Roots and Resilience: A Conversation with Vanya Orr

Ramya Reddy: Vanya, it’s an honour to sit with you today. Your dedication to the Nilgiris, its people, and its heritage has been a guiding light for many of us who deeply love these mountains. As I walked through the shola forests this past week, I couldn’t help but think of the countless stories these landscapes hold—some of which you’ve helped preserve and bring to life. There’s a particular magic here, isn’t there? One that seems to draw us back, no matter where life takes us. I arrived in the Nilgiris nearly 20 years ago to study photography and quickly realized there was much more to the journey, and I know you understand that feeling well.

Vanya Orr: Thank you, Ramya. It’s lovely to hear how the Nilgiris have woven themselves into your life. The mountains have a way of calling us back, reminding us of the roots we didn’t even know we had. For me, it’s always been about listening to those stories—whether they come from the land, the people, or the silence in between.

Ramya: Absolutely. It’s like the land holds its breath, waiting for us to hear what it has to say. I found myself becoming more than just a photographer here. My work evolved into something that felt necessary—to document and preserve this region’s stories, beauty, and culture.

Vanya: That’s so important, Ramya. It is vital to bring back meaning and value to these traditions and art forms. People often lose touch with what’s crucial to their identity and culture, and your work helps reconnect them. Tarun (Chhabra) did incredible work in energizing these communities. When he began his work with the Todas, many of their traditions were vulnerable, but he inspired them to mend their temples physically and spiritually. His efforts helped sustain the richness of their cultural knowledge and pass it on to the younger generation.

Ramya: Vanya, your story is rich in history and personal discovery. I’m particularly fascinated by how you returned to the Nilgiris with your mother and decided to stay. Was there a specific moment during that journey that made you realize this was where you were meant to be?

Vanya: It wasn’t one single moment, but rather the entire journey felt like a series of doors opening. In 1994, I travelled with my mother to Bombay on my sixtieth birthday. She hadn’t returned since she was sent to school in England when she was six. The war broke out while they were in Europe, and she didn’t see her parents again until she was 11.

When she was around 80, she discovered she had some money she didn’t know about, and we encouraged her to have an adventure. She wanted to go back to Bombay to see the places she remembered from before she was six, a time she called her “magic time”. Although she was hesitant at first, we made the trip. I remember vividly, as we approached India in the early morning light, with the sun rising on one side and the moon setting on the other. It felt as though we were stepping through a gateway—like entering a portal into another world. That moment was transformative for both of us, though I had no idea where it would lead.

We retraced the steps my grandfather took when he returned to Bombay after proposing to my grandmother. We then caught the train down to Bangalore. [My grandmother had been a teacher at Bishop Cotton School in Bangalore and lived on Richmond Road with her friend.] We passed by stations filled with memories from their letters.

Ramya: That must have been a powerful experience for both of you.

Vanya: It indeed was.

Ramya: Your family’s history in the Nilgiris is fascinating. I’m curious: how did the Cinchona plantations impact your family’s legacy in the region?

Vanya: Yes, it was quite a journey. My twice-great grandfather came from Ireland in 1824 to join the army attached to the East India Company and fell in love with the Nilgiris and Wayanad. His sons followed him and established estates there. Though I hadn’t lived in the Nilgiris before, the connection ran deep in the family’s history.

My great-grandfather’s coffee estates there prospered initially but faced problems until the brief gold rush in the 1880s. When the promise of gold didn’t materialize, they lost much of what they had. Despite that, they paid off all their debts.

In the middle 1800s, the Indian government offered my grandfather a position managing the Dodabetta Cinchona Plantation. It was there that he and his wife raised their 12 children. The Cinchona plantation provided quinine, an essential treatment for malaria. Unfortunately, the discovery of synthetic quinine in the 1980s meant that the Cinchona market for the original product collapsed, a significant loss for the community.

Ramya: What happened after this significant collapse?

Vanya: After much initial discussion, in the 1980s, a Medicinal Herb Research Centre was set up which gave valuable research and documentation data relating to cultivation and oil distillation. However, this was closed down when the Forestry Department decided to clear the Cinchona trees and replace the Cinchona with eucalyptus as a more commercially viable venture. This degraded the entire landscape and left the community with no income and threatened with eviction due to the policy, at that time, to move out any people living in forest areas, as people living there would only contribute to their degradation.

When we arrived, the area was in shock—hundreds of acres of trees had been clear-felled. Years of rich development of high-altitude germplasm were lost, along with so much heritage and livelihood.

