Kaner.Retreat

Kaner.Retreat India's first desert botanical resort near Jodhpur.

Hosting Kaner Clay Experience which is a one of a kind experience that involves the guided walkthrough of the pottery museum followed by a 7 course fine-dining experience.

MARWAR PRINTS REVIVAL - The land, worn. Its flora, its fauna, its memory carried close to the body. A love letter to hom...
03/06/2026

MARWAR PRINTS REVIVAL - The land, worn. Its flora, its fauna, its memory carried close to the body. A love letter to home, printed in cloth.

In the Thar Desert, textile is not fabric. It is the identity of a community, the record of a landscape, the story of a way of life.

Dr. Madan Meena is trying to bring that story back. Through the Marwar Prints Revival project, he is working to recover nearly 500 lost prints — designs that exist today only as traces. A scrap of fabric. An old block. A textile a family has kept folded away and agreed, quietly, to share.

“In my head, I constantly think — we are losing this heritage every day.”

Someone told him about a family at the far end of the desert who had old blocks. He drove there. They had the blocks, they said — but they had burned them for warmth in winter.

There is no archive. The reconstruction begins with what can be found and then with illustration, new blocks, and the slow work of printing what was nearly gone.

Artist Malini Saigal is documenting the flora and fauna that run through these designs. The project will culminate in four museum-quality volumes, not just a record of pattern, but of the stories communities told through cloth.

India’s first revival of this scale. Built, like the textiles themselves, from listening.


heritage.society

02/06/2026

“Two silences meeting, the water and the desert. Both know how to wait.” 💙

[Slow travel, Offbeat Experiences, Nature, Kaner Retreat]

Chef Pankaj Sharma has curated the seven-course lunch experience at Kaner Clay — a sensory journey themed around the Th...
30/05/2026

Chef Pankaj Sharma has curated the seven-course lunch experience at Kaner Clay — a sensory journey themed around the Thar Desert Pottery Exhibition and rooted in the five elements that shape both a clay vessel and the human spirit. ( Panchmahabhuta in Indian Philosophy).

Trained at the Oberoi and seasoned across properties like the Aman and the Lodhi, Pankaj went on to found Syah — with outposts in Ladakh and Udaipur — where the experiences he created earned him a place on Condé Nast Traveller’s 40 Under 40.

His instinct for the hyper-local is rare: wild desert resins, foraged berries, ingredients that most chefs would walk past. But what sets him apart at Kaner is something quieter. He chose to work with our local staff — not despite the challenge, but because of it. Audio manuals for those who don’t read. Strings in place of measuring tapes. A kitchen built around the people already in it, not the other way around.

In between, his brilliance finds its space — in the crockery he designs, the cutlery he considers, and the dishes that stay with you long after the meal is over.

“My favourite memory of him is cutting Ber branches with an axe and making skewers” Sapna Bhatia, Founder, Kaner Retreat





[Chef, Forager, Culinary, Kaner Clay, Fine-dining experience India]

ARTIST AT KANER - Malini Sehgal came to art the way she came to books — with an editor’s instinct. Not just looking, but...
28/05/2026

ARTIST AT KANER - Malini Sehgal came to art the way she came to books — with an editor’s instinct. Not just looking, but reading. Finding what doesn’t belong. Finding what’s missing. That same attention, the kind that catches a misplaced comma or a rhythm that’s slightly off, is what she brings to a petal, a stem, a leaf catching light.

Stand in front of her botanical work and something happens to you. There is a moment — brief, involuntary — where you forget you are looking at art. The flowers don’t hang on a wall. They insist on themselves. They are alive in the way that very precise things sometimes are: because nothing has been left to chance.

Her mixed media work arrives like a different mood entirely — same steady hand, but the room has changed. An evocative portrait of a mango,and then around it: the bright, landscape of Indian pop culture. Film. Nostalgia. Colour that doesn’t whisper. And somewhere in all of it, a wink. A tongue firmly in cheek. Two worlds made to sit together — and that is Malini’s world.

You can see botanical art by — not as something on a wall, but as a focal point. A flower from the Thar Desert becomes a muse. Walking in a room feels like walking into a gallery.

[Botanical, Botanical Art, Malini Saigal, Artist, Desert Botanical]

ARTISTS AT KANER - For artist listening is her canvas. She listens to the mountains, the trees, the fallen twig, even t...
27/05/2026

ARTISTS AT KANER - For artist listening is her canvas. She listens to the mountains, the trees, the fallen twig, even the marks left behind. But this is not passing attention — she holds what she hears, carries it. Her art lives in that space between listening and holding.

Like a hymn that won’t leave you.

Two years after she hosted an art retreat at Kaner, an envelope arrived at my door. Inside: botanical prints made from the plants of the desert — her way of telling me she had been holding that, too.

