In exchange for all those disposable double-incomes, glitzy malls and EMI-enabled lifestyles, modern living extracts a heavy price. It takes us away from who we are. It reduces us to a functioning component — a faceless worker for an enterprise and cause that eludes us.

So we like to run away for a little while, as frequently as we can. To places that restore us to ourselves.

Places like Kuchesar and Kikar Lodge....

(From top)a view of the Kuchesar Fort, simple elegance marks the fort’s interiors

Kuchesar

It’s only 80km out of Delhi, down NH24. You drive deep into Jat country, past Bulandshehr and Hapur. Drive 7km off the highway and you reach the portals of an 18th century fortress. Kuchesar was once a jagir that encompassed 365 villages stretching from Meerut to Aligarh.

The country here is the copybook village idyll. Women churning out butter and chaach, children swinging from the boughs of a mango tree; tall, handsome Jat men atop their tractors — at least that’s what they do when they’re not walking the ramp in Delhi’s fashion shows.

Warm-hearted and rough-speaking, they’ll say rude things about your sister and mother as an expression of affection. Very quickly you begin to feel your city-self melt away, like ice under a bright sun. You discover a hitherto unsuspected appetite for thick, stuffed parathas slathered in butter. You remember how to laugh and how to climb a tree.

The fort has absorbed the relaxed, easy-going air of the countryside that surrounds it. At dawn, peacocks cry out hysterically and flights of parrots swoop among the ruins in the unrestored part of the fortress. Breezy nights take you back to those old b/w Hindi movies where fluffy clouds scudded across the moon, while mellow songs played and the breeze stirred tendrils of hair around the incandescent face of Madhubala. Kuchesar has the power to make you believe in things you don’t believe in anymore.

The Kuchesar family has lived here for 13 generations, which is why this feels like the real thing. Vinokshi Singh, the matriarch of the family makes the most delicious pickles, and guests invariably go back with a bottle or two tucked into their bags.

Food is a serious matter at the fort and for chef Mahesh, it is an article of faith. To partake is an act of worship. The dinner table, is laid in a candle-lit pavilion atop the tower. And as you put away quantities of cold gazpacho, followed by roast chicken with potatoes, and spinach fettucine — Mahesh hovers around directing the ceremony like a presiding priest.

A morning is best spent taking a ride through the village just beyond the ramparts, in old Om Prakash’s bullock-cart. Om Prakash used to be the groom when the family kept horses. Now he cares for the three buffaloes and one cow that keep the fort supplied with milk. As you trundle through the stone-paved pathways, shops on either side are starting to open.

The local banias are sweeping the shopfront, reading their newspaper or lighting agarbattis. Over a huge glass of milky tea, punctuated by many imprecations regarding your sister, they will tell you that farmland costs Rs 2 lakh a bigha, sugarcane sells for Rs 500 a quintal, and that the sarpanch got into a scuffle with the daroga over a woman. You are as far as you can possibly be from the world of cell-phones and board-meetings.

Fact file: Access by road from Delhi, 80km down NH 24. Turn right at Kuchesar Chowk Chopala and then another 8km down.

Tariffs: Rs 2,000 for a Double; Rs 3,000 for a Suite.

Meal rates per head: Rs 150 for breakfast; Rs 300 for lunch & dinner.

For reservations: 053736-273038, 273039 (M) 09837003084

(From top)the poolside and cottages at Kikar Lodge; a guest meditates at Kikar

Kikar Lodge

Kikar Lodge is a resort and spa hidden in a forested fold of the lower Shivaliks in eastern Punjab. It is set in 1,800 acres of privately owned forest in a place called Nurpur Bedi, making it possibly India’s first private wildlife reserve. So dense is the deer population, that even a casual stroll in the vicinity of the resort is likely to bring you face to face with a startled sambhar or two.

There are no big cats, elephants or bears in these tracts, which makes it perfectly safe to walk deep into the forest or do a night safari in an open jeep. Safety is possibly the USP here.

At Kikar Lodge it is possible to do a night jungle safari — an experience not permitted in most Indian sanctuaries. By starlight, the forest is a Kiplingesque landscape of low muddy cliffs, and eyes gleaming at you from out of the darkness as herd of sambhar crop quietly on the undergrowth. Wild boar and smaller animals move along the dry water channels that form during the monsoons.

By day, there’s bird watching aplenty besides two swimming pools and plenty of beer for serious unwinding.

Kairali has been imported from far-off Cochin and grafted onto Nurpur Bedi. So there you are in the Punjab backwaters, lying on a wooden trestle slathered in oil, while two pairs of strong hands administer an authentic abhyangam. “Prezzure ok?”, you will be asked with the sweetest Malayali smile. The spa runs full-fledged Ayurveda therapeutic treatments in conjunction with yoga, under the supervision of an in-house doctor. So for Chandigarh wallahs, Kerala is only two hours. By road.

But just to ensure you don’t miss out on the flavours of Punjab, the estate includes a dairy farm, where fat Holstein heifers keep you supplied with fresh milk, frothy lassi, and paneer.

When they were boys, proprietor Amarinder Singh and his brothers went to Doon School. Vacations were spent here at Nurpur Bedi, exploring the jungle, cooling off in the tube-well, and fishing in the river. A simple, wholesome boyhood experience that they are now attempting to package.

The jungle tracts are bordered by the village Kangar, the archetypal Punjabi village of a Yash Johar movie — green wheat fields against a backdrop of the slate blue Shivaliks; pretty girls with bright dupattas covering their head as they lead their cows; travelling merchants from Jammu & Kashmir opening out their bundles of shawls, walnuts and raisins while a gaggle of women gather around; tall sardars, draped in rough blankets roar by on motorcycles, their beards whipping back in the wind.

More and more, Indian travellers are moving away from mainstream hotels and seeking out experiences that are a counterpoise to the soulless life of the city. Seeking out the offbeat or the nostalgic. Kikar Lodge is both of these. Here amidst the kikar and babool there are hidden pathways that may lead you back to yourself.

Fact file: By road from Delhi to Chandigarh (250km), driving time is four hours. Chandigarh to Kikar Lodge (70km) takes 2 hrs.

For bookings contact: G-77, Sujan Singh Park, N.Delhi — 3. Tel.: 011-24618780, (M) 98101 95002

Tariff: Cottages Rs 5,500 for a couple including three meals; suites Rs 7,500 per couple including three meals.

Photographs of Kuchesar by author. Kikar photographs courtesy Kikar Lodge