Kaner Retreat

The villas and public spaces at Kaner Retreat are designed to let the desert landscape in. There are 10 spacious villas in this 7 acre property. Each villa has its own private courtyard filled with scented flowers. The windows in each villa open to the desert landscape.

The glasshouse lounge offers 360 degree views of the Thar desert. The 'hathai' room is an exclusive, private dining area. Here, guests can enjoy their meals while feeling one with the desert setting.

The beautiful demoiselle cranes, called dames by the French queen Marie Antoinette are called ‘Kurja’ locally.

Thousands of them throng here during winters all the way from Mongolia and are treated with love and reverence by the village. It all started with the 'conservation warriors', Sevaram Mali Parihar and the late Ratanlal Maloo who started feeding and protecting them after their harsh migratory journey.

Guests at Kaner can travel to Khichan for a tete a tete with the special travellers along with their guardians - the local villagers who will narrate the conservation story.

Khichan is also a great haven for cultural and heritage enthusiasts and for those into art and architecture with century old, ancestral havelis , owned by merchants, which have withstood the ravages of time. The tour here includes a walk in the village with more stories, while plans are afoot to showcase the interiors of these traditional havelis or mansions as well.

The tour also includes a visit to the Olive Grove for lunch and more on this in the next postcard. But before that, a special tip: Look out for the carvings of olive leaves on the facade of the mansions.

The desert has many stories of resilience, patience and strength and people who live to tell the story. Kaner celebrates such people. One of them is Satbiri Devi, a woman farmer who spent ten years planting around 6000 olive trees . The saplings had travelled all the way from Negev Desert in Israel to the Thar Desert. When asked why she took on such a difficult task, she said “ "someone said it could not be done'.

This is the spirit of the people who live in the desert, where every day is an extraordinary tale of struggle, but a labour of love that is rewarding in its way.

Satbiri Devi’s farm is in Phalodi, which is about 45 minutes drive from Kaner Retear . While guests are there they can also soak in the scenic views of lush desert vegetation surrounding them.Satbiri Devi’s tale of love and toil has led to the delicious artisanal organic, extra virgin oil that gets produced from her farm. Guests can enjoy a Mediterranean inspired lunch made with the Olive Oil from the farm. They can also visit the Olive Garden after the tour to Khichan, which is just 10 minutes away.

'Mharo Khet' meaning my farm in local language celebrates plants - not just the indigenous and native desert vegetation, but also exotic flora and over hundred species of plants.

From superfoods like moringa to the familiar mango, from strawberries to fig, the farm also focuses on sustainable farming and community involvement, largely having women farmers who nurture the crops.

Founded by Rajnush Agarwal and his wife Vedika. Mharo Khet is more than just a farm . It is all about transforming the arid desert landscape into a fertile verdant land for the love for fresh, local and natural produce.

With Mharo Khet, Oxford returned Rajnush has created a new narrative in the desert landscape by introducing different varieties of produce using modern and sustainable agriculture

Kaner Retreat and Mharo Khet stand for celebration of plants and focus on local communities, and sustainable and responsible farming.

Dinner on the first night is described at Kaner as the botanical walk on a plate. The thali is built from plants you were shown that afternoon, some of them foraged by hand, including the ones desert families fell back on in famine years. It is served on the rooftop, under open sky. Afterwards Samir, Kaner's co-founder and a mathematician by training, leads a session of stargazing and storytelling. Jodhpur, the nearest city, is 90 kilometres away. The session depends on his being at the retreat and on a clear night, so treat it as likely, not fixed. Ask at dinner which dish came from which plant on the walk.

Over three years the artist and curator Dr Madan Meena collected more than 800 pieces of pottery from across the Thar, and they are now shown at Kaner as the Thar Desert Pottery Museum, a record of the lives and work of Rajasthan's potters. A guide takes you through the collection before lunch. Then you sit down to seven courses themed on the exhibition and on the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space, cooked by a chef named in Condé Nast Traveller's 40 Under 40. The ingredients are foraged, sun-dried and local. Kaner pairs the two deliberately: you see the vessels first, then eat from the tradition that made them.

Manvar is the desert's word for hospitality, and the larder behind it is sun-dried. The best-known dish from that larder is panchkuta, five dried ingredients cooked together: ker berries, sangri pods from the khejri tree, kumatiya seeds, gunda and kachri, a wild cucumber. Legend has the goddess Karni Mata serving it to Rao Bika, founder of Bikaner. Your last evening begins with a jeep drive into open desert, with tea and coffee as the sun goes down. Then a table is set on top of a dune, by candlelight, for a dinner made mostly of sun-dried ingredients. Bring a layer; the sand cools quickly after dark.

A 'thali' in India is rooted in the culture of a region. Experts say that it changes after every 15 kilometres. According to Ayurveda a 'thali 'should balance all the six tastes - sweet, sour, salty, astringent, pungent and bitter. These six tastes and the traditional recipes from the Thar make the Kaner signature 'thali' . Dishes are curated using foraged, seasonal and local ingredients.

The highlight of this culinary experience is the guided nature walk in the sacred grove or 'oran' before savouring the 'thali' . Oran is a community land that is considered sacred - no cutting or pruning of trees is allowed here. Oran offers miles of untouched desert wilderness and hundreds of plant species.

Through stories and anecdotes from local culture guests explore desert biology and its role in the culinary traditions of the Thar.