A Journey to HD Kote: Among the Haadis

My travel notes from a drive through Wayanad to the tribal settlements of HD Kote taluk, Mysuru district

The journey began in Calicut, the coastal plains giving way almost immediately to the climb into Wayanad. The road bends upward through coffee and pepper estates, mist settling over the ghats even in daylight, and somewhere past Sulthan Bathery the character of the land begins to shift — the Western Ghats folding into the forest belt that Wayanad shares with Bandipur, Nagarahole, and, further ahead, HD Kote. Crossing the Kerala–Karnataka border, the forest thickens further, until the road finally opens out onto the banks of the Kabini, its backwaters catching the afternoon light. From there it is a short stretch into HD Kote taluk itself — red earth, tall stands of bamboo, and the first glimpses of a haadi, one of the small tribal hamlets that dot this forest frontier.

The night was spent at the hostel of the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram in HD Kote — a simple, functional base that has long served as a point of contact between the outside world and the surrounding tribal belt. It felt like the right place to begin: modest quarters, an early start, and a sense of continuity with decades of quiet work already done in this region.

The purpose of this visit was not sightseeing but Sewa: a first survey of approximately five haadis ahead of a joint initiative between SEWA Europe and the Abhyudaya Foundation to establish multiple Community Development Centers across different haadis in the region. The visit was supported throughout by Shivaram ji, Project Director of the Abhyudaya Foundation, whose familiarity with the terrain and the communities shaped much of what was possible to see and understand in a single day, and by Mr. Prasanth Rao of SS Foundation, whose presence added another thread of experience to the conversations that followed at each haadi.

Arrival at the Haadis

Over the course of the day, the visit covered close to five haadis scattered through the HD Kote forest belt, each a short but often rough drive from the last. The communities living across these settlements are the Jenu Kuruba, Betta Kuruba, Soliga, and Yerava — all classified among the more vulnerable tribal groups of the region. Each carries its own distinct traditions, belief systems, and forms of forest-based livelihood, yet all face a shared struggle: holding on to identity and custom even as external pressures — restricted forest access, land alienation, patchy schooling, and the slow pull of migration — continue to erode the ground beneath them.

What struck me first at each haadi was not deprivation, though that is visible, but dignity. There is a quiet self-sufficiency in how these communities organize themselves, even as basic infrastructure — schools, healthcare access, stable livelihoods — remains thin on the ground.

Elders of the community gathered under a tamarind tree to speak with us. Their concerns were practical and immediate: children walking long distances to school, the absence of a nearby health sub-center, the erosion of traditional forest-based livelihoods as access to minor forest produce has grown restricted, and the slow pull of younger generations toward towns in search of work that the haadi cannot offer.

Why Community Development Centers, and Why Here

Listening to elders and community members across the haadis, the shape of what is needed becomes clear — not a single project imposed from outside, but a network of Community Development Centers, each rooted in its own haadi: places for supplementary education, basic health screening and referral, skill training aligned to what each community already knows — honey collection, weaving, forest produce processing — and a bridge to the government schemes that exist on paper but rarely reach this far. The partnership between SEWA Europe and the Abhyudaya Foundation is meant to build exactly this — not one center serving as a symbol, but several, each answering to the particular needs and traditions of the haadi it sits within, given how different Jenu Kuruba, Betta Kuruba, Soliga, and Yerava customs and priorities can be from one settlement to the next.

This is where the idea of Sewa as Sadhana finds its most literal test. It is easy to speak of selfless service as an inner discipline in the language of the Gita — Nishkama Karma, action without attachment to the fruit. It is another thing to sit under a tamarind tree in HD Kote and translate that philosophy into a school timetable, a health camp schedule, and a list of who will need transport to the taluk hospital. The Sadhana, if it is real, has to survive that translation.

A Walk to the Forest Edge

Later in the day, a few of the younger men from one of the haadis walked us to the boundary where the settlement meets the reserve forest. The line between haadi and forest is not just administrative — it is the line between what the community was permitted to keep and what it has had to let go of. Standing there, the scale of the task ahead becomes clearer: a Community Development Center here cannot only be a building with a signboard. It has to earn trust that has been tested many times before by promises that arrived and then quietly left.

Closing Reflection

Driving back toward Wayanad and Calicut as the light began to fade over the Kabini backwaters, the day left behind more questions than conclusions — which is, perhaps, the right place to begin. The Jenu Kuruba, Betta Kuruba, Soliga, and Yerava families of these haadis do not need to be told what selfless service means; they have practiced forms of collective care within their own communities for longer than most outside institutions have existed. What they are owed is not charity but consistency — centers that return, month after month, until they are no longer visible as an outsider's project but simply part of how each haadi sustains itself, and its traditions, belief systems, and identity, into the future.

That, perhaps, is the real test of Sewa as Sadhana: not the eloquence of the intention, but the patience of its follow-through.