In my last post I mentioned rainforest in the context of Costa Rica and in this post I cross over to India to mention another rainforest. Rainforest, the conservation initiative. Rainforest, the community initiative. We are collaborating with the owner of Rainforest, the resort. It is in the same location where the photo above is taken.

These waterfalls have all kinds of remarkable superlatives attached to them. For me the best is “the Niagara Falls of India,”  but not so much because that sounds funny (which it does, to me). Athirapally is their formal name, and that is funny because as with many names in India there is more than one official spelling. You are likely to see road signs spelling the name Athirapilly on your drive approaching the falls.

But the Niagara reference is meaningful to me because my doctoral dissertation relied on archival data, both qualitative and quantitative, from that location starting in the 1880s and ending in the 1980s. As I have noted elsewhere in this blog, that doctoral research led to an invitation to Costa Rica two decades ago, and that led to the development of the entrepreneurial conservation business model I have been promoting since then, all of which led to the eventual formation of Raxa Collective.

And now, we are happy to report that Raxa Collective has responsibility for a lovely example of entrepreneurial conservation, in the form of a resort that is facing those waterfalls. Rainforest welcomes you. Lonely Planet seconds that emotion:

Watch these pages for more on Rainforest in the coming days, hopefully from our Kerala communicator in chief, Rosanna. She has a way with words. For now I can simply share that the man whose vision it was to create this resort speaks our language. His goal is conservation, his mission is to collaborate with the local indigenous communities surrounding the resort and the waterfalls, and our task is to make all that happen as effectively and efficiently as possible. We cannot do it without you, so watch for our call to action.