"Treehouses, cave rooms, mud rooms and tents two kilometres from Pench’s Turia gate, with an indoor pool for the afternoons"
Tathastu is Sanskrit for "as you wish", and the resort takes the name literally: eighty-odd rooms in seven styles on one estate at Turia, the main gate of Pench. It is the big, well-equipped end of the park, two kilometres from the gate, with an indoor pool and enough on site to fill the hours between drives.
Seven ways to sleep
The resort sells its rooms by character rather than by floor. Mud rooms have 18-inch mud walls and roofs 15 to 20 feet high under traditional kavelu tiles, which the resort says keep them naturally cool. Cave rooms are built into rock with a waterfall for a shower. Treehouses stand up among the trees. Luxury tents are canvas with air conditioning and a television. The villa suite looks over a bamboo grove on one side and the lawn and lake on the other, and the mud villas come in red, yellow and orange. Most rooms take two adults and two children, or three adults.
Two kilometres from the Turia gate, with an indoor pool for the afternoons.
Fauna, Flora and the Jungle Bar
Fauna is the main restaurant, Flora a private dining room for a table of your own, and the Jungle Bar a resto-pub with cocktails. Rural cooking sessions and a barbecue are on the experience list.
Between the drives
The resort runs a botanical tour of its grounds, bird watching with its own naturalists, breakfast on the bonnet of a jeep, pottery, a museum of Central Indian craft, live music at the bonfire and a spa. For families there is a temperature-controlled indoor pool, archery, cycling, hammocks, a life-sized chess set, a Burma bridge, boating, fishing and stargazing.
The gates
Turia is 2 km away. Teliya is 5 km, Khursapar and Khawasa 10 km, Sillari and Rukhad 35 km. The resort's own safari desk books the jeep, the permit and the forest guide, and permits open 120 days ahead.
Our take: the first-safari resort at Pench for a family. It is a hotel rather than a camp, and that is the point: a pool for the children, a bar for the evening and the gate ten minutes away.
Rooms
Eighty-four across seven styles: villa suites, cave rooms, luxury tents, treehouses, villa rooms, mud villas and mud rooms, plus log and peace rooms as the simplest category.
Best for
A first safari with children: indoor pool, archery, cycling and the main gate two kilometres away.
Getting there
Tathastu, Awarghani to Turia Road, Turia, Pench National Park, Madhya Pradesh 480881. Nagpur airport is 99 km, about two hours; Nagpur railway station 90 km; Jabalpur 196 km, about three hours forty minutes. The Turia gate is 2 km from the resort.