Ramya: What was it like for you to finally arrive in the Nilgiris, knowing your family’s deep history here?

Vanya: Although I hadn’t lived in India before, I grew up on stories of the Nilgiris. Later, when I lived in the village, I kept thinking about my great-grandmother, who loved her garden and sweet violets. Everything was overgrown and abandoned, but one day, as I was gardening, I found under a bush, a small clump of sweet violets. It was so affirming and for a moment, felt as though she was still there.

Ramya: Tell us about your upbringing in Wales—it sounds like you moved from one sacred landscape to another.

Vanya: I grew up on a wild farm in Wales, surrounded by an ancient landscape steeped in history, where some of the stones used to build Stonehenge were sourced. From an early age, this numinous land—with its sacred stones, trees, rivers, and hills—became my inner landscape, shaping my connection to the natural world. That deep bond with the earth is something I later rediscovered in the Nilgiris. But basically, I think it was my ancestors and my life journey that brought me here.

Ramya: And that connection led you to stay?

Vanya: Not initially. I loved the Nilgiris, though it hadn’t occurred to me to stay there long-term. But the people of Cinchona village, whose ancestors had a far connection to mine, were losing their homes and livelihoods. They told me, “You’re part of our story; you must help us.” I didn’t know the language, the hierarchy, how anything worked, or if I could do anything. So, I started trying to find ways to support them, connecting with people who could help.

I met a remarkable man while trying to understand what had happened in the area. His name was Krishna Kumar, and he was an absolute visionary—a remarkable District Forest Officer (DFO). I asked him about the situation, and he explained how they were at an impasse because, politically, they couldn’t shift the people out; one collector who supported him had already been transferred. “If you think of a way you can help, get back in touch with me,” he said.

I approached Jayanthi, the then-collector of the Nilgiris, and she said, “If you can do anything to help, it would be a huge burden off my back.” I was beginning to wonder if I could get involved with this, but I couldn’t see how.

So, I asked the villagers to give me a list of all the people in the village, including their names, ages, experiences, and what they would like to do. They returned the list, but the last column—where they were supposed to write their dreams—was empty.

Ramya: That’s heartbreaking.

Vanya: I told them, “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what your dreams are.” And they responded, “Madam, we can’t dream. We don’t have food for our children, our houses are in disrepair, we face harassment from the Forest Department, and our children are pulling up all the trees. We’ve spent all our money on lawyers. We can’t see any way out; nobody can.”

Something inside me just shifted. How do you have a future if you can’t dream? I realized I had made some kind of contract to be there. So, I stayed in my grandmother’s house, in the room where she died, for three days. I was trying to feel into the situation. I knew that if I stepped in, thinking I could “fix things,” it would all come crashing down around my ears. That I had to be sure it was, somehow, something I had come to do…part of my life contract.

But even after three days, I still couldn’t see a way forward, so I returned to England, keeping minimal contact with people.

However, when a Charity offered me money to return to check it out, I felt things were moving forward. I found an address someone had given me and sent a letter to FRLHT (Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions) in Bangalore explaining the situation. FRLHT was established to conserve and sustainably use India’s medicinal plant resources and to revitalize traditional health practices. They were trying to find ways forward for communities living in the forest who were in danger of eviction by the Forest Department.

Ten days later—unheard of then—I received a reply asking me to come to Ooty to meet with them and Krishna Kumar.

It was as if the universe had suddenly decided to move things forward. I went to Ooty, and in the DFO’s office, he and a director from FRLHT received me. Krishna Kumar said, “Vanya, you won’t have any validity or credibility as a foreigner and even less as a woman. I suggest you set up a women’s organization with the local women at Dodabetta, and we can develop a project to restore part of the old estate with medicinal plants.”

Ramya: When Krishna Kumar pointed out the potential challenges you might face, did it make you reconsider your approach? How did you build trust and credibility with the community despite these obstacles?

Vanya: It was a situation where everything was locked, and nobody could see a way out. But then, one thing changes, and suddenly, everything shifts. I think I just happened to be there when that change occurred. FRLHT was instrumental in helping communities at risk of losing their homes and livelihoods by integrating traditional knowledge systems with modern health practices. I had some experience in organic farming and nursing, so I helped with organic production. I asked Krishna Kumar and the FRLHT director, “If the women would be able to receive the same wages as the men for the same work?” and “It had to be organic.” At that time, organic wasn’t even in the market, so it was a new concept for them. They agreed.

The horticulture department surveyed all the cultivated areas in Nilgiris and declared them completely dead. The chemicals used destroyed any living organisms in the soil. It was like a hydroponic situation where you feed it chemicals and reap toxic, low-quality yield. Yet, many people were indifferent.

