Design
Palaash inside Tipai Wildlife Luxuries is the new restaurant in the woods, literally!
DEC 26, 2023 | By Pratishtha Rana
Some destinations can prove to be sensorially healing than usual — where the weariness of long flights and city commotion, swiftly dissolves into visually-rich experiences that grip the eyes first, before triumphing other senses of touch, sound, smell and taste. Tipai Wildlife Luxuries typifies this exact sentiment.
While ELLE DECOR India deep dived into this sustainable getaway a few hours’ drive away from Nagpur airport in its Feb-March 2023 issue, newer spaces including an in-house fine-dine Palaash by chef Amninder Sandhu and wellness alcoves like the spa and gymnasium unfurled recently.
A quest for a slice of nature turned into reality by MakeMyTrip’s Keyur Joshi, Tipai is perceptibly sustainable in its demeanour. Championing earth and its materials in the most design-forward ways.
Our 2023 EDIDA India Sustainable Achievement winner Ariane Thakore Ginwala spells the beauty of earth and soil in the most honest ways, weaved through meditative architectural interventions that stun at every glance.
If you think keenly, Tipai is bucolic as it is paradisical. Think local stones, terracotta, rammed earth, wicker and wood melding without contentions. Ariane’s design decisions are seen across Pool and Forest villas, decked with a familiar scent of earth, poised furniture, alfresco lounge area and the grandest of them all; a bathroom with a pocket of open-to-sky shower. As soothing as it is to be indoors, the palpable taste of wilderness doesn’t shy away, too, nesting amidst the fringes of rustling greens and clear starry skies.
Now then, it isn’t a surprise that at a few kilometres distance is Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, accessible for early morning safaris in the friendly abandons of nature that sprawl acres and miles!
Forest rustles: Dining at Palaash
The inebriating scent of the morning dew and evening wind is the first to greet, every time you step out of your idyllic cove. Just a leisurely stroll away sits Palaash, the sylvan new restaurant that’s carved right amid the jungle.
An extension to the sustainable way of life at Tipai, the restaurant with its outdoorsy character is chef Sandhu’s language of playing with ingredients and techniques that are local, frill-less and authentic in every bite.
With open-fire cooking as a trusted tool by her side, the kitchen is majorly run by a sagacious women staff from the neighbouring villages.
Palaash in the day. Palaash in the night. Both are convincingly two different venues in-person. Unassumingly picturesque nonetheless. On the opening night, shrouded by dark blanket of Palaash trees (which the restaurant is named after) and the invisible skyline, our first introduction to chef Sandhu’s palatable local fare commences with a sweet-sour ball that pops out with a lasting orange memory on the tongue.
“Don’t bite it, let it melt and pop,” the chef is quick to warn! As we are served one course after the other, the recipes leave telling imprints on the palate, revealing through its flavours and aroma, the slow-cooking method over open fire. The most memorable of which is the bamboo-smoked jackfruit curry served with warm side of Indrayani rice.
Open only for dinners for the time being, shaping Palaash in the middle of nowhere, as Ariane recalls was a sweet challenge, “Fallen teak trunks from last monsoon are used as structural columns, which camouflage the structure and integrate it into the forest housing a live kitchen. The floor was finished with pebbles and natural stone slabs and fire bricks.” Interestingly, leaping beyond the logistics of flavours on the tastebuds, conscious practises also trickle over table linen and kitchen uniforms that are all vegetable-dyed in hues of Palaash flowers, yellows and deep orange.
What is evidently telling is how the wildlife resort, sentiantly so, has been stitched end-to-end as one comprehensive destination of leisure, dining, adventure and sustainability. A lingering flavour of surroundings and local culture that perhaps is only found in the far lands of nature and its bounty!
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