NEW DELHI/PATNA: A woman’s family once said, “Chalo ladka dekhne chale” – (let’s go see a boy for our daughter’s marriage). But halfway through, they turned back, defeated by the lack of a proper road to the village.
“How can we settle our daughter here?” her parents asked.This is the reality in Barwan Kalan, a remote village in Bihar.
Tucked away in the Kaimur hills, the village has a recognition that has brought little celebration and plenty of incredulity.The village is known as the “hamlet of bachelors” due to “the absence of services and infrastructure,” and no marriages have taken place there in over 50 years, according to the rural.tourism.gov.in website in 2022.
'Hamlet of Bachelors'In 2022, a resident, Nand Lal Singh, the panchayat mukhiya of Barwan Kalan, told TOI, “The information on the website is completely misleading."Speaking from Bhabua, the district headquarters, Singh clarifies that while the village has many unmarried men, the reason is far from any romantic legend—it is the lack of basic infrastructure.“Out of the 14 villages in the panchayat, Barwan Kalan, Barwan Khurd, Sarwandag, Surkur Khurd, and Tori have the highest number of bachelors because there is no motorable road, no drinking water, and unreliable electricity.
It is difficult to live here, let alone host marriages,” he explains.
Close to Tourism, Far from DevelopmentThe village sits approximately 10 km from the recently inaugurated Maa Mundeshwari Wildlife Eco Park and Telhaar Kund Waterfall, an ecotourism facility opened by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.Yet while visitors may access these attractions with relative ease, Barwan Kalan remains largely isolated.
The nearest hospital and police station are 45 km away, and during the summer months, handpumps run dry, forcing women to walk nearly a kilometre to fetch water.“Whenever there is a function, villagers prepare a temporary kutcha road so that vehicles can reach us,” Singh says. Solar panels provide intermittent electricity, but lights fail frequently, and mobile networks are nearly nonexistent. “Even our cellphones don’t work properly,” he adds.Survival Over ComfortFor residents like Pappu Kumar, who lives in Bhabua but hails from Barwan Kalan, daily life remains challenging. “Men have to migrate for work because farming depends on rain, which is unreliable in this hilly terrain. If water is needed for any function, a tanker is the only source, and we must prepare a makeshift path for it. Solar lights are a personal investment; we buy them ourselves,” he says.
Local frustrations are compounded by the perception that the village has been added to the tourism list for the wrong reasons.Struggles That Are Not NewTOI accounts from as early as 2009 describe the village’s peculiar predicament. At the time, septuagenarian Bulai Ram, living alone, illustrated the challenges of daily life with a simple anecdote: his dhoti had gone unchanged for a week, and with his brother away and sister-in-law unable to assist, he had no one to help.
The hamlet sits atop a peak of the Kaimur hills. Access to the villages requires negotiating thorny fields and treacherous rocks on foot—a journey that can take four hours.Among roughly 200 tribal families living here, over 115 men remain unmarried, largely due to geographic isolation, TOI reported in 2009.“The hot-blooded males of the village have been left high and frustrated,” the report notes. Without a road, hospitals, or schools, social life is limited.
Pregnant women and the sick are ferried in blankets, often with tragic consequences, while the local anganwadi doubles as a cattle shelter due to lack of infrastructure.
Marriage is further complicated by tradition. Local customs prevent marrying within the same village, and arranging weddings in the foothills is arduous. Baraats often turn back midway, unwilling to climb the difficult terrain. Some men, desperate to marry, have resorted to trickery.
Uddhal Yadav, for instance, moved to the foothills to conceal his village of origin from prospective in-laws, revealing the truth only after the wedding rituals.“Many marriages are fixed but not solemnised,” Munna Ram told TOI in 2009. “The groom’s party often refuses to undertake the journey up the hill. I, however, went personally to bring my bride down while others waited in the foothills," he added.For many men, leaving is not an option. Rajagiri Singh laments, “My fields and ancestral property are here.
How can I leave them? Five marriage negotiations have broken down. My hopes have too.”
“We doubt anyone will come to mourn a couple of rocks, let alone us.”
Even in 2025, challenges persist.A telephonic conversation with a local resident, Pappu Kumar, revealed that while some improvements have been made, the village still lacks basic infrastructure. “There’s only one BSNL network that works. Solar panels provide electricity, but there is no light at night,” the resident said.However, Kumar also said that the situation has improved in recent times, with more bachelors getting married in the village. Barwan Kalan’s story reflects a paradox. While the village may attract tourists’ curiosity as the “hamlet of bachelors,” its residents continue to navigate the hardships of inaccessibility, unreliable water and power supply, and minimal government support.For villagers like Chandradev and his peers, the hope remains that roads, electricity, and water will eventually arrive—not for tourism accolades, but for the basic dignity of everyday life. “We want what everyone else has,” he says simply. “We want to live here, marry, and raise families, without having to struggle just to survive.”Until then, Barwan Kalan remains a testament to resilience, its inclusion on a government website a bittersweet symbol of a village caught between isolation and recognition.