Sapna Bhatia, Founder, Kaner Retreat

[Art Retreat, Artist, Botanical Prints, Nature, Hemangini Maharaul]

I have always been intrigued by Kabuli — a dish that has nothing to do with Kabul, and something to do with a loaf of br...
23/05/2026

I have always been intrigued by Kabuli — a dish that has nothing to do with Kabul, and something to do with a loaf of bread.

When commercial bread arrived in Jodhpur, the city absorbed it the way the desert absorbs rain — completely, and on its own terms. The sweet shops stuffed two slices of double roti with Mirchi Vadas. And somewhere in that moment, Kabuli was born.

One theory points to Pokar Sweet Home, not far from the Shanichar temple. Devotees would arrive after prayers, hungry and hopeful, asking for something filling. The owner, working with what was at hand — leftover bread, vegetables, paneer — fried it all together, tossed it through a spiced sauce and fragrant rice, and a dish appeared that had no name yet and no precedent. It moved quickly from that small shop into home kitchens and onto ceremonial feast tables.

The star was always the bread. It absorbs the masalas completely, turns golden and spiced and yielding — something between a crouton and a revelation. I remember as a child, digging into the kadai and stealing the fried bread pieces before anyone could catch me. Some things you just know are the best part.

A look at Zomato confirms Kabuli is in high demand across the city — and yet its provenance remains gloriously murky.

At Kaner, Kabuli is part of our modern Marwar menu — a table where we serve stories as much as food. Dishes in this culinary experience are an ode to the ingenuity of the people of Thar who have always known how to make everything from almost nothing.

Would love to hear more stories about the double roti 🙃

Sapna Bhatia, Founder, Kaner Retreat

The design language of the Thar Desert is rooted in restraint, resourcefulness and an instinctive sense of abundance. Ho...
22/05/2026

The design language of the Thar Desert is rooted in restraint, resourcefulness and an instinctive sense of abundance. Homes are built simply, using local earth, lime and wood, yet every object within them carries meaning and memory. Nothing is wasted — scraps of fabric are repurposed into quilts and textiles, old wood finds a second life, and objects are made to endure across generations. Important moments are marked through local craftsmanship: pattu textiles woven for marriages, pots and vessels shaped by village kumhars, pieces commissioned not for display, but for daily life.

At Kaner Retreat we have borrowed from this philosophy. Our spaces follow a rhythm of commissioning and conserving. Much of the furniture and many of the fixtures, including the chandeliers, are made from reclaimed materials and reworked by local craftsmen. Textiles are commissioned to local weavers and printers, carrying forward traditions that have long belonged to the Thar.

This approach extends to the landscape as well. Our wild garden is planted with native and endangered desert species, designed to survive almost entirely on monsoon rain rather than excessive irrigation. At Kaner, sustainability is not an aesthetic gesture, but an inherited way of living — shaped by the intelligence, scarcity and beauty of the desert.

Our 3 day TharUnplugged itinerary is designed for people who value slow travel, craft and storytelling. DM “TharUnplugged” and we will get in touch with you.

[TharUnplugged, Boutique hotel Jodhpur, Boutique Hotel Jaisalmer, Offbeat travel, Kaner Retreat ]

Get in touch with us

“In the Thar, summer belongs to the makers. While the heat empties the roads, it fills the homes — wool is spun, cloth i...
20/05/2026

“In the Thar, summer belongs to the makers. While the heat empties the roads, it fills the homes — wool is spun, cloth is woven, old things find new life. Women preserve the desert’s harvest, water bodies are deepened to catch every drop. At night, voices gather under a full moon for jagrans, music rising into the moonlight”. Dr Madan Meena

“And all through it, quietly, the plants are doing their own urgent work — releasing seeds to the wind, tucking them into the wings of passing birds and not missing any opportunity to disperse their seeds.As if they are in a race to save this world.” Somil Daga

At Kaner, like the inhabitants of Thar we spend these months in repair and rest.

“Becoming a living museum of the Thar Desert’s crafts was never a plan. It was an unfolding — drawn by the profound harm...
18/05/2026

“Becoming a living museum of the Thar Desert’s crafts was never a plan. It was an unfolding — drawn by the profound harmony between land, flora, fauna, and the communities who have shaped this desert for centuries” Sapna Bhatia, Founder, Kaner Retreat

Kaner is now home an extensive Thar Desert Pottery collection alongside textiles like camel belts, worn smooth with use and the stories they carry. Everywhere you look, a living tradition speaks back. And we are here to tell the stories.

[International Museum Day, Pottery,Textiles, living museum]

Address

Jodhpur Jaisalmer Highway
Jodhpur City
342023

Telephone

+919810203057

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