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Once a year, when winter is waning and spring is in the air Shekhawati highlights its presence with one of the country?s most enduring rural festivals-The Shekhawati Festival.
The unique aspect of this festival is the diversity of events and venues giving every visitor, be it a gawking tourist from Europe or America or a Rajasthani villager, something to cherish forever. One such event is the eco tourism initiated by the Morarka Foundation.
The Foundation encourages and promotes eco tourism. This essentially is centric to developing integrated rural development and exposing the outside world to the quaint and dignified life of the Rajasthani village. Here tourists get a first hand experience of the hinterland of India. They are invited to stay at a series of finely constructed eco tourism locations spread in the interiors of Shekhawati.
Some of these are within organic farms supported and initiated by Morarka Organic. The easy conviviality, warmth and hospitality of the people of the region gives this initiative a unique flavour. Tourists can savour organic food fresh from the farms, as they sit back and enjoy real artistes in colourful costumes perform age old folk dances, puppet shows, lilting music, camel safaris and more.
At the Shekhawati festival you are as much a spectator as a participant, and eco tourism is one such participatory event!
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To make things more comfortable for tourists, efforts are being made to get longer itineraries, facilitate student exchanges and make processes smoother and better for domestic and foreign visitors. A beginning has been made by offering tourists country rides into farms; the farmers being carefully selected and trained to become a host; profiles of select farm families are being made which can be studied by visiting tourists. Initiatives have been taken to create basic facilities for tourists coming to the farms and if willing, even to stay with them in tents.
Heritage Hotels have been encouraged to accommodate and service tourists from all over the world. During the Shekhawati festival some of the finest Havelis of Shekhawati play host to dignitaries and visitors from all over the world. Old and magnificent forts, palaces & castles of the bygone era with their rich sculptures and paintings transform into fine hotels and serve as a fine location from where you can go about your eco tourism venues.
The idea of heritage hotels augments the availability of accommodation for tourists and also helps to preserve and restore art and architecture, which otherwise may be lost forever due to the vagaries of time and nature and the inability of the owners financial capacities to maintain them. |
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