Our Founders & Owners Jaisal and Anjali Singh are part of an entrepreneurial tradition that goes back 130 years. As scions of India’s leading conservationist and industrialist families respectively, Jaisal and Anjali have personally designed & created each of our unique destination experiences which deliver luxurious, authentic and most importantly sustainable hospitality experiences in areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Today marks the annual day dedicated to endangered species. This day provokes a necessary conversation on how we, as humans, are able to counter the imbalance and decline of a lot of our most favoured species. The IUCN Red List, a catalogue of all species that are threatened with extinction, currently claims the list hold over 41,000 species, covering all classes of vertebrates and invertebrates, fungi and flora and even certain single celled organisms. This day is dedicated to each of these wonderful organisms and species.
You are driving, meandering along Ranthambhore National Park’s network of tracks that enable you to see what the area has to offer and suddenly your jeep stops, pugmarks! Fresh paw-prints dot along the track and it takes you back to when you were 5 years old and playing “Connect the Dots” where the end prize could be a beautiful female tigress. As you follow the trail of breadcrumbs, the impressions left behind by a tigress’ recent presence, you yourself come away with an impression that these tigers prefer to walk on the track, rather than the scrub to your immediate left and right where it seems to be more concealed.
Whomever you come across in India, be it on the shores of Chennai, or around the narrow alleys of Chandi Chowk, or even deep within the snow capped mountains of the Himalayas, all will be able to recognise the peacock. Partly to do with why the peafowl is the national bird of India is that they can be seen all over the country, their presence is unavoidable. At Jawai, it’s no different. every corner you turn, five run off to the concealment of the prosopis juliflora, every hill you climb, ten frantically flap their wings in frightful flight, every valley you traverse, the unmistakable shrill cry of twenty resonates through the scrub. In short, peafowl are ubiquitous throughout the area. Although their colours and plumage are majestically magnificent, it isn’t a huge surprise to come across one while out on our drives…. well, until now.
A couple of nights ago a rare lunar event called the “super blue blood moon” dazzled us here in Rajasthan and many others around the world. Here in India, this event was scheduled to occur just after sunset which made it all the more vivid and magical to see with the naked eye. Our JAWAI skies are without a doubt pretty mesmerising on a daily basis, however what we were about to see was something truly spellbinding. To our west we had a beautiful red lit sky painting the rising moon in the east in a warm, fire burning red. So what exactly is a Super Blue Blood Moon other than a bit of a wordy wonder?!
Generally, vultures get a bad rep and perhaps we have Disney to blame for always portraying vultures as the baddies in all our childhood favourites of Jungle Book, Robin Hood and Snow White to name a few.
Read More Egyptian Vulture, neophron percnopterus, the unassuming hero of the animal kingdom
Seeing a leopard is and will always be a momentous occasion for anybody who experiences JAWAI. Seeing two adult leopards together is such a rare occurrence that we all are left, sitting in the jeep, with an expression of total bewilderment. You can then imagine all our faces when on one granite outcrop we had witnessed three adult leopards together.
Some of the rock formations that you see when you take a drive around Jawai are astounding and it’s hard to believe that only through weathering and erosion have these rocks come to be the shape they are now. No rock, no boulder, no hill is similar. Through millions of years of wear both above and below ground this granite rock seems to have been sculptured by someone with the same skill and imagination as Constantin Brancusi. Jawai has a dramatic landscape and these intrusive igneous rocks are the centerpieces that contribute to these regular breath-taking moments. Therefore, as you catch your breath, here are five of some of the best from Mother Nature’s collection:
