The stone cottage
Indhrivanam, located in Kumily Thekkady in the South Indian state of Kerala, is a unique place to stay with only one detached stone cottage available for tourists. The cottage is situated in a small private forest with hundreds of rosewood, rudraksha, mango, jackfruit, avocado and orange trees, creating a setting you won't find elsewhere in Thekkady. Indhrivanam is ideally suited for a couple, Indian or non-Indian, who want to get away from the crowds of India, for people, for instance honeymoon couples, who would like to enjoy their holiday in privacy, for foodies who enjoy the luxury of having vegan/vegetarian meals prepared especially for them, and for anyone wanting a stay low on impact on the environment, fauna and flora.
Indhrivanam means a sense of forest in Malayalam. The word indhrivanam is made by joining indriyam, meaning a sense of, and vanam, meaning forest, and by adding an h to more accurately reflect the pronunciation of indri. The name is a reflection of reality as the 2 acre property is almost entirely under tree canopy. In addition, the canopy is layered, which makes an ideal habitat for our slender lorises (a primate that is very rare and usually only found deep in the forests of South India and Sri Lanka), Asian palm civets, giant squirrels, Indian squirrels and more than 50 types of birds, including Malabar grey hornbills. Roaming at ground level are wild boar, barking deer, sambar deer, mouse deer, hares, rabbits, porcupines and monitor lizards.
Staying at Indhrivanam is a different kind of experience as the focus is on ecologically sustainable practices like rainwater harvesting and the use of dry toilets. For people wanting conventional luxury (swimming pool, flat screen television, and room service), Indhrivanam is not recommended, but for people seeking the luxury of privacy, peace, nature, ecology, helpfulness, comfortable living in a very nice stone cottage, Indhrivanam may be the perfect place. Unsurprisingly, it is difficult to categorise Indhrivanam. We are a retreat because by staying here you are retreating from the outside world. We are a resort because the property is large. We are a boutique hotel because very few people stay here at the same time. And we are a homestay because we deliver a homely, informal and friendly atmosphere.
If this appeals to you, please do read on!
The tariff excludes food. However, a maximum of two meals can be provided as follows.
Breakfast: INR 500 (for 2 people). The Indhrivanam breakfast consists of freshly baked homemade bread with various homemade nut butters, relishes, jams and cashew cream cheese. Served in the guest cottage from 07:30 to 08:00.
Lunch: Not available.
Dinner: INR 400-800 (for 2 people). There is a light dinner version and a heavier one. The light dinners can be Japanese noodles in a peanut sauce with salad, an Italian style spaghetti dish in a creamy tomato and basil sauce with salad, Indian rice and dal with raita, or Indian puloa/biryani with raita and papadam. The heavier dinner is something from the Indian cuisine, North or South, a fusion, Jain or a new invention consisting of rice, several curries and salad or Indian breads. So, the menu is very short, but we are happy to accommodate your requests whenever possible. Served in the guest cottage from 18:00 to 20:30.
The food is vegan which, in an Indian context, means pure vegetarian without dairy products. For guests who prefer to eat out, there are around 100 restaurants located within 4 to 10 kilometres from Indhrivanam. If required, we are happy to recommend restaurants that suit your budget and taste. You are also welcome to bring back a takeaway/takeout/parcel to enjoy in the cottage.
We do our best to maintain a natural habitat for animals by having a continuous canopy on most of the property, we use rainwater only, and we minimise the use of unnatural products and harmful chemicals.
At Indhrivanam we will always attempt to limit our negative impact on local and global environments. One way of doing this is to avoid the risk of polluting groundwater reservoirs with sewage. Therefore, expect to meet some of the coolest composting toilets ever!
There are free laundry facilities on the property. And rest assured, if you need your clothes ironing, we have an iron and you to operate it.
If you worry about where your money is going by staying at Indhrivanam, we can assure you nobody is getting rich from this business, and any money generated, including any profit, stays in India. For the foreseeable future (decades), any profit will be used to maintain and add to the property, and for donations to our favourite charity, Humane Animal Society (HAS) in Coimbatore.
