An eco-village on a hill in Salem district, learning in public how a piece of land can hold food, shelter, work and a whole way of living — and then handing the method away.
Most land projects sell a plot and a promise. Nannilam is built the other way round: the land is the curriculum, the community is the faculty, and everything that works here is meant to be copied elsewhere.
We are establishing an eco-village model that doubles as an educational seed bank — for knowledge as much as for grain. Research plots, natural-build workshops, dairy, forest gardens and small green enterprises sit beside each other so that a single hillside can demonstrate food, water, shelter, energy and livelihood at once.
The intention is not self-sufficiency for a lucky few. It is a replicable, open platform where indigenous practice gains global exposure and global research becomes locally useful — so that regionally appropriate cultures can be grown, not imported.
Take any one away and the others sag. We design, measure and teach all four together.
Rainwater harvesting, composting, native habitat and natural farming. Buildings made from what the hill already has — earth, stone, bamboo, salvage.
Growing zone
Farmversity, artist residencies, craft and story. Elders teaching technique to visitors; researchers publishing what the elders already knew.
Learning zone
Village stays, volunteer seasons, wellness and shared kitchens. Neighbours from Therkunadu are members of the project, not its backdrop.
Experience zone
Value addition on the hill instead of raw produce leaving it. Small green enterprises, a dairy, and co-working for people who bring their work with them.
Value zone
The Kalrayan Hills
A breathing natural wonder in the Eastern Ghats — cool, wooded, threaded with streams, and home to communities who have farmed these slopes for generations.
Nannilam sits on the Chinna Kalrayan range above Karumandurai, in Salem district. The hill gives us a distinct season, a distinct soil and a distinct set of neighbours — all three shape what gets built here.
[ACRES]Acres under design
[ELEVATION]Metres above sea level
[STREAMS]Streams on the land
[SPECIES]Species logged so far
Life at Nannilam
Ten things happening on the same hillside
Each one is open to visitors, students and members — not a department, a doorway.
A solar dryer now turns hibiscus, curry leaves, kadukkai and guava leaf into stock for our herbal value-addition work. Less is wasted after harvest, and more of the value stays on the hill.
Run with Para Learning. Strangers trekked barefoot up our streams, turned freshly cut microgreens into chutney, stayed up by the fire, and slept under bamboo roofs and in tents, waking to peacock calls.
First-year MSW students from the Madras School of Social Work, on a tribal camp in the hills, walked the gabion walls and earth buildings with Poobathi, our project coordinator: lantana furniture, lean farming, lemongrass tea, and a long talk about livelihoods.
Members hold their own acre and share the whole expanse — the water, the forest, the workshops and the decisions. What you are buying is a seat in the design of the hill, and the years of work that follow.
Two days on the hill before anything is signed.
The first members who set the culture of a parcel.
Titles, surveys and paperwork done in the open.
Contours, swales and storage mapped before planting.
Farmversity is the hill's field school: short, hands-on courses taught on the land by the people who work it. Pick a track, or bring a group and we will shape a programme around you.
With Wild Ethnos: children slow down, look closer and meet the forest beyond what first meets the eye. Schools such as Chisel Montessori have already come up the hill.
Any workshop can run as a private programme for a school, college, community or company, on dates that suit you. Running a workshop of your own? We don’t charge for the space: you bring the people and the knowledge, we look after the stay, the food and the land.
