Named After Birds: The Rooms at Lemongrass Nest
Walk into most hotels and the room names are trying a little too hard. Serenity. Bliss. Suite 204. We went the other way. Every room at Lemongrass Nest is named after a bird. Not an invented, brochure-friendly bird, but the real ones that show up in the trees here in Kudal, in the Sindhudurg district of the Konkan.
About fifty kinds of birds live around the property, and four of them gave their names to the Lemongrass Nest rooms. We just kept the names the locals already use in Marathi. So there’s a hornbill, a minivet, a kingfisher and a peacock. Learn those four, and the place starts to read a little differently.
Dhanesh — the Hornbill
Rooms: Dhanesh · Dhanesh Aangan
Start with the hornbill, or dhanesh. If any bird runs this forest, it’s this one. You’ll usually hear it long before you see it: a big black-and-white bird with a thick, curved beak and a loud, clattering call. That call carries because of the casque, the odd hollow ridge sitting on top of the beak like a second crest. The one most people spot is the Malabar Pied Hornbill, though its quieter relative, the Malabar Grey Hornbill, lives here too and goes by the same Marathi name.
So why name a room after it? A couple of small reasons. Hornbills do a fair bit of the forest’s gardening: they eat fruit and scatter the seeds across the hills as they go, which is partly how these trees got here to begin with. They’re also loyal. They pair up for life, and at nesting time the female shuts herself inside a tree hollow while the male keeps her fed until the chicks are grown. A bird that fusses that much over its nest felt like the right one for a room built for two. Dhanesh has a queen or twin bed and a veranda of its own; Dhanesh Aangan adds a king bed and a private courtyard on top.
Gomet — the Minivet
Rooms: Gomet · Gomet Aangan
The minivet, or gomet, is easy to miss and worth not missing. It’s a small thing, about twenty centimetres, and up here in the Western Ghats the males are a bright orange-red against black, while the females go yellow and grey instead. They don’t really travel alone. They drift through the treetops in loose, chatty groups, picking off insects and whistling back and forth, and when a whole group crosses a gap in the canopy, the colour is the sort of thing that stops you mid-step.
It suits our most laid-back rooms, the ones for people who mean to be outdoors more than in. Gomet is the everyday room, with a queen or twin bed. Gomet Aangan steps that up to a king bed and adds an aangan of its own.
Khandya — the Kingfisher
Room: Khandya Aangan
Almost everyone knows a kingfisher on sight, even when the name won’t come: that hard, electric blue, a rust-brown chest, a white throat, a heavy orange-red beak. Marathi calls it khandya, and ours is the White-throated Kingfisher. Here’s the part that catches people out. For a bird with “fisher” in its name, it couldn’t care less about water. You’ll find it perched bolt upright on a wire or a bare twig, nowhere near a stream, then dropping in a blink to grab a lizard, a grasshopper or a frog out of the wet grass.
Which is exactly why Khandya is a courtyard room. A king bed, its own private aangan, and a fair chance of catching that blue streak getting to work first thing in the morning.
Mayur — the Peacock
Room: Mayur Aangan
And then the peacock. Mayur. India’s national bird, and not remotely shy about it. The first monsoon clouds build over the Konkan and the peacock answers with that long, complaining cry, and every so often the whole shimmering fan goes up. Nothing else in these hills makes that kind of entrance, and nothing else needs as much room to make it.
So, naturally, the peacock landed our biggest space. Mayur Aangan is a full villa for four: a king bed and a twin, a hall, a veranda, a courtyard of its own. If you’re coming with family or a gang of friends, this is the one to book.
A quick word on “aangan”
A quick note, since the word keeps coming up. An aangan is simply a private, open-air courtyard. It’s a Marathi word, and a very Konkan idea: that a house ought to have its own little square of sky and green. It’s where the morning tea happens, and where, more often than not, the birds come to you instead of the other way around.
How to book your room at Lemongrass Nest
None of this is just clever naming. It’s a small nudge to look up while you’re here. Give it a day or two and you’ll be telling the dhanesh from the gomet by sound alone, the way people in Kudal always have. You can see every room on our accommodation page, and if you’re thinking of coming in the green months, read our Konkan monsoon guide first.
Getting here is easy enough. Kudal sits right on the Konkan Railway and has its own station, so you can practically step off the train and you’re here. Tarkarli’s beaches are about half an hour away, Malvan and the old island fort of Sindhudurg a little past that, and when the rains are in, the Amboli waterfalls are roughly an hour’s drive. Come for the birds. Stay for the coast.
Frequently Asked Questions
About fifty kinds of birds live around the property in Kudal, and each room simply takes the Marathi name of one of them.
Dhanesh is the hornbill, gomet the minivet, khandya the kingfisher, and mayur the peacock.
It’s the Marathi word for a private, open-air courtyard. Any room with “Aangan” in its name has one.
Mayur Aangan, a villa for four with a king bed, a twin, a hall, a veranda and a courtyard.
Yes. The property has logged around fifty kinds of birds, along with a giant squirrel and Blue Mormon butterflies.
In Kudal, in the Sindhudurg district on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra.
Written and published by Lemongrass Nest · Kudal, Sindhudurg, Maharashtra
An independent boutique resort on the Konkan coast.
lemongrassnest.com
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