Ramya: That sounds incredibly difficult. How did you manage to support the community during this time?

Vanya: To develop this project, a contract was set up between the Forest Department, the Women’s NGO, and FRLHT. FRLHT funded the women’s wages and some project costs. I was able to get separate funding to support the NGO and project.

After a year or so, the Forest Department let me stay in one of the Forest Guard’s houses. I hadn’t brought much with me from England—no books, no music—because it just didn’t feel appropriate given the conditions the villagers were living in. I was sleeping on a mat, and I remember waking up one morning with a really bad cough and fever, to find half the village in my room, making tea, with children playing around. And they brought me a bed and a mattress!

Towards the end of the project, we had set up a market with the Spices Board, and the villagers were distilling oil—they were really good at it. They bottled, boxed, and sold it locally.

I thought this might be the end of my work because the people were doing well and managing independently. I returned to England and stayed back until after my mother passed away, and then I stayed another year.

During that year, I kept waking up at night, thinking about a woman I had held as she was dying. The image of the earth—dead and shocked by the environmental damage—kept coming to mind. Something about the land spoke to me profoundly as if it was reaching out from a distant past.

Eventually, I realized I had a connection to that place and its people from another lifetime. I discovered that I had been there before, during a time when patriarchy was starting to suppress matriarchal traditions. I was involved with a goddess temple there—a beautiful and sacred experience. Returning there felt like reconnecting with something very ancient and significant.

Ramya: Your life has been marked by visceral experiences with powerful coincidences. How did these experiences shape your decisions as you continued your work in the Nilgiris, especially when faced with challenges like funding and community needs?

Vanya: Yes, very visceral experiences that felt almost fated. They deeply strengthened my connection to the land and the people. When I returned for my second project, I remembered the young woman who had died and felt compelled to help not to fix things but to empower people to heal themselves and manage sometimes horrendous situations.

I was incredibly fortunate to have had the support of people who cared deeply about this land and its people. One such person was David Pople, whose help was instrumental in getting organic farming off the ground in the Nilgiris. Over the years, he supported tree planting, school gardens, and healthcare programmes, raising significant funds for those in need. His work lifted so many people up. David and Patricia, his wife, dedicated their lives to the Nilgiris, and their love for this place will always be part of its story. His passing has left me deeply bereft, but their legacy remains in the people and the land they cherished.

The success of our organic farming project, which people could no longer dismiss, led to creating a women’s organization focused on healing people and the earth. The idea was to replicate this success in other villages, providing women with tools of resilience. However, when I sought support from the trustees, they had questions about funding. At the time, I was living on emergency credit with no financial backup. Although a Quaker organization had initially funded me, I had no plan for future funding, which ultimately limited the support I could receive.

That was a powerful reminder that vision often comes before finance. People tend to think you need money first, but sometimes, having a clear vision attracts the necessary resources. It’s not just about finances or lists in accountants’ books; it’s about connecting with people’s lives, their happiness, and their creativity—much like what you’re doing. So, when the trustees said they couldn’t support me due to funding, I just went on. I met someone running a biodynamic centre for growing vanilla near Mysore, he offered me the chance to run a nursery up in the hills. We drove around looking for land, and I felt a strong connection to a particular place.

One of the trustees from the original women’s organization had some land by that road which he rented to us. This led to setting up training programmes for both women and men, for organic farming and a women’s health programme. I then moved into a room over a cowshed in the village, where a friend and I made some basic living arrangements.

Eventually, a wonderful woman named Jenni Sangster reached out. She was a craniosacral therapist, a professional nurse working in a hospital neonatal ward in the U.K . She left her job to set up a village Primary Health Care programme with support from the funders, and I began connecting with some of the village people and young individuals interested in their cultural heritage.

Ramya: I’ve always felt a profound connection to the earth and have sensed energy fields in my own way. I’ve noticed it in indigenous communities worldwide—they seem to have an innate intuition for selecting sacred lands, often linked to these energy fields. When you first became aware of these energy lines in the Nilgiris, especially drawing from your experiences in Wales, what was that like for you?

Vanya: I had heard stories about Shiva at Rangasami Peak, where he was said to take three steps south or southwest to visit Parvati. A pool there was believed to be Parvati’s bath, and some footprints were thought to be hers. This got me thinking about the energy lines in the Nilgiris, much like ley lines, which can sometimes become fractured. There was something amiss between Rangasami Peak and another significant location where the Goddess Hethe festival occurs. We started to identify key spots in the landscape.

