An Environment friendly Castle

The proud owner of this castle, Jyotin Gandhi an entrepreneur who is into mining and exports is from the Gandhi Family of Hubli, Karnataka (around 400 km from Bangalore).

A businessman and a nature lover! That’s one deadly combination and a rare breed to find, built his mansion on a total area of 90,000 sqft or two acres, with built-up area just about 10% of the total land.

90% area is flooded with lush green trees and lovely plants, two ponds with lotus flowers, ducks, frogs, birds and a lot of other pets around makes this place almost a dense jungle.


Jyotin Gandhi in his 1937-model Morris Minor

Jyotin Gandhi says he loved the woods and hence chooses this place near the woods. The architecture is so finely looked into and the abundance of light and air is utilized to its max, in such a way that usage of fans and lights are minimal during day time.

A few specialties like Howdah converted into a tea table; a Terracotta door from Rajasthan, a century-old horse cart that has a built-in jewel box, shows his interest for antiques. A world traveler he has a large collection of various artifacts from across the globe which includes a wall-mounted coffee grinder from Brazil.


His grand-kids enjoy a ride on the toy train that has a live steam engine running on coal though the engine takes an hour to fire. To add-up there are two circular tracks, a miniature railway station and two railway over bridges

“The houses look like stone castles. They are structures of stone, wood and burnt mud tiles, surrounded by gardens. The all weather mansions have long wind tunnels and towers to flush in cool, fresh air. The houses have wood flooring and roofing. The houses are built on a small piece of a huge site. The rest of the site is a large, natural garden. Apart from handpicked species of plants, the garden has ducks and pigeons that move around the fountains and ponds” - TOI

As usual TOI has come up with this lovely piece of article which I thought will share with you all. A neat and creative write-up by Rishikesh Bahadur Desai from Times News Network

(info and pic from TOI)*