Going with the Natural Flow of the Land

Bikramjit Ray May 05, 2016

How did the idea of Queens Meadows come to you?

As I told you earlier, Queens Meadows came up with the need for sustainable and responsible tourism in the mountains. When I visited Ranikhet in 2007, I was pained to see concrete structures coming up as hotels with pathetic infrastructure. Unlike Himachal (Pradesh), Uttarakhand is not very open to tourism as yet. If you compare both of them, we are at least 20 years behind Himachal (Pradesh).

I saw a need. I thought Ranikhet could be a destination. So, I thought of doing something over here.

What were the challenges you have faced while building the resort?

The journey has been quite tedious. When we decided to do something in Ranikhet, we were a construction company working for the likes of HCC at Lavasa. Acquiring land in the mountains is the biggest challenge. We somehow narrowed on this piece of property and for two and a half long years it was lot of litigation. That had to be overcome. Government permissions had to be in place. Finances had to be in place. Doing a project in hostile terrain had so many challenges.

Every piece of material has been hauled up either by people or on mules. There has been no vehicles or machines used in the property to make this property. It is all down to human effort and grit.

How have you followed your philosophy of eco friendly sustainability?

First of all, the very concept of the place is in rhythm with nature. We have not even cut and filled any piece of land to make way for a structure. The topography is exactly the same as it was. Even if you go to our centre court, it is as rustic as we found it.

When we were conceptualising this, we actually thought of building something that belonged here. We wanted it to look like it was always here. The idea came to us to do stone, wood and glass villas. Stone is native to here. All over Kumaon you see houses with slate tiles and stone walls. We used more than 250 truck loads of stone, all brought to the property by mule. The challenge was where to source 250 truckloads. Luckily, we found a contractor while going through the cantonment area, who was constructing new barracks and offered the stone and wood etc from the demolished barracks which dated back to the British Raj. We bought all the barracks and transported all the material from the cantonment.

The idea was not to make it a very crowded area. We have 10 acres on which we have just eight villas and seven tents.

Do you have any plans for expansion?

We may not expand it to a 50 room property ever. The idea is to be sustainable. Grow your own food. I envision a time when guests would walk through the property and pick up things from the kitchen garden and ask our chefs to prepare it for them.

Has this made you a kind of expert on constructing resorts in Uttarkhand?

Its a learning curve and I am learning every day. If and when I do a next project, it will be a little easier.

Photo: Sanjay and Sanjana Sarin at their resort in Ranikhet, Uttarkhand.