On 35 acres of land that the Rathore family bought in 1989 — barren, desert-dry, and ecologically spent — they planted a forest, created lakes, and built a home. Today it is one of the most extraordinary places to walk in tiger country in India, and the family that made it is inseparable from the park itself.
There is a particular kind of intimacy available at Khem Villas that no other place in Ranthambore can offer. It is not the intimacy of a luxury spa or a private villa. It is something older and rarer: the intimacy of a family that has spent three generations living alongside the tigers of Ranthambore, learning the forest from the inside, and opening that knowledge to anyone who comes to stay.
The story begins with Fateh Singh Rathore — the man aptly described as the founding father of Ranthambore National Park, who helped put the park on the tiger map of the world and is widely regarded as one of India’s greatest tiger experts. Fateh devoted his life to the tigers of Ranthambore with a ferocity that shaped the park’s conservation history. His son Goverdhan grew up inside Ranthambore, learning the forest and its tigers first-hand under his father’s guidance. That education produced a man of exceptional knowledge — a doctor by training, an internationally acclaimed environmental activist by vocation, and a tiger conservationist by inheritance.
In 1989, Goverdhan and his wife Usha, along with Pritam Singh, purchased 35 acres of barren land on the outskirts of the park. The land was degraded, largely empty of vegetation, and of no particular use to anyone. They planted indigenous trees. They created small water bodies. They watched, over years, as the ecosystem began to return. Jackals. Jungle cats. Hyenas. Desert foxes. Crocodiles settling into the new lakes. Leopards, tigers, and bears leaving pugmarks in the soil. By the time they opened Khem Villas as a camp in 2006, they had already created something more valuable than any resort: a functioning natural habitat, a private extension of the national park, a 35-acre wilderness that guests could walk through in a way impossible inside the park itself.
The Property
Walking into Khem Villas is unlike arriving at most places near Ranthambore. There is no grand gate, no lobby. There is instead the immediate, palpable sense of being inside something alive — trees dense above you, birds calling from every direction, the particular stillness of a forest that has been left to its own logic. Severn kilometres of walking trails thread through the property. A resident naturalist is available to guide guests through the grasslands, lakesides, and forest patches where animals come and go at will.
The camp itself is designed in understated elegance — thatched roofs, teak and rattan furniture, traditional forms that merge with the surrounding landscape rather than asserting themselves against it. A central campfire area is where evenings gather, Goverdhan holds court with stories of the tigers, and the sounds of the jungle — a barking deer in the distance, the call of a peacock, the sudden silence that sometimes means something large is moving nearby — provide the only entertainment anyone needs.
Amitabh Bachchan, who stayed at Khem Villas during the filming of a documentary, described the rooms as “cottage industrial construct in keeping with the ambience — thatched roofs, verandahs, courtyard or the angan with the very identifiable charpoy.” It is a description that captures something essential: Khem Villas is not trying to be anything other than what it is.
The Accommodation
There are approximately 21 units in total across four categories, each positioned within the landscape with an eye to privacy and views.
The Private Villas are the most impressive — spacious, elegantly appointed, with private plunge pools and Jacuzzis from which guests can look out over the Ranthambore hills while resident crocodiles cruise the adjacent lake. The Luxury Cottages are thatched, air-conditioned, with spacious bedrooms, large bathrooms, and verandahs facing onto vistas of either pampas grass and lake or the forest edge. The Luxury Tents offer the closest possible approximation of sleeping in the wild while maintaining all the comforts that allow for genuine rest. The Rooms in the main building are simpler and more affordable, carrying the same character in a more compact form.
All accommodation is air-conditioned. Daybeds are scattered through the grounds. The Age Veda Spa offers Ayurvedic treatments for those who need something other than walking and watching. Yoga classes are available.
Eating Here
Khem Villas serves only vegetarian food — an ecologically and ethically deliberate choice that reflects the camp’s broader commitment to sustainable living. Meals are prepared from the property’s own organic vegetable garden, with ingredients that have been grown on the same land as the trees the family planted decades ago. The food is described consistently as delicious, lovingly prepared, and genuinely nourishing in the way that meals grown from one’s own soil tend to be.
A welcome of chilled face towels and sweet lime juice on arrival sets the tone for a hospitality that is warm without being performative and attentive without being intrusive.
Walking in Tiger Country
The signature experience at Khem Villas — the one that no other accommodation in Ranthambore can replicate — is the guided walk through the property’s 35 acres with the resident naturalist. This is not a sanitised nature walk with informational signboards. It is a genuine encounter with a functioning wilderness: reading pugmarks in the mud, identifying bird calls, understanding the alarm behaviour of deer, learning to read a landscape the way the tigers read it.
