Cool winter nights, a green monsoon and a hillside plot: Pune and the Mulshi ghats

Two climates inside one metropolitan area

In the city itself the India Meteorological Department's tables put the mean daily maximum near 38 °C in April and the mean January minimum at about 11 °C, with 800 to 850 mm of rain a year, most of it from June to September. That is a winter cold enough to want a cabin and a warm pool, and a hot April that wants a cold plant. A short drive west, the Sahyadri hills around Mulshi are on the windward side of the Western Ghats, so a hill plot is drawn for more rain than the city's figure. We treat a hill plot as a different climate from a Baner flat, and the layout says which one it was drawn for.

A hillside plot is a drainage problem first

Hill plots in basalt country come with retaining walls, stepped terraces and water that arrives from above in the monsoon. A pool or a cabin plinth that sits across the natural line of the water will dam it. We draw the swales, the retaining wall and the pool's overflow together, and send the sheet to the landscape architect and the structural consultant. A terrace that looks level in December can carry a stream in July.

Getting crates up a ghat road

• Which road reaches the plot, and what is its narrowest bend or its lowest bridge, for a truck of the delivery's length?
• Is a crane needed to lift the cabin or the glass from the road to the terrace, and where can it stand?
• Can the plot receive a delivery in the monsoon, or should the schedule avoid July and August?
• Are there village or estate rules about delivery hours on the access road?

Who commissions a suite around Pune

Weekend villas in the hills, boutique hotels in the valleys (about 6,800 branded hotel rooms in Pune, per Hotelivate), homes in Koregaon Park and Baner, and fitness and clinic operators in the city. The hill brief is design-led: a cabin that faces a view, a pool with a lake behind it. A glass-front sauna with a plunge pool beside it is a typical brief.

Permissions on hill plots: questions to ask

• Does the planning authority or the hill-station development rule for this plot regulate structures, height and setbacks on a slope?
• Is there a requirement for a drainage or soil report before a pool shell is cast?
• Does the estate or the resort association need to approve an outdoor heated structure?

These go on the drawing for the planning authority to answer.

Pune: two briefs, added up

The Pune calendar, month by month

A programme for a hill plot

Cabins in cool air: what changes

A cabin on a hill plot in a December night starts from a lower temperature than one in the plains, and the glass loses heat faster to the cold air outside. The heater is checked against the glass and the timer is set earlier; the first session of the evening takes the full 40 minutes or a little more. A warm pool beside the cabin is more than a luxury on those nights. It is the part of the circuit that makes the walk between the cabin and the cold pool bearable.

Six photographs we ask a hill-plot owner for

1. The top and the bottom of the slope, so that we see how water would cross the plot.
2. The retaining wall or the rock face nearest the proposed terrace.
3. The access road at its narrowest bend or its lowest bridge.
4. The nearest power pole or transformer, and the DB.
5. The place where rain leaves the plot.
6. The view the cabin's glass will face, since the cabin is drawn to it.