Mountains are on sale in India

Ranikhet, Uttarakhand: Advertising professional Ajay last month drove 350km from his home in Gurgaon to Ranikhet, a hill station that offers breathtaking views of western peaks of the Himalayas and is famous for British-era churches, colonial bungalows, Asia’s highest golf course and mountains covered with tall pine and oak trees.

At the peak of monsoon, Ranikhet in September is not an ideal holiday destination and tourist season begins only in October. But Ajay is not a typical tourist. He is chasing a childhood dream of living on the mountains. “I want to build a house on the rock,” says 36-year-old Ajay who has been meticulously planning an early retirement from his 13-hour grueling routine of the advertising industry. His property agent in Ranikhet is a doctor who abandoned his medical practice to dabble in India’s fast-growing lucrative holiday homes market. Being an early entrant to the market, Dr Sanjay Grover today owns hundreds of square metres of land on the mountain sides, mostly located at 6,000 ft above the sea level. “This is where my first holiday cottages would come up,” says Dr Grover pointing to a roadside hill overlooking a vast mist-covered valley. “From here, you can touch the clouds and watch the Himalayas,” he proudly adds, looking at Nanda Devi, the second highest mountain in India and revered as patron goddess of the Himalayas.

At roughly Rs 2,700 per square metre, such type of land in Ranikhet is dirt cheap, well-connected by roads and offers stunning 360 degree views round the year. Yet Ajay is not impressed: “I want a secluded corner on the mountains that promises solitude, greenery and where I can hear the river flowing.” For the next five days, he travelled to nearby mountain towns and villages of Mukteshwar, Sona Pani, and Padampuri in search of a peaceful retreat.

Ajay is not the only one who is trying to escape from India’s dirty, congested and polluted cities bursting at the seams. After having secured a city home to live or to invest, the growing upper middle class is heading to the mountains in India’s north, west and south in their quest for peace and tranquility. With a price range of just over a million to five million rupees, studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom apartments and luxury villas are on sale in Haridwar, Nainital, Bhimtal and Kasauli, all in the northern states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Most properties promise power-back up, running water, road connectivity and the developers in these states are targeting upper middle class people who would like to flaunt a cottage or a holiday villa on the mountains.

Despite the growing demand, construction on the northern mountains is still at a limited scale and cottage communities are coming up in small clusters, possibly due to high construction cost, harsh terrain and government regulations. But in western parts of India, construction activity on the mountains has taken a whole new dimension. Take the example of Lavasa, India’s first purposefully built mountain city located barely three hours from Mumbai. When fully built, Lavasa will be home to around 300,000 residents and over two million tourists are expected to visit every year. Designed by American architecture firm HOK, Lavasa project boasts of thousands of villas and apartments, several hotels, retail facilities, sports and entertainment complexes, water bodies, schools, colleges, biotech parks and much more. Developers of Lavasa promise live-work-learn-and-play lifestyle in the mega project that is divided in to five sprawling towns. Built on the Western Ghats, Lavasa will eventually occupy seven hills of picturesque Mose valley, covering over 25,000 acres of land and will have around 25,000 apartments and villas.

Since its inception, Lavasa has attracted attention of environment regulators and activists. Last year, Maharashtra government filed a criminal complaint against Lavasa Corporation for allegedly violating Environment Protection Act. The complaint was filed only after Bombay High Court took note of the alleged violations. Social activists Anna Hazare and Medha Patkar have criticised the project saying it will adversely impact water resources in Pune district. But this opposition by environment activists and intervention by courts is unlikely to halt the progress of the city. The federal ministry of environment has already cleared Lavasa’s first phase Dasve township that covers 1,700 acres and includes 600 villas and other commercial facilities.

Down south, Mysore, ranked the cleanest city in India, is another destination popular among the rich from Bangalore and other nearby urban hotspots. Next is Ooty, fondly called the queen of hill stations, where expensive villas ranging from six million to thirty million rupees are considered a good bargain due to the city’s location in Tamil Nadu state’s Nilgiri hills or the blue mountains.

All this construction has huge environmental and social implications for the local communities who feel isolated and ignored in the development-hungry India, and developers know that India’s urban rich have too much surplus cash to be sitting idle in banks. Implications of this construction on the hills are far, wide and visible. In Ranikhet and other surrounding hill stations, landslides due to construction activity are common. Bare, brown mountain sides and garbage dumps are slowly replacing lush green cover of the hills. From Ranikhet to Mukteshwar, several small garbage dumps with plastic and other household waste are a growing sign of the pitfalls of this mindless urbanisation of the mountains. Land ceilings exist in some states but developers and property agents have ten different ways to dodge these regulations.

Popular hill stations for holiday homes

Ranikhet, Kasauli, Bhimtaal, Nainital, Naukuchiyataal, Ooty, Lavasa, Lonavala, Khandala, Mysore

Check before buying

Land ceiling regulations for outsiders

Source of water

Electricity

Construction approvals

Cost of construction

Title deeds