Swechha Farm Ladpuri · Khairthal-Tijara · Rajasthan

Arranged by month

Visiting the farm

When
to come

कब आना ठीक रहेगा

This page is arranged around the month. Four months of the year we can tell you exactly what you would be walking into.

Kinnow is ready in January. Eight or nine of the eleven fruit species flower between January and April, and the apiary that sits inside the citrus strip works that window. If you have no other constraint on when you travel, that is the answer.

Go to the year

Two thatched mud houses on a rise, a sand track climbing between planted beds

Four months written · eight not

The year

साल के बारह महीने — चार लिखे हुए

We keep a floral calendar with twelve rows in it. Four of them are written down. The other eight are left empty rather than filled with a plausible-sounding month. You might be booking a train on this.

  1. Januaryजनवरी

    Harvest and the first flowering, in the same month

    Kinnow is ready. It is also when the orchard begins to flower, so one month holds a harvest and the opening of most of the rest. If you come once, come now. It is the only month where both are true.

  2. Februaryफ़रवरी

    The orchard in flower, and the bees working it

    Eight or nine of the eleven species are open. The apiary sits inside the citrus strip, which is the shortest distance bees can be asked to work, so the noise you wake up to is not traffic. Ten colonies are alive across about fifty boxes.

  3. Marchमार्च

    Still in flower, and the month the farm cannot spray

    You are inside the window where our own software will not clear a spray date it cannot square with the apiary record. It refuses rather than warns. A strange thing to offer as a reason to visit, admittedly.

  4. Aprilअप्रैल

    The window closes

    The flowering runs out through this month. After April we have nothing written down. The farm does not stop. The writing does.

  5. Mayमई

    Not written down

  6. Juneजून

    Not written down

  7. Julyजुलाई

    Not written down

  8. Augustअगस्त

    Not written down

  9. Septemberसितंबर

    Not written down

  10. Octoberअक्टूबर

    Not written down

  11. Novemberनवंबर

    Not written down

  12. Decemberदिसंबर

    Not written down

Four of those eight months have been photographed, even though none of them has been written up

A photograph is evidence that something was happening, not a description of what it is like to be here. These are dated, they are this farm, and they are from months the calendar above leaves blank. We are putting them here rather than using them to pretend the rows are filled.

  1. Amaltas in full yellow flower hanging over a mown lawn at dusk, a thatched pavilion beyond

    May · 27.5.2026

    Amaltas over the lawn. The hottest month on the farm is also the one the flowering tree belongs to.

  2. A pale lotus bud opening beside a green seed pod, broad leaves behind

    August · 11.8.2026

    Lotus. August is the month the Stay page sends people away from, and this is also August.

  3. A line of white geese crossing bare ground in late light, cattle behind

    October · 11.10.2026

    The geese out on open ground, which is what they do at the end of the day.

  4. Kinnow turning orange on the branch, dense dark leaves around the fruit

    December · 11.12.2025

    Kinnow colouring. January is written up because the fruit is ready; this is the month before.

Four photographs do not make four months. They do make the blank rows harder to defend, and that is the right pressure to be under.

Eight dashed rows is our calendar, drawn accurately. We know what happens in those months. Somebody is irrigating through all of them. But it sits in people's heads rather than on paper, and the moment we guess at one we are lying to somebody buying a train ticket.

Two things are true across the whole year. The cool months are the good months, and we have never pinned down which months we count as cool, so neither does this page. And summer here is the heat that collapsed the apiary.

Not written down yet The remaining eight rows of the floral calendar, and which months we mean by the cool months.

Two leave · two stay here

Four ways of
being here

What each one is for. Arrangements live on their own pages or in an email, and two of the four we answer ourselves.

  1. The two thatched mud houses on the rise above the planted beds

    A night, or several

    The two mud houses sit on the high ground, the only part of the parcel from which you can see most of the farm at once. There is a camping site on the flatter ground below them. You wake up inside a working farm.

    Stay · conditions first

  2. Children gathered along a trough under a thatched shelter, hands reaching in, an adult working alongside them

    28 December 2022. The one visit whose parental permissions are on file.

    A school group

    Children in the beds rather than beside them. Twenty-four vermicompost beds and nine irrigation zones off one borewell make most of a day's teaching without a slide. A child can open a bed, follow one valve, and understand a closed loop by lunchtime.

    Schools · what is unanswered

  3. Five people sowing by hand along fresh furrows in red soil

    You want to learn how it works

    Growers, students, people doing this on somebody else's land. We take this one ourselves, because the answer depends on the week. Say what you want to see and roughly when.

    Write to the farm

  4. Curved planting rows following the slope of the ground, bougainvillea in flower along the edge

    The contours, kept rather than levelled. Flat midday light. A grower would want this in low raking light, which we still have not taken.

    You have ground of your own

    The most useful conversation we have is with somebody holding degraded land and wondering whether it is worth it. Come and look at the contours that were kept rather than levelled, the nine zones and the compost yard. Then ask what went wrong.

    Write to the farm

A line of children and adults walking up a sandy track towards the farm, scrub and a boundary wall either side

Arriving, on foot, up the sand track. December 2022. This is the last few hundred metres, and it is the bit nobody tells you about.

That is a school group, on the one visit whose permissions are on file. We have nothing equivalent for a family, a couple, or a practitioner walking in.

Said plainly

It is a farm,
and it is working
while you are here

Somebody will be irrigating at six in the morning whether or not you are awake, and nothing on these five acres was built to be looked at. The compost yard is where the compost is. The mud houses are on the rise because that is the high ground.

So it is not a venue. There are no weddings here, no function lawn and no restaurant, and nobody can be absorbed as a drop-in on the day. Every visit is arranged in advance, because somebody has to stop farm work to meet you.

That is not a policy invented for a website. It is what five acres can carry, and saying so saves two people a wasted journey.

“It's not a hotel, it's natural, it's rustic. It's a real farm.”
Vimlendu Jha
Inside an A-frame mud house: a bamboo frame rising to a point, a low bed, two lamps and a small window

Inside one of the houses.

The two A-frame houses lit from inside at night, seen through a bamboo gate

The same houses after dark. Power here is not reliable. This is what it looks like when it is working.

One fact · five questions

Getting here

What is verified

Where
Ladpuri, Khairthal-Tijara, Rajasthan — five acres in the Aravallis
From Delhi
About ninety minutes. It is the only travel time we have confirmed.
The last stretch
The track up to the rise is sand

What is not

We have not estimated any of this. Better to admit the last mile than invent it.

DirectionsThe route we actually tell people to take, and where it begins.
The sand trackWhether a normal car makes it up, in which seasons, and where to leave one if not.
ParkingWhether there is any, and where.
By train or airThe nearest station or airport, and what happens from there.
ArrivingWho to tell, and how far ahead.

No photograph of the last mile

The sand track as a driver meets it, from the point where you decide what to do with the car. It is the thing people ask about most and we have no picture of it.

Mostly still unanswered

Everything you ask,
and we have not
yet answered

Every one of these is a real question somebody asks in their first email. They are decisions we have to make, not sentences a website can supply.

How manyWhat each house sleeps, what the camping site takes, and the largest group we can hold in a day.
What it costsAnything at all about cost: a night, a day, a school, a deposit. No figure goes up until we set one.
What is includedMeals, bedding, who cooks, whether anything is served, and what a visitor should bring.
TimingsWhen a day starts and ends, how long we recommend, and whether we take anyone overnight midweek.
Children and ageWhether there is a minimum age, and what supervision we expect near the borewell and the beds.
Getting around the farmWhether somebody who cannot walk a sand track can take part, and how.
Who answersOne named person who takes these and replies. Until that is settled, mail goes to the address below.

Ask the farm

[email protected]

Send the month you are thinking of, how many of you there are, and what you want to see. That is enough for a straight answer about whether that week works.

The door

January,
if you can

हो सके तो जनवरी में

Kinnow on the tree and the orchard opening, in the same four weeks. Ninety minutes from Delhi, and arranged in advance because somebody has to stop work to meet you.

[email protected]

Stay in a mud house Bring a school The farm map The orchard