As Featured in Hindustan Times: Bhopal's Best-Kept Wildlife Secret
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When one of India's leading newspapers sends a journalist to spend two nights in the forest with you, and she leaves calling it "Bhopal's best-kept wildlife secret" — you know something special is happening here.
There's a particular kind of validation that comes not from what you say about yourself, but from what others discover when they arrive.
In April 2026, travel journalist Akanksha Agnihotri from Hindustan Times made the 60-kilometre journey from Bhopal to our doorstep. She came with a notebook and curiosity. She left, by her own account, standing under the stars "longer than she meant to."
Her feature, published on 16th April 2026, carried a headline that made us pause: "Bhopal's best-kept wildlife secret lies just an hour from the city: 100 bird species, 18 mammals and not a single TV."
We didn't write that. She did. And perhaps that's why it means something.
What She Found Here
Akanksha arrived the way most guests do — after the road winds through thickening green and the Vindhya mountains begin rising on the horizon. By the time you reach Madhuban, the city has already started feeling like a memory.
Over two days, she walked through the Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary with our naturalist Anup Mourya, spotting peacocks, purple sunbirds, Asian flycatchers, and the elusive Indian pitta. She traced tiger pugmarks on forest trails. She ate meals cooked on a traditional chulha — mahua chila, seasonal mushrooms, dal baati churma — each dish rooted in the land it came from.
She noticed what we don't have: televisions, alcohol, loud music, non-vegetarian food. And she understood why.
"Eco-tourism," our manager Shibajee Mitra explained to her, "rests on three pillars — conservation, community, and communication. The retreat exists to help guests genuinely reconnect with nature, not just be near it."
The Story Behind the Story
What the article captures beautifully is something we've been building quietly for years.
Madhuban Eco Retreat didn't emerge from a business plan. It grew from a childhood memory — our Chairman, Samir Somaiya, recalling a visit to Bandipur with his father, and the way the forest moved him. When he later saw this land at the edge of Ratapani, something connected.
The land was barren then. Today, native species have been replanted. Families from nearby villages — Bori Dumbi, Kerry — work alongside us. Solar panels generate 25 kilowatts of power. After dark, we keep lighting minimal so the forest's original residents remain undisturbed.
This isn't a resort that happens to be near a forest. This is a forest that invited us to belong.
What the Numbers Don't Tell You
Akanksha's article mentions the facts: nearly 100 species of birds, around 18 mammals including tiger, leopard, sloth bear, nilgai, and chinkara. Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary spans dense sal and teak forests, and our retreat sits at its threshold — close enough to feel the wilderness, respectful enough not to intrude.
But numbers don't capture the 5 AM chorus that replaces your alarm. They don't describe the stillness of watching a fan-throated lizard bask in morning light, or the way palash flowers set the dry deciduous forest briefly, impossibly, on fire with red.
They don't explain why guests stand under the night sky longer than they planned, or why the drive back to Bhopal feels longer than the drive out.
Why This Feature Matters to Us
We don't chase press coverage. Madhuban has always grown through word of mouth — guests who arrive sceptical and leave promising to return, families who discover that their children can, in fact, survive without screens, couples who remember what conversation feels like without distraction.
But when a respected publication takes the time to experience what we offer — and reflects it back with honesty and elegance — it feels like recognition of something we've been building slowly, deliberately, against the grain of what modern hospitality often demands.
Akanksha wrote: "Ratapani won't give you the theatrical wildlife experience of the famous reserves. What it offers is subtler, and maybe more lasting — the sense that the forest is indifferent to whether you notice it, and more alive for that."
We couldn't have said it better. We wouldn't try.
Experience It Yourself
The forest doesn't perform for visitors. It simply exists — ancient, unhurried, complete. Some guests come for the birdwatching. Others for the silence. Many for a weekend escape from Bhopal that feels like travelling much further than 60 kilometres.
What you find here depends on what you're ready to notice.
