Tree House Hideaway
Bandhavgarh National Park

Hidden high in the canopy at the edge of Bandhavgarh National Park, Tree House Hideaway isn’t a safari lodge in the conventional sense. It’s a whispered secret in the jungle, a place where you wake to birdsong and go to sleep to the low, distant call of a tiger. It’s India at it's most raw, intimate and alive.

Perched in the branches of centuries-old mahua trees, the five private treehouses are crafted from local sal wood and woven seamlessly into the forest around them. Each one is part Swiss Family Robinson, part Hemingway-in-the-wild, with four-poster beds, warm lighting, copper-lined showers and wooden decks that overlook watering holes where spotted deer, wild boar and the occasional leopard come to drink.

There’s a romance to Tree House Hideaway, where barefoot evenings are spent on your deck with a whisky in hand, or waking at dawn to mist swirling through the branches, or lying in bed listening to the forest shift around you. You’ll find no WiFi or flat-screens in the trees, just stillness and the feeling of being somewhere that hasn’t been tamed.

The lodge sits just outside Bandhavgarh National Park, one of India’s most revered tiger reserves. Once the private hunting grounds of Maharajas, today it is one of the best places in the world to see the Bengal tiger in the wild. This landscape of dense sal forest, golden meadows and ancient ruins is home to a whole cast of other characters too - sloth bears, jackals, langurs, mongoose, civets, hornbills and butterflies the size of your hand. Twice-daily game drives take guests into the park with exceptional naturalists who know the jungle like no one else, noting every track and every broken branch. You will learn too, to watch and wait, to read signs and attune your senses to the wild.

Back at the lodge, the dining room is a treehouse too with candlelit dinners of local Mahua chicken, woodfired breads and dal makhani served under a thatched roof high in the branches. One night you might dine in the wild, by lantern light beside a bonfire, another you may be served a bush breakfast out in the forest. The mood is always warm and personal, and service here is effortlessly low-key - the team never intrude but are always present. And for all its earthy charm, Tree House Hideaway is run with precision.

This is a place that belongs to the forest; you’ll leave with the scent of sal trees in your skin and red dust on your boots. Its' perfect for those who seek a quieter kind of luxury, the kind you feel more than see. Come here not just to see a tiger, but to remember that we, too, are wild things.

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.
Susan Heller