Hill station

Mount Abu, Rajasthan,India

Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh, India

Antsirabe, Madagascar

Ifrane, Morocco

Tea plantations in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India

Bandarban District, Bangladesh

Manali, Himachal Pradesh, India

File:Munnar hillstation kerala.jpg

Munnar, Kerala, India

Garut, Indonesia

Ciwidey, Bandung, Indonesia

Puncak, West Java, Indonesia

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

Nainital, Uttarakhand, India

Baguio City, Philippines

Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka

Da Lat, Vietnam

Genting Highlands, a hill station founded after the independence of Malaysia.

Patnitop, Jammu and Kashmir, India

A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia, but also in Africa (albeit rarely), for towns founded by European colonial rulers as refuges from the summer heat, up where temperatures are cooler. In the Indian context most hill stations are at an altitude of approximately 1,000 to 2,500 metres (3,500 to 7,500 feet); very few are outside this range.

History

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Hill stations in India were established for a variety of reasons. After the revolt of 1857 the "British sought further distance from what they saw as a disease-ridden land by escape to the Himalayas in the north and Nilgiri Hills in the south", a pattern which started even before 1857. Other factors included anxieties about the dangers of life in India, among them "fear of degeneration brought on by too long residence in a debilitating land." The hill stations were meant to reproduce the home country, illustrated in Lord Lytton's statement about Ootacamund, in the 1870s, "such beautiful English rain, such delicious English mud."^[1] Shimla was officially made the "summer capital of India" in the 1860s and hill stations "served as vital centers of political and military power, especially after the 1857 revolt."^[2]^:2

Dane Kennedy, following Monika Bührlein, identifies three stages in the evolution of hill stations in India: high refuge, high refuge to hill station, and hill station to town. The first settlements started in the 1820s, primarily as sanitoria. In the 1840s and 1850s, there was a wave of new hill stations, with the main impetus being "places to rest and recuperate from the arduous life on the plains". In the second half of the 19th century, there was a period of consolidation with few new hill stations. In the final phase, "hill stations reached their zenith in the late nineteenth century. The political importance of the official stations was underscored by the inauguration of large and costly public-building projects."^[2]^:14

List of hill stations in the world

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Most hill stations are located in Asia:

Africa

Asia

Bangladesh

Burma

Cambodia

Bokor Hill Station

China

Hong Kong

Victoria Peak

India

Hundreds of hill stations are located in India. The most popular hill stations include:

Indonesia

Iraq

Malaysia

Cameron Highlands
Fraser's Hill
Genting Highlands—founded following Malaysian independence
Maxwell Hill
Penang Hill

Nepal

Village of Namche Bazaar in Nepal

Pakistan

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Punjab

Sindh

Balochistan

Ziarat

Gilgit Baltistan

Philippines

Baguio

Sri Lanka

Nuwara Eliya

Syria

Vietnam

Europe

Cyprus

Platres

Oceania

Australia

Mount Macedon

References

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Bibliography

Crossette, Barbara. The Great Hill Stations of Asia. ISBN 0-465-01488-7.
Kennedy, Dane. The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Full text, searchable). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ISBN 0-520-20188-4, ISBN 978-0520201880.

External links

Booknotes interview with Barbara Crossette on The Great Hill Stations of Asia, August 23, 1998.

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[1]

[2]

Hill station

Contents

History

List of hill stations in the world

Africa

Madagascar

Morocco

Nigeria