An engineer and an MBA by training, Vaibhav Kiran Gholap, 33, worked for two years in Mumbai before returning to his native village in Jawhar, a hilly block with a large Adivasi population in Palghar district, about 135 km from Mumbai.
Business prospects in Jawhar were poor, but in 2016, Vaibhav decided to start a tourism venture as a proprietorship. Using social media for publicity, he began to grow his offerings slowly, drawing city-dwellers with the prospect of a location that was different, close to Mumbai, had a cultural legacy, a pleasant environment and a bountiful rainfall during the monsoon.
Offering visitors a slice of tribal culture and tribal history, Vaibhav popularised tours to Jawhar, the ‘town of waterfalls’ with seven to eight waterfall sites including two that remain active year-long.
“From tours to the palace and fort to Warli painting workshops to events on right farming practices, to a wild forest food festival, we did many different kinds of things for our travellers,” he said. Another attraction was Dussehra, a 300-year-old fair in which Hindu and Muslim families participate together.
For the first two-three years, Vaibhav was himself the guide. After a stint with the Atal Incubation Centre for startups, he turned his venture into a private limited company and began to expand his team.
At the Dhaparpada village campsite, visitors can enjoy the Tarpa folk dance near a lake, giving village youth a sustainable income from providing services to the groups of 25-30 visitors who arrive every weekend. “We also tap into government schemes, and residents of this village no longer migrate out looking for work,” he said.
Vaibhav’s team also supports several women’s self-help groups, and through a government scheme, plan to start a restaurant for tribal cuisine, run by the SHG women. “It will be all locally generated work, vocal-to-local,” he said. They already provide all-India sales of paintings and handicrafts created by locals.
“They have been trying to bring people from Tier 1 cities into this location, also providing earnings for the locals alongside,” said Sachin Panchal, a pioneer of caravan tourism in Maharashtra.
On the cards for Vaibhav is a Jawhar Festival and a special tour of tribal areas across Maharashtra. As the pandemic ended, Gholap experienced a boost in visitors, even though their marketing spend was zero. “We are not so commercialised so as to harm our surroundings,” he said, “because money is not everything.”