We have decided that our main contribution as humans is to improve the lives of other animals. We do this in various ways, most importantly by adopting dogs. There are a few with us: Ashna (born in 2010) came from a cage as a puppy; Martha (estimated to be born in 2011) is a brown Labrador who, at 12 years old, showed up at our property one rainy day; the tri-pawd wonder dogs, Shanmugi and Daisy (both born in 2024), whom we adopted from the Humane Animal Society in Coimbatore in October 2024; and Teddy (born in 2022, missing back leg), Malli (born in 2023, missing front leg), Honey (born in 2021, missing front leg), and Mishti (born in 2022, missing paw) arrived from the Humane Animal Society in December 2024. All the dogs are very friendly with up-to-date vaccinations. The dogs sleep in the main building, and are a quiet bunch who won't disturb you unless you want them to.
Indhrivanam is a property of undulation: some places are level whereas others are a little up and down. Consequently, we are, regrettably, not well suited for people who have walking difficulties, and completely unsuitable for people who are dependent on wheelchairs.
If you are looking to spend your holiday in the company of a television, you will have to carry one in your luggage. But we do have 300/300 Mbps fibre Internet, so connectivity isn't an issue.
The stone cottage (there is only one) is located in its own 1 acre piece of woodland. It is made from local hand-chipped rock, and has a traditional terracotta roof. Very little concrete, paint and chemicals were used in the construction. The cottage has a front veranda (12 m2), bedroom/living room (20 m2) and attached bathroom (6 m2). The bedroom has double/twin beds with extremely comfortable king sized spring mattresses. In the cottage there is an electric kettle, coffee, teas and clean drinking water.
Regarding occupancy, tariff and discounts, please note the following:
1) We can accommodate a maximum of 2 adults. Our place is not suitable for children of any age. If you need 2 cottages, our neighbours at the Garden Hideaway, have a beautiful traditional teak cottage, which may be added.
2) The tariff for 1 or 2 people is INR 3750 per night including any/all taxes/fees. There are no hidden charges. The tariff is unchanged throughout the year; high season, low season, national holidays and other artificial constructs are all the same for us.
3) We do not give discounts. However, for exceptionally long stays (more than 10 nights), the tariff will be reduced as follows: Night 1-10: INR 3750 per night. Night 11-20: 3000 per night. Night 21-30: INR 2250 per night. Every night thereafter: INR 3000 per night.
4) We don't have 24-hour check-in/out or other convoluted ways of staying. Our check-in time is after 13:00, and check-out is before 11:00. However, we can be quite flexible about check-in and check-out. If you let us know your requirements in advance, we may be able to find a solution.
5) Minimum stay is 2 nights. You are welcome to stay for just 1 night, but the tariff will be the tariff for 2 nights.
6) If you are booking your stay at Indhrivanam through a booking website, please note these take 30% in commission and taxes. Therefore, you may find booking a stay on a booking website is more expensive than booking directly with us. Travel agents and tour operators are no different, except they want their percentages from our web tariff. As we have priced our cottage at an absolute minimum, we cannot accept bookings through agents who require payment from us.
7) We do not have driver facilities. If you are travelling with a permanent driver, you will have to arrange this elsewhere. And, no, the driver cannot sleep in his car on our property. Luckily, there are free/cheap places for drivers to stay in Kumily Town. Drivers are paid a so-called bata to cover such expenses, but as this doesn't amount to much, you may want to consider giving the driver some additional money.
8) To book directly with us, please use one of the contact methods listed below.
Before contacting us, you may want to check our Internet reviews on Tripadvisor, Airbnb, and Google. We got a nice mention in an article by Mahananda Bohidar on halabol.com (pdf, 476 kB), we really appreciate the considerate blog posts from Barbara Bell, who stayed at Indhrivanam in 2013, and Shivya Nath, who stayed at Indhrivanam in 2020, and, finally, we were reviewed favourably in Lonely Planet Magazine India (pdf, 1 MB) in August 2015.
In addition to the cottage, there is only one building at Indhrivanam, which we usually refer to as the main building. In the main building there is an office, reception and so on. It is also where you find amenities like computer and printing facilities, laundry service, a very small library of books, playing cards, dominos, chess, backgammon and scrabble.
