this farm tourism is that its going be a campaign which will buckle down under the pressure of maintaining tourist interest with many things that that haryana people don’t do on their farms anymore. So far it seems a state sponsored tamasha with very spic n span idea to live on a farm and churn yr own butter while the real McCoy has moved onto things electric long long ago, considering haryana is second most prosperous and industrialized state of India.

Anyway it wont be a something that I would look forward to from a purist’s point of view.

shere

So true. Most farmers I know are well into their farm machinery. Even the clothes they wear having changed from traditional kurta pyjama and shirt with chaddar to shirt and trousers. Only the very poor now plough fields with Oxen.

You can still find people who use traditional methods but they are few and far between.

Hippie at Heart

The idea of a woman churning butter in a promo picture that I saw was very appalling to me. Shere its just not the dress but the whole gamut of activities that have changed. For the life of me I fail to understand who haryana tourism (or even Punjab tourism for that matter if they decide to join the fray too) are going to bring back the evening get together on village chaupal or ladies coming to common chulha ?

The real farm life that they are trying to show cast DOES NOT happen on farmhouses who owner comes to shop at Delhi and demand to know why Arrow isn’t stocking different collar sizes at their shop? Or if Mitsubishi Lancer comes in how many Ltr variants. This contrast with farm life they are trying to sell, is so hilarious really.

It is true there was places in north rural India where they might have running chicken in courtyard and plough the fields with bullocks and where it is possible to have real smell of earth but the fact remains it will be some interior place to where they don’t even have proper road infrastructure to carry them tourists.

This campaign remind me of the term that’s synonymous of Indian beurocracy ‘non application of mind’ or maybe suddenly haryana tourism department is buzzing with Ivy league MBA grads, hardened with American concept of hard sell?

shere

Even the evening get together for gup shup (chat) is no more. I remember visiting my dads village in the late 1980s and there was always something going on in the village ranging from peopel hunting for rabid dogs to people trying to chop others up with machetes. The atmosphere used to be great (ok apart from the violence). Now thanks to cable television no one bothers to come out (besides me and a neighbour who used to chat and have a good laugh on the rooftop). The only time people now get together is when a local flood drainage channel overflows and there is danger of flooding, then the atmosphere is great as people work together and a community kitchen springs up to feed everyone.