Leopard, tiger, and bear pugmarks are regularly found within the camp grounds. Camera traps have recorded leopards moving through the property at night. This is not the park, where rules and vehicles and crowds mediate the encounter. This is a piece of land that wildlife treats as its own — because, for over three decades, it has been.
Jeep game drives into Ranthambore National Park’s core zones are arranged daily — morning and evening — with drivers and naturalists who know the park with the intimacy born of years. The park’s core zones cover a vast and varied landscape of dry deciduous forest, grasslands, lakes, and the extraordinary ruins of Ranthambore Fort, which looms over the park like a reminder that people have always lived in proximity to these tigers and found ways to coexist.
Village walks, camel rides, and river safaris on the nearby Chambal River offer additional perspectives on a landscape that is far more than a tiger park.
The Conservation Mission
Staying at Khem Villas is an act of participation in something larger than a holiday. Goverdhan founded the Prakritik Society in 1994, which has since built a comprehensive tiger conservation programme unlike any other in India. Four hundred children from surrounding villages and towns attend Prakritik’s Fateh Public School. A seedling nursery distributes over 50,000 saplings of indigenous tree species annually to local farmers, reducing dependence on the park for fuel wood. A biogas project converts cow dung from surrounding villages into methane energy. A women’s enterprise provides employment as an alternative to activities that historically increased poaching pressure on tigers.
In 2004, this work won Goverdhan the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy — commonly called the Green Oscar — presented to him by Sir David Attenborough.
Guests are welcome to visit these projects, talk with Goverdhan and Usha about them, and participate in whatever way feels meaningful. The family would be delighted to discuss any of it over dinner, or around the campfire, with the jungle holding its breath beyond the firelight.
Why It Stays With You
People come to Ranthambore for tigers. A good sighting is never guaranteed — the forest is vast and the tigers move as they choose. But Khem Villas ensures that regardless of what the park produces, the stay is never disappointing. The walks in the early morning through a wildlife habitat that the family built from nothing. The campfire evenings with Goverdhan’s stories. The understanding that what you are seeing — the jackals, the jungle cats, the birds, the crocodiles, the pugmarks in the mud — is the result of three decades of one family’s labour of love.
The tigers know this land because the Rathores made it worth knowing.
Plan Your Visit
Address: Khem Villas, Ranthambore National Park, Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan Phone: +91 94140 30262 Website: khemvillas.com Booking: Direct via website (CloudBeds booking system) · Also bookable via international agents
Owners: Dr. Goverdhan Singh Rathore & Usha Rathore (with Pritam Singh & Rachel) Conservation: Prakritik Society · Tiger Watch · Fateh Public School · Biogas and seedling nursery programmes
Accommodation: 21 units across 4 categories — Private Villas (with Jacuzzi/plunge pool) · Luxury Cottages (thatched, AC, verandah) · Luxury Tents · Rooms in main building. All air-conditioned. Dining: Fully vegetarian · Organic produce from the property’s own garden · All meals included in most packages Facilities: 35 acres of rewilded habitat · 7 km of walking trails · Resident naturalist · Age Veda Spa · Yoga · Campfire area · Swimming pool · Daybeds throughout grounds Sustainability: TOFT Award winner · TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence · Solar and biogas initiatives
Getting There — Sawai Madhopur Railway Station is the nearest railhead — approximately 12 km from Khem Villas, around 20 minutes by road. Direct trains from Delhi (Hazrat Nizamuddin) take approximately 4–5 hours on the Rajasthan Sampark Kranti or Intercity Express. — Jaipur Airport is approximately 180 km away — around 3.5 to 4 hours by road. Paid transfers can be arranged. — From Delhi by road: approximately 375 km — around 5–6 hours via Agra or Dausa. — From Jaipur by road: approximately 180 km — around 3 hours. — The camp is located approximately 4 km from the nearest Ranthambore National Park gate. Park entry is via Forest Department-assigned vehicles.
Nearby — Ranthambore National Park Gate: 4 km · Sawai Madhopur: 12 km · Ranthambore Fort: inside the park · Jogi Mahal: inside the park · Chambal River safaris: 40 km · Jaipur: 180 km
Best Time to Visit: October to June for safaris (park open) · February to May for the best tiger sighting opportunities as vegetation thins and tigers use water sources · November to February for pleasant cool weather · Park closed during monsoon (July to September) but Khem Villas remains open and the rewilded property is spectacular in the rains.
