Poor Indian Villages Win Green Award for Hospitality
Art Gallery in the Himalayas
Village Ways, a self-sustaining tourism project of six very poor, very remote villages in north India, is one of six winners of the inaugural
Times Green Spaces Awards, which were announced on Tuesday night at an Awards’ ceremony hosted at One Aldwych hotel, London.
The six winners are:
Best place to stay (Britain): Trelowarren, Cornwall, England
Best place to stay (Europe): Finca La Herradura, Orgiva, Spain
Best place to stay (Worldwide): Village Ways, Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary,Uttarakhand, India
Best project (Britain): Centre for Alternative Technology, Powys, Wales
Best open space (Britain): Thames Barrier Park, London, England
Best open space (Europe): Turtle beach, Dalyan, Turkey.
Some 200 nominations for the awards were received from Times’ readers.
The winners were selected from a shortlist of 24, which were each inspected. The full list of finalists, winners – and their nominees, is
on Timesonline:
Commenting on the award, Richard Hearn, one of the founders of VillageWays, said,”This Green Spaces Award from The Times is a huge feather in the cap of the villagers, who take such pride in their work. It will mean an enormous amount to everyone concerned and we can’t thank the readers of The Times and the judging panel enough.”
Following his inspection visit to Binsar for the awards, Steve Keenan,online travel editor, The Times said, “Village Ways is incredibly uplifting – many guests leave in tears. This is a genuine way to see inside rural life in India, all of its smiles, smells and joy at a very cheap price and in stunning surroundings. And is a very worthy
winner of an award.”
Among the judges for The Times Green Spaces Awards were Toby Sawday of Sawday’s Publishing, Richard Hammond, founder of greentraveller.co.uk, Anna Shepherd, The Times’ Eco Worrier columnist, and Steve Keenan, Kate Quill and Kathleen Wyatt, the online editor, assistant travel editor and travel editor of The Times respectively.
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