A Mumbai journalist dreamed of a farmhouse on his ancestral land in Guhagar. His daughter, a chef in Canada, came home five months pregnant. A pandemic kept her from leaving. A baby girl was born on the farm. The farm was named after her. This is Ayra Farms — and the story of how it came to be is inseparable from what it is.
In 2014, Rajan Chaughule stood on his ancestral piece of land in Guhagar, a small coastal town on Maharashtra’s Konkan coast, and said to himself: one day, I will build a farmhouse here. He was a journalist from Mumbai. Anyone who heard him would have laughed. The land was undeveloped, the project entirely theoretical, the ambition of the kind that urban professionals carry around for years without acting on. But Rajan was not joking.
By 2020, the Chaughules had made it real. Rajan — formerly the Director of Bharati Vidyapeeth School of Photography — and his wife Sadhana, a school art teacher, had retired early from their Mumbai lives and moved to the family’s ancestral home in Guhagar to lead a simpler, more fulfilling one. They grew vegetables, bred cattle for manure, restored the property with energy-efficient design that used materials found in their vicinity, and did it all without cutting a single tree.
Then their daughter Noopur came home from Canada.
Noopur Chaughule was a chef, working and living in Toronto. She was five months pregnant when she visited her parents in Guhagar. March 2020 arrived and the world closed. She could not travel back. And so her daughter Ayra was born not in a hospital in Canada but on her family’s ancestral land in Guhagar, on the Konkan coast, surrounded by betel nut palms and the sound of the Arabian Sea.
The grandparents watched Ayra grow up on the farm. The little one explored every corner of the property with what everyone who knew her describes as angelic curiosity. Noopur looked at what her parents had built, looked at the land her daughter was growing up on, and understood that this was a place worth sharing. Ayra Farms — named for the child born on it — opened as a farmstay.
The Farm
Ayra Farms occupies four and a half acres of ancestral land in the Guhagar region, approximately 24 kilometres from Guhagar town, 20 minutes off the Chiplun-Guhagar road. The approach involves a 1.5-kilometre off-road stretch from the state highway — low ground-clearance cars should take note — and the walk from the gate to the house is, in itself, an experience worth arriving for: lined with fruiting trees, wild growth, and quiet corners that smell of the particular green of the Konkan in every season.
The farm is a functioning agricultural property: betel nut (supari) trees, mango, jackfruit, coconut, drumstick, and a rotating kitchen garden of seasonal vegetables, herbs including ambadi (a local green used in Konkan cooking), and whatever else Sadhana decides to grow that month. Cattle are bred for manure. The composting cycle is closed. Not a tree was cut in the property’s development. The farm is part of a village dam project that has significantly improved the water table — the groundwater runs, in Noopur’s own words, strikingly blue.
In the middle of the farm sits a traditional haud — a stone water tank historically used to irrigate the supari plantations. In summer, it doubles as a splash pool. In the monsoon, a gushing stream runs just beside the house, cold enough to wade in and loud enough to follow to the next village. Fireflies light the trees in the evenings.
The Rooms
There are two guest rooms, on the first floor of the family’s main home. They are built with reclaimed wood, cooled by high ceilings designed to capture the Konkan breeze and manage the heavy monsoon humidity without mechanical assistance. The rooms open to garden views. The common space — shared with the hosts — is warm with the lived character of a family home: Rajan’s photography background visible in the walls, Sadhana’s artistic sensibility in the colours and arrangement, the toys of young Ayra tucked into quiet corners.
The aesthetic is rustic without being rough, deliberately simple without being spare. This is a home that was designed by people who know what makes a space feel alive — a Konkan farmhouse aesthetic, honest in its materials and generous in its spirit.
The Kitchen
Sadhana and her local team run the kitchen with the authority of someone who has been cooking Konkan food for decades and has no interest in softening it for outside palates. The cuisine is the food of the Guhagar region: the rice and fish curries of coastal Maharashtra, the seasonal preparations that use what is growing in the garden and what the fishing boats bring in that morning, the slow-cooked breakfasts that the farm’s guests wake up to with the smell arriving before the plate.
The day begins with birdsong and that breakfast smell. It ends with a hearty dinner cooked and served with love by Sadhana and her team. In between, Noopur’s chef training — she trained and worked professionally in Canada — shapes the menu’s more creative dimensions, combining Konkan tradition with the broader culinary vocabulary of someone who has cooked in professional kitchens across the world.
The farm produces what it can: vegetables from the kitchen garden, manure from the cattle, seasonal fruits from the orchard. What cannot be grown is sourced locally. Meal timings are fixed. No alcohol or smoking is permitted in the rooms — this is a family home with a small child growing up in it, and the rules reflect that.
