"Six treehouses on mahua trees and ten cottages in forty acres at Sarahiri, twenty minutes from Pench’s Karmajhiri gate"
Pench Tree Lodge was the first lodge built in the Karmajhiri area of Pench, on forty acres at the tribal village of Sarahiri that it has been rewilding with local trees. The Karmajhiri gate is about twenty minutes away. Only six treehouses and ten cottages sit on the estate, and the lodge counts over a hundred bird species inside it.
Treehouses eighteen feet up
The six treehouses are built of local sal wood and perched eighteen feet above the ground on mahua trees, set well apart from one another. Each has large French windows onto a private deck, a bay-window lounger that doubles as a day bed, a four-poster bed, air conditioning with 24-hour power backup and a kettle with organic teas and a coffee plunger.
A treehouse on a mahua tree, and the quiet gate of Pench twenty minutes away.
Cottages for a family
The ten cottages are stone with local sal and teak, inspired by the treehouses: a king-size bed on the ground floor, a queen-size bed on the mezzanine, French windows and a private sit-out deck over the forest. They suit a family of four or two couples travelling together.
A scratch kitchen
Everything is made in-house, sauces and breads included. Breakfast is served on safari inside the park, or by the pool for anyone who stays back. Lunch is a fixed menu of Madhya Pradesh dishes, among them desi aloo, daal barbati and dobri mahua kheer, from the Paanch Gaon Andar menu that sources from five villages around the lodge. Dinner takes requests. The farm dinner is cooked in black clay pots on an open hearth in a village set-up beside the organic garden, and the bar stocks single malts, wine, beer and the local mahua.
The Kipling Hide
The lodge built India's first underground photography hide, a 150-square-foot bunker at eye level with a reflection pond that draws wild pig, jungle cat, jackal, four-horned antelope, civet, porcupine and mongoose, with honey badger and leopard on rare days. It seats four, has a coffee station and charging points, and can be booked by the seat or whole, morning or evening. Beyond that there are nature trails and cycling with the naturalists, village walks and the weekly haat, cycling at Rukhad in the Kanha-Pench corridor, night trails and bush dinners.
Getting there
Nagpur airport is about 130 km, under three hours; Nagpur station about 145 km; Jabalpur about 190 km. The lodge advises setting Suktara air strip as the first stop in Google Maps, then the lodge, which is 20 km on.
Our take: the quiet-side alternative to the Turia crowd, and the treehouse is the room to book. The hide is the thing nobody else at Pench has.