Indhrivanam is located only a few hundred metres from the perimeters of Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR), the main attraction in the Thekkady area, and 9 kilometres, from the main town in the area, Kumily. From a nature preservation perspective, PTR is most definitely in the top five of the best run tiger reserves in India, and from a tourism perspective, PTR is probably unrivalled; there are a number of well-constructed walks and treks in PTR that suit any level of fitness with varying chances of spotting wildlife, including elephants. The tiger, however, remains illusive.
In addition to the activities in PTR, there are a number of activities of varying quality in the Thekkady area arranged by private service providers. We have created a page with all relevant information about the recommended activities in Thekkady.
Indhrivanam was created in 2010, and is owned by the Indian company Tiptoe Travel and Tourism Private limited (company identification number U63040KL2008PTC021884). The shareholders and directors of the company are Morten and Sarah.
Morten was born in 1969 in Denmark in a traditional, provincial nuclear family of four. From an early age he was focused on concepts like justice and equality, and ended up with university degrees in political science and applied policy research and statistics. He spent some years working as a social policy researcher for the Danish Central Government. Vegetarian since 1990 before becoming a vegan in 2001. Interests are music, gardening, composting, design, architecture and the board game backgammon.
Sarah is also from 1969, but had her own nuclear family in the North-East of England. She has a degree in sociology and anthropology. She is a vegan kitchen wizard with focus on the difficult specialties like kombucha, micro-greens, sourdough bread, and the Middle Eastern and Indian cuisines. She also does home roasting of the coffee that grows on the property. Sarah is interested in nature, gardening and birding, and has the interesting special skill of being a facial recognition expert with a well-developed eye for audio.
We met in 1995 at Newcastle University, lived in Denmark from 1998 till 2002, and in the UK from 2002 till 2007 before embarking on what was a journey into the unknown when we created an Indian company in 2008 with the purpose of running a business based on ecologically sustainable principles. There were a number of reasons for making this non-trivial move from the Western hemisphere, and 15 criteria were included in the analysis of determining the final destination, which could only ever be India. We spend as much time as possible in India (up to 11 months of the year), and take great care in ensuring that guests staying in the stone cottage are comfortable and well-fed.
Raju has been attached to Indhrivanam since 2008, before we even opened. Raju has a lot of experience in the tourism sector: he has worked for a large restaurant in Dubai making traditional South Indian delicacies; he has worked in a resort Munnar; and he was, at one point, the PA for an American student of ayurveda, yoga and meditation in the Kerala Backwaters. Raju's better half is Omana. She also has extensive experience in the tourism sector as she has worked for a couple of hotels in Kumily. In emergencies, Raju and Omana are responsible for cooking for our guests. Raju and Omana live in Kumily with their two sons.
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A few words on our dry toilet system. As you can see, there are two toilets. The one on the right in the photo is a variation of the compost toilet. In the traditional compost toilet, the poo is kept permanently in a large chamber under the seat. As this could make our guests unnecessarily uncomfortable (the fact that previous guests' poo was below them), we have implemented a bucket system. Sawdust lines the bucket, and after finishing, the poo is covered with more sawdust. Pee goes into a separate compartment at the front. The separation of poo and pee, and the fact that the poo is covered, means that there are no smells emanating from the toilet. We empty and replace the bucket daily. For the purpose of bottom cleaning, you jump to the toilet on the left side in the photo where you can use the health faucet, visible between the toilets. This toilet is also used if you need to pass urine only. At the very end, all the green areas are rinsed with the health faucet.
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The photos, videos and text on this website were created mostly by ourselves, though one or two photos were shot by guests who happened to be travelling with high quality cameras, an eye for scenes, and a steady hand. We are very grateful for this. Below is a complete list of additional contributors.
Photo of Lower Camp on the activities page: Julia Maudlin
Photo of Cumbum temple on the activities page: Meena Subramaniam
Photo of Meenakshi Temple in Madurai on activity section/page: cotaro70s
On confirmation of your booking, we will message you more information on how to pay for your stay.
CloseBesides Indhrivanam, there are NO other vegetarian places to stay in the Thekkady area, but there are a number of, mostly very average, pure vegetarian places to eat in Kumily Town. We have made map of the vegetarian restaurants in Kumily. Kumily Town is 8 kilometres from Indhrivanam.
In addition to restaurants and activities (found on other maps on the website), there are a number of useful shops in Kumily, e.g. banks, courier services and medical stores. For their exact locations, lease check our map of places in Kumily.
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