VanaVas

How do you turn a collection of natural assets into a destination people understand, experience and remember?

The site already had something unusual: a strong relationship with nature, rare plants and fossils, a substantial cattle ecosystem, water, and a much larger township vision developing around it.

The opportunity was not simply to place activities on the land. It was to find one idea that could connect these assets, give people a reason to visit, and create an experience relevant to families, travellers, celebrations, wellness and longer stays.

The destination needed a clear identity before individual attractions, buildings and activities could make sense.

We started with one thought: what if going back to nature could also mean rediscovering a way of living?

Mast developed VanaVas as the central idea—a contemporary retreat into the vana, or forest, inspired by the relationship between people, nature, food, celebration, wellbeing and community.

Rather than treating the project as one large park, we organised the destination into a collection of connected experiences, each interpreting a different part of that idea.

Then introduce the six worlds:

Vana Vihar — Discover

A forest-led journey designed around observation, reflection and learning. The experience explores values people can rediscover through time spent in nature, turning the forest itself into part of the storytelling.

Vana Ahaar — Taste

A food experience designed around eating closer to nature and rediscovering food traditions. One of the concepts explores ingredients and dishes through a before- and after-colonisation lens, supported by specialist culinary research and menu development.

Vana Nivas — Stay

Nature-led accommodation that extends VanaVas beyond a day visit. Different stay formats are positioned around the landscape and water, allowing the environment itself to become part of the overnight experience.

Vana Utsav — Celebrate

Outdoor and nature-integrated spaces for weddings, gatherings, cultural events and celebrations. The concept combines flexible event infrastructure with settings by the water and within the landscape, allowing different scales and formats of celebration.

Vana Gau — Connect

An experience built around the site's existing cattle ecosystem and India's relationship with the cow. It combines rural life, storytelling, music and participation, with possibilities for visitors to form a more personal connection with individual animals and the ecosystem around them.

Vana Sattva — Restore

The wellness layer of VanaVas. Developed through research into Ayurveda and conversations with practitioners, it explores how traditional approaches to wellbeing can become part of a contemporary destination experience.

Then finish the Approach with:

Feasibility, concept development, thematic thinking and master planning brought these individual ideas together into one destination system—so each experience could be distinct while still clearly belonging to VanaVas.

From a collection of assets to one connected destination.

VanaVas now has a defined destination concept, experience architecture and master plan built around six connected worlds.

The proposal has been approved and the VanaVas master plan has been completed. The project is now aligned with the planning of the larger township development surrounding it, after which it can progress toward the build phase.

The result at this stage is a clear framework for what VanaVas is, who it is for, what happens within it and how its different experiences come together as one destination.

This is more accurate than claiming operating results.