What to See and Experience
Guhagar itself — a small, spectacularly clean beach town on the Konkan coast — is the primary context for the stay. Guhagar beach is one of the least crowded and most pristine beaches in Maharashtra, largely bypassed by the mass tourism that has transformed Alibaug and the beaches closer to Mumbai. The sea here is clean, the sand is wide, and the pace is entirely Konkan: unhurried, fish-forward, deeply local.
The farm offers guided walks through the property and surrounding countryside — through the supari and mango orchards, past the stream, into the village where the dam project has changed the local ecology. These walks, led by Rajan or by the local team, are an education in the particular knowledge system of Konkan farming: what each tree produces, how the land is managed across seasons, the relationship between the village and the forest that surrounds it.
Bird watching in the surrounding forests and the farm’s own trees is exceptional — the Konkan coast is on a major migration flyway and the biodiversity of its coastal forests is, by any standard, remarkable. Cooking demonstrations and participation in farm activities — harvesting, composting, understanding the working kitchen garden — are available for those who want active engagement rather than passive observation.
The Guhagar coast and surrounding Ratnagiri district offer broader exploration: Velneshwar temple, the Jaigad Fort, the Ganpatipule beach and temple, and the extraordinary Alphonso mango experience in season (February to May) when the Konkan’s most celebrated export ripens on trees visible from every road.
Why It Stays With You
The name Ayra Farms contains the whole story: a child born on ancestral land during a pandemic, who grew up exploring its every corner, whose name was given to the farm because the farm and the child became inseparable. Every guest who comes to Ayra Farms steps into that story — into the land Rajan dreamed of building on in 2014, the retirement that Sadhana and Rajan built from nothing in Guhagar, the kitchen that Noopur brought her professional training to, the stream and the haud and the fireflies and the smell of the slow-cooked breakfast.
This is a farmstay built by a family for whom the farm is not a business proposition but a life’s work — made available to guests because Noopur understood that what they had was worth sharing. The groundwater runs blue. The mangoes ripen in May. The Konkan breeze lifts the curtains in the high-ceilinged rooms at night. Ayra’s toys are still in the quiet corners.
Plan Your Visit
Address: Guhagar region, Ratnagiri District, Konkan, Maharashtra (24 km from Guhagar town · 20 min from Chiplun-Guhagar Road, SH 78 · 6 hours from Mumbai and Goa) Phone / WhatsApp: +91 86050 47365 Email: ayrafarms2022@gmail.com Instagram: @theayrafarms Facebook: TheAyraFarms Booking: Direct via WhatsApp/email · Also listed on Raahghar (raahghar.com/hs/ayra-farms)
Family: Noopur Chaughule (chef, co-founder) · Rajan Chaughule (photographer, founder) · Sadhana Chaughule (artist, kitchen lead) · Ayra (the farm’s namesake)
Property: 4.5 acres · Ancestral land · Working organic farm · Traditional Konkan architecture · Reclaimed wood construction · Zero tree cutting
Accommodation: 2 guest rooms on first floor of main family home · Reclaimed wood · High ceilings (natural ventilation) · Garden views · Shared common areas with hosts
Meals: All meals included (fixed timings) · Traditional Konkan cuisine · Seasonal farm produce · Sadhana’s kitchen · No alcohol / No smoking on property
Experiences: Farm walks and forays · Bird watching · Stream walks during monsoon · Haud splash pool (summer) · Kitchen garden participation · Cooking demonstrations · Village dam project visit · Guhagar beach (24 km)
Sustainability: Zero trees cut · Energy-efficient design · Local materials only · Cattle for manure · Composting cycle · Village dam/water table restoration project · Local employment throughout
Note on access: 1.5 km off-road stretch from state highway on the approach. Cars with low ground clearance may face some difficulty — confirm with the farm before arrival.
Getting There — Mumbai: approximately 6 hours by road (270 km) via NH 66 (Mumbai-Goa Highway) to Chiplun, then SH 78 to Guhagar. The most common route. — Goa: approximately 6 hours by road (270 km) via NH 66 northward to Chiplun. — Chiplun Railway Station: approximately 30 km from the farm — around 45 minutes by road. Chiplun is on the Konkan Railway line, well-connected from Mumbai (3.5 hours by Jan Shatabdi) and Goa. — Pune: approximately 5 hours by road via Poladpur/Mangaon. — From the Chiplun-Guhagar Road (SH 78): approximately 9 km — 20 minutes. Turn off at the indicated junction and take the 1.5 km approach road to the farm.
Nearby — Guhagar Beach: 24 km · Velneshwar Temple: 18 km · Jaigad Fort: 45 km · Ganpatipule Beach and Temple: 70 km · Chiplun: 30 km · Ratnagiri: 80 km
Best Time to Visit: November to February for the best beach weather and farm produce · March to May for Alphonso mango season — the Konkan at its most fragrant and celebratory · June to September for the dramatic Konkan monsoon — the stream runs, the land is impossibly green, the fireflies are out
