Ironically for one of the least populous and most densely forested areas in India, what’s most exciting about the Dangs isn’t its wildlife but its people. 94% of the Dangs population belong to the so-called ‘Scheduled Tribes’ – mainly Bhils, Kunbis, Warlis and Gamits. These traditionally forest-dwelling peoples have seen their range shrink progressively since the 1880s, as swathes of their ancestral land have been designated for logging or for wildlife reserves. It’s part of a pattern of disenfranchisement of indigenous groups across India, squeezing them off areas they’ve occupied for centuries by wrapping land rights up in legal red tape. Without access to their forests or demand for their traditional skills, the people of the Dangs have few options left. This is where the Dang Forest Retreat comes in.

The Dang Forest Retreat is pretty much the only place you can stay in this almost completely undeveloped part of the country. The people who run it are locals, and they have a real vision, not just for the ecolodge itself, but for what tourism should look like in The Dangs. Everything they do, they do with a mind to benefiting their community, from developing a range of furniture using local artisans’ bamboo and basket-weaving skills, to curating cultural experiences that involve and include surrounding villages. They have proper, deep local knowledge, not just of nature (the birding is particularly good here, even if the dense forest makes it hard to spot bigger wildlife) but of folklore, customs, and traditional skills.

These are early days, so it’s still quite a raw experience, but it’s incredibly rich, deeply fascinating, and with the local people in charge of the kind of tourism they want to foster, it’s nothing like voyeurism. It’s totally immersive and completely different from what you can experience anywhere else in India. This just the beginning for the Dangs.