The Region Around Us

The Konkan region of Maharashtra is well known for its beaches and scenic monsoon drives—but its real heart is in the hills, rivers, mangroves, and forests that breathe life into the villages here. For generations, people here have lived minimally with the land — fishing, foraging, farming small patches.
What’s not known is the scarcity and struggle for water post monsoon and the challenge of farming on steep resource poor hills. Many families, unable to sustain themselves from farming, resort to selling parts of their ancestral land or leave their farms behind, choosing to migrate to cities.
Nature has reclaimed, what people left behind. Abandoned farms turned into thriving forests — home to native trees and wildlife including big cats – but this paradise is fragile.
As the land changes hands, forests are being chopped down, hills bulldozed into accessible plateaus, and diverse ecosystems replaced with monoculture plantations. In the race for survival and sustenance, new plantations, and development, these forests risk being cut again—this time without the promise of coming back.