Gurung Guest House
The Gurung Guest House is a creation of HELP Tourism, a pioneering responsible tour operator in Eastern India and the gigantic Gurung family—41 members currently crowd their massive family house! Visitors don’t have to crowd the house with them though—their guesthouse is actually located in a separate building. With four standard twin-share rooms and four quad-bed rooms, the building was designed by the family after the village started attracting tourists. How did it do that?
Over the last few years, Tinchuley has emerged as an agro-friendly tourist destination, and earned a reputation as a ‘model village.’ Tinchuley was specifically developed as part of a joint initiative between WWF – India and HELP Tourism. Scattered around the Gurung Guest House are a number of tea plantations, orange gardens, cabbage groves and several other vegetables of all kinds. Poultry is raised nearby; a fish tank lies terraced into a hillside. Just above it is a small biogas production facility that supplies cooking fuel to one of the houses in the village, while a nearby shed houses a dozen ‘natural grass processors’ who moo and produce the necessary manure that fertilizes everything.
Because of all this local production, the family and village is almost totally self-sufficient. They require almost no food from outside and when guests visit, all of this locally grown food ends up on their plates. The family prides itself on this fact, and makes sure that no guest leaves lighter than when they came. Visitors who enjoy organic food and the company of a rambunctious local family will enjoy their visit to Tinchuley, and there are plenty of opportunities to burn off the massive meals with walks in the village, or even more adventurous activities like rock-climbing or trekking in the hills.
With its focus on agro-tourism and friendly homestay, visiting Tinchuley is very much like visiting family relatives at their farmhouse.
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