Ramya: That’s just fascinating. How did you discover these spots in the landscape?

Vanya: I’m a dowser, so I can track energy. A local young man from the community and Jenni (Sangster) helped me too.

Ramya: Did the villagers understand the significance of what you were doing?

Vanya: I didn’t talk about it much, but I did tell them they were killing the Goddess by poisoning the earth and, in doing so, poisoning themselves and their children. I also said you are the people who can now heal the Grandmother and Mother Earth. But I couldn’t speak about my personal involvement because it would have been improper as an outsider. Yet, many of them had great affection for me, and even adopted me as a member. I was so fond of them and loved their stories. Some stories had never been shared before because the younger generation were beginning to lose touch with their traditions.

Ramya: Yes, I’ve seen this too—when stories start flowing, they gush out.

Vanya: Exactly. There was one lovely time when I returned from a Benedictine ashram near Tiruppur for Christmas. An Irish fiddle player had come along with me. She played Irish dance music and traditional songs, and I suggested she share her music with some of the indigenous communities in the Nilgiris. We visited the Droog communities of Kurumbas and Irula with her fiddle. At first, there seemed to be no one around, but then people slowly emerged, and their boys brought out their drums. An old man, sitting on a step, began singing—it was like hearing something from the dawn of time. It was such a moment. Such a privilege.

Ramya: Was it also around this time that you started working with the other indigenous people?

Vanya: Yes, I had been visiting their temples and meeting with them. One day, I was invited to a Toda funeral—a life-changing experience. The connection they had with the earth and the spirit of the person who had died was incredibly sacred. I wanted to be part of that and learn from it.

I was introduced to their embroidery, almost forgotten when I arrived. Only a few elderly women knew how to do it, and their eyesight was failing. It encouraged us to think about setting up an income generating project with sewing and knitting for the village women. The Toda embroidery was carried forward by the remarkable Vasamalli and another Ooty professional called Lydia who both worked to preserve and develop it.

Ramya: What led you to establish The Earth Trust?

Vanya: As I continued my work, I realized the need for a more structured approach to support the communities and the environment. That’s how The Earth Trust was born, starting from a simple cow shed. We set up programmes across nearly 200 villages before I left, focusing on sustainable agriculture, health, and education. As the organization expanded, I had to shift more into administrative work, managing funding and regulations. I found myself missing the grassroots involvement that had originally inspired me to start this journey. I missed the root-level involvement that had initially drawn me to this work.

Ramya: What was that transition like for you?

Vanya: It was difficult. In 2012, Other people took over, and by 2013, I realized that Admin was not what I was best served to do. My work so needed to be aligned with the village people. The politics and administration of a large project were not my strength or my joy.

Ramya: And what about the Nilgiris now? How have you felt about the sustainable agriculture practices there since you left?

Vanya: Unfortunately, many of the projects couldn’t survive long term. Without the same level of support and experience, many people gave up. But some kept going out of love for the land. They weren’t driven by money but by a deep connection to the earth. Seeing those who continued the work is so inspiring because of their courage and dedication.

Ramya: Your connection to the land and the people has been central to everything you’ve done.

Vanya: Yes, it’s all about the love for the land and the people. One of the things I loved most was being with the indigenous people and playing a part in restoring their indigenous knowledge of medicinal herbs and the village health project with the midwives and village health workers. I’ve been privileged to be part of their lives and their stories.

Ramya: What advice would you give to someone aspiring to contribute to sustainable farming or community development in rural areas?

Vanya: I truly believe that we make a spiritual contract before we come to Earth—we choose the challenges and desolations we’ll face. It’s all part of our growth, our learning. Life is like a powerful spiritual school, and every difficulty we encounter teaches us something we need to know, whether it’s compassion, healing, or just understanding the deeper truths of our existence.

In these troubled times, it might seem like there’s a lot of desolation, but I see it as fate. It’s not random—it’s part of our journey. When you’re doing your work, whether in sustainable farming, community development, or anything else, you have to move from your heart. That’s where your true strength lies. I’m 90 now, but I feel as strong as I did at 70, and I believe that’s because I’ve always stayed connected to the land and to the love that people carry for one another. Everything else—money, success—will follow if you’re on the right path and true to your purpose.

Ramya: Vanya, I’m at a loss for words to express how deeply touched I am by your stories and the warmth you’ve extended today, especially the things you mentioned sharing for the first time. Thank you for your time and the gift of your wisdom.

Vanya: Ramya, blessings to you. Thank you.