Written by Ankita Raina
I’ve never been big on travel. Growing up, it felt like a luxury I wasn’t trained to afford. But on a friend’s insistence, I visited a quiet beach in South Goa a few years back. Seeing the enormity and the beauty of the sea for the first time isn’t an experience one forgets easily. It was not just the sea that had mesmerised me, but also the local Goan culture, Konkani food, and the lush green of post-monsoon Goa. I knew I would return to the Konkan someday. So, when I heard about this place called Guhagar from a friend’s colleague who had volunteered at Raan, I was instantly drawn.
It still took a year for the plan to materialise. I reached out to Mohit, the founder, to know how I could volunteer. I wanted to volunteer because I wanted to do more than just stay as a guest. But I was intimidated when he said they require volunteers to commit a minimum of two weeks. That felt like a long time to be somewhere that looked so obviously quiet. In cities, we’re rarely in silence for long, always surrounded by horns, white lights, and endless chatter. Two weeks of quiet, while not “working” per se, sounded intimidating. Back in Delhi, this is not the idea of travel. Most people I know believe in weekend getaways or quick trips to the mountains, only to do the same things they do in the city. So, going away for two weeks to a place that required me to slow down sounded eccentric to even my parents. My mother kept warning me, “You will be bored. You will feel alone.” Still, I took a bet on myself and set out.I took a flight from Delhi to Mumbai, spent a day wandering the city with friends, and then took a bus from Bandra that dropped me at Guhagar bus stand early in the morning. In the morning, the views were stunning, but honestly, I was too sleepy to fully digest them. At the stand, I told the auto driver that I needed to get to Raan Guhagar in Aregaon, that’s what Google Maps showed. 10 minutes’ worth of ride towards the village, and I lost my phone network. After that, I was completely at the mercy of the auto driver’s memory. But I reached smoothly. As I arrived at the location, I saw a small board on a blue steel gate with “Raan Guhagar” written on it in English and Marathi.
As I stepped inside, it didn’t feel as though I’d entered a man-made space; it was as if someone had opened a door into the heart of the forest. I was welcomed by the women who run Raan, the local women of Guhagar. They greeted me and introduced me to the many rules of staying at Raan. Packaged food wasn’t allowed on the premises, meal timings were strict, and smoking and drinking weren’t allowed either. At first, it felt a little too strong, but I told myself I could manage. I was ushered to the female dorm, where my bed was next to a window that opened out to the trees. Famished, I placed my breakfast order at reception, where I was surprised that they didn’t hand me a menu like a restaurant would have. There were limited options based on what was planned for the day. I was told to collect my meal from the kitchen window when the kakis called out my name. It felt as if I was visiting a relative’s home. The first meal I had here was ghavan chutney, closely resembling the chhir chot made in my Kashmiri home, further wrapping me up in a feeling of comfort and homeliness.
My first meal at Raan
After breakfast, I wandered through the property. Different shades of green folded into each other, teakwood furniture seemed to blend seamlessly with stone walkways that crunched underfoot, and the air felt startlingly clean to someone used to Delhi smog. What I struggled with were the other creatures that moved freely here. Nothing at Raan is sealed off from the wild. Even the pool comes with Mr. Foo’s company, the resident frog, who sits politely on the poolside as you swim, a neighbour rather than an intruder. One evening, I spotted a snake outside my room. Having grown up terrified of snakes, I let out a loud gasp. The snake raised its head in shock and slithered away in the blink of an eye. Later, at the dinner table with Mohit and fellow travellers, I learned it was one of the keelbacks, harmless, docile, more scared of me than I of it, and that it was best to stomp when walking to alert it of my arrival.
The longer I stayed, the more my instincts softened. I didn’t have to be threatened with the mere existence of other creatures. In the city, when I would see an insect, my first reaction would be to swat it away. Here, I found myself observing them instead. One day, I noticed a red ant carrying a black one across the arm of a chair. Was it carrying its dead, or tending to the injured? Had the black one been crushed under a careless human step? I don’t know. But I do know that instead of brushing them off, I sat and watched. That small shift, from reaction to attention, felt like the forest slowly teaching me how to see. And this is what Raan does. It gives you just enough comfort to rest, but never so much that you forget where you are. Open showers sometimes mean bathing in the rain. Butterflies linger on flowers; grasshoppers vanish into walls; birds chatter from dawn to dusk; the Are River hums at the edge of the property. Nature doesn’t surround you here; it moves with you. And if you’re quiet long enough, it begins to accept you as part of itself.
Met this little guy on one of the walks
This spirit of rootedness extends to the space itself. I learned that Raan was never meant to be “constructed” in the usual sense. It was imagined as something to be grown, layer by layer, in conversation with its surroundings. As you move from the reception to the common areas, you notice the blend of cultural heritage and eco-consciousness. The structures are made of locally sourced, eco-friendly materials such as Mangalore tiles, stone, and upcycled wood. The air within the space is cooled not by machines but by the canopy of trees, by the monsoon’s arrival, and by the breeze drifting through open corridors, keeping the rooms cool even in the height of summer, making Raan “air-conditioned by nature”. The laterite bricks used to build the structures are cut from the very soil beneath our feet, and the gaj design used in the wooden grills of the terrace pays homage to the traditional architecture of Konkan.
Designs inspired by local architecture
Right from the very first glance, be it the website or word of mouth, Raan made its intentions clear. If you come here, you come on nature’s terms. The experience isn’t designed as a catharsis for entitled, urban dwellers to wash away our stress at the expense of local communities and nature. In my time here, I met such travellers too, the ones who tried to cram everything into two days – kayaking, waterfalls, turtles. The wild doesn’t work like that. You can’t kayak during the monsoon without risking being swept into the sea. You won’t see turtles unless it’s hatching season. You don’t trek to waterfalls when it’s been raining for days. The forest and the forest alone sets the calendar.
And slowly, the way of living here began to reshape mine. The rules that had felt restrictive at first started making sense to me after two weeks of living comfortably with them. Packaged food would have brought crumbs that invite insects and plastic waste. Loud music would have scared away the birds, snakes, and frogs who lived here too. Fixed meal timings, so the women who cook can return home to their families on time. What seemed like rules were, in truth, respect. Life here runs on what Mohit calls “Raan Standard Time,” a rhythm that honours both the forest and the people who keep it alive. For the women, cooking isn’t just an activity; it’s an identity. When they hand you a plate, it’s not just service; it’s care. And even though Raan is their first formal workplace, they’ve naturally excelled at this because they’ve done this all their lives. What this space has offered them is more independence, with a lot of them opening their personal bank accounts, defying caste norms, and building a sisterhood of laughter and a quiet pride in their identities.
Artwork made by me : )
With no packaged snacks to munch on and days filled with movement, you fall asleep early, inevitably. I woke up early every day, without fail, not to an alarm, but to the rain and birdsong. I spent my days walking, cycling, reading, hiking, and swimming in natural ponds alive with fish, frogs, and the occasional harmless keelback.
At Raan, raw wilderness engulfs you, the calls of birds fill your ears, and soft winds brush past in greeting. Here, you are not in a resort, but in the shared home of red ants, lizards, snakes, Ratnagiri hapus trees, and karvanda shrubs. My time at Raan Guhagar made me realise that to live in the wild is to surrender to the stillness of the hills, the unpredictability of rain, the vastness of the sea, and the quiet insistence of the trees. Raan is not a destination, but a reminder that we are welcome in the forest only if we learn how to belong gently. The forest will always have the first word, and if we are patient enough, perhaps the last.
