THE WESTERN GHATS

Deep blue skies, pine sap breezes, dollops of purple and gold splashed from a wildflower palette and the crackle of a wood fire on perpetual late autumn nights.




The British built their summer homes here, seeking what we might call "Colonial air-con". Because let's face it. Tamil Nadu can be as hot as hell, and even the plushet rooms cant cool you off as you wander the dust clouds on the plains. Solution? The lush mountains of the Western Ghats, offering some of the most welcome hill heat relief in India. Rising like an impassable bulwark of evergreen and deciduous tangle from the north of Mumbai to the tip of Tamil Nadu, the Western Ghats contain 27% of all India's flowering plants, 60% of its medicinal plants and an incredible array of endemic wilflife.Although its not just the air and lack of pollution that's refreshing, either-there's also a general acceptance of quirkiness and eccentricity in the hills that is hard to find in the lowlands.