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Saily Gokhale

You will usually find her by the fire, with a cup of something hot.

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over the forest after the last safari jeep has rattled back through the gates, engine cooling, dust still hanging in the last of the light. That is when Saily starts talking. And if you are lucky, she will tell you a story.

She has a lot of them.

Chapter one

A decade in the jungle, long before it was content.

Before wildlife travel had hashtags, Saily was walking Central India's forests for a living. She started as an independent wildlife guide, leading travellers through the major parks of the region at a time when doing that as a woman, on her own terms, was not the norm it is slowly becoming. She did not inherit this world. She built her place in it, one safari and one sighting at a time.

That groundwork took her somewhere most visitors never see. Saily spent years working with the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department as a volunteer on conservation outreach, based in Kanha, with projects that reached Bandhavgarh, Pench and Panna. It was slow, patient, unglamorous work. Sitting with village communities. Listening before talking. Understanding that protecting a forest means understanding the people who live alongside it.

It is that chapter which explains something guests notice within a day of arriving. Saily does not just know the jungle. She knows the people of the jungle. The villagers, the trackers, the old timers who remember things no guidebook does. Ask about a village you passed on the drive in and chances are she knows a family there, or a story about it, or both.

Chapter two

From guide to general manager, and back to something smaller.

After the outreach years she moved into hospitality. First with a couple of established lodges in Kanha, then into leadership, rising to General Manager of what was then Dev Vilas Kanha, later rebranded as Lemon Tree Wildlife Resort Kanha. It was her last role in the big lodge world, and it taught her everything about running a wilderness property at scale. The logistics, the standards, the guest experience.

But somewhere along the way she began wanting something smaller. Something warmer. Something that felt less like a stay and more like being welcomed into a home in the forest.

That wanting became Semal.

Why Semal exists

Ask her what drives her and she will not mention the degree.

Saily holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences. Ask her what actually drives her and she will talk about connection instead. Her aim has always been simple, if ambitious. To help protect wild spaces by working alongside the people and organisations already doing that work, and to build awareness of conservation among rural and urban communities alike. Through education, through responsible travel, through getting more people to fall in love with the wilderness the way she has.

Independent wildlife guide across the major parks of Central India

Conservation outreach volunteer with the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department

Former General Manager of a wildlife lodge in Kanha

MSc in Environmental Sciences

Entirely self taught cook, and the reason dinner is not an afterthought

The part you did not expect

Her other great love is the kitchen.

No culinary school. Just years of curiosity, trial, error, and clearly a gift for it. She is equally at home turning out a comforting Indian thali, a continental plate, an American classic, or something with an oriental turn, having quietly mastered a handful of standout dishes in every cuisine she has taken on.

At Semal that means your evening meal is not a buffet line formality. It is something she has genuinely put herself into, the same way she puts herself into everything else here.

Everything above is really just the outline. The real stories come out slowly, usually by the fire, usually when nobody is in a hurry to go anywhere.

The bonfire is where the real stories live

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