We highly recommend and use these eco friendly, socially conscious and ethically responsible hotels. They care for earth & local community; use energy & water judiciously with least of resources going waste; recycle all their waste and most even compost all bio degradable stuff within its premises; some of them generate their own energy (like Spice Village); some hotels are made out mostly of discarded items from old houses (Coconut Lagoon); some do not use AC at all (Green Hotel in Mysore); many grow their own herbs and vegetable albeit on a small scale (Evolve Back, Coorg & Kabini); most of them offer filtered water in rooms doing away with bottled water and a Ayurveda resort (Swaswara) runs totally on rain water and does not take a drop from ground or other sources! A hotel in Kerala is fully made of mud and then there are tree houses without an electricity or artificiality! In wildlife areas too, we have such beautiful places like Chambal Safari Lodge.

Then there are nature friendly luxurious houseboats and lately we have seen many of these hotels doing great humanitarian work by accommodating COVID-19 patients when there has been no business currently! If you want to digitally detox yourself, then we have Wayanad Wild in amidst dense forest, in the lap of sheer nature! Of course to physically detox yourself, there are numerous ayurveda resorts, mostly in Southern India! Some may be a beautifully located typical style boutique hotel.

By the way, the International Airport of Cochin is fully run on solar power too!

We are looking forward to more and more hotels adopting sustainable practices in coming months, especially after evolving due to ongoing pandemic and implementing more innovating ideas!

As a responsible and discerning tourist, you may want to choose these over the other ones as far as possible! And don’t forget to give your valuable suggestions to hotels (and to us) to make things even more sustainable.

Coconut Lagoon – Kumarakom
If you are a bird lover then Coconut Lagoon will give you many days of happy bird spotting. It will not be far fetched to say that the guest cottages at the coconut lagoon are individual works of art. They were built from the remnants of old mansions – tharavads, that were once the family homes of the nobility of the land. They were brought here in sections and painstakingly reassembled by skilled craftspeople so that you could experience first hand what it is to live in these ancient and celebrated houses of yore. In homage to the environment that supports and sustains us all, we have our very own sacred grove in the property. It is a piece of pristine ‘forest’ dedicated to nature, while keeping with a time honoured tradition.

Spice Village – Thekkady
“Spice village for us is a work of nature as much as it is a lofty expression of the imagination. We conceived the resort as a village and approached its building the way you would a village – with local materials, native artisans, mountain spirit and traditional wisdom in its creation. Though traditional in its conception, this is a ‘village’ that offers you all the comforts of a city minus the noise, pollution and other urban ills that you can do without. Our interaction with the ecology of these hills is symbiotic, influenced by the native people of these parts who have lived in harmony with their surroundings for generations. They taught us about self-sustaining systems and also steward our organic gardens that put fresh vegetables, fruits and spices on your tables every day.”

Upcycled Furniture: Did you know that the simple and light pinewood furniture you see in the rooms have been made by recycling old wooden crates bought from the nearest seaport.

Brunton Boatyard – Cochin
Reducing our footprints and saying no to plastic, we remove around 12,000 plastic bottles of packaged water from our waste stream each year. These have been substituted with glass bottles filled with RO treated drinking water for the rooms and restaurant. Likewise, our in-room toiletries are kept in earthenware containers, further reducing our need to rely on plastic. At CGH Earth we are coming to believe that waste reduction is far more significant than waste management. It also helps to reduce our carbon footprints by a big margin.