The Great Hill Stations of Asia

by Barbara Crossette

For the European and later the American colonial soldier, the civil administrator and his clerk, the merchant, the missionary, and the families who followed them east of Suez, daily life was less a matter of advancing the glory of God or empire than a battle for survival against sunstroke, dysentery, cholera, malaria, and a host of other unnamed deadly fevers as well as little-examined, vague indispositions that in hindsight would probably be diagnosed as clinical symptoms of depression. Later, medical scholars coined a phrase for it: “tropical fatigue.” Pity John Ouchterlony. By the time they brought him to the healing hills, it was too late. On April 29, 1863, Lieutenant Colonel Ouchterlony of the Royal Madras Engineers died of “jungle fever brought on by exposure while in the execution of his duty,” says a memorial plaque—one of many—at St. Stephens Church in Ootacumund, a British colonial town in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. Others were luckier. They got to Ooty in time and survived the perilous East, at least for another season, by rising above its pestilential lower reaches. On litters, in chairs, on ponies, by foot if they were able, Europeans in Asia nearly two centuries ago began climbing into the hills in search health, relaxation, and sometimes their sanity.They called the refuges they created—little European towns carved from rocky mountainsides or nestled in the meadows of high plateaus—”hill stations.” Colonialism came and went, but the hill stations remain. They are no longer European, but most have not lost their unique appeal. After all, the plains still fry in the sun and the cities of Asia have only grown larger, noisier, and more polluted. New generations of Asians are rediscovering hill stations and turning them into tourist resorts with luxury hotels and golf courses. Hill stations still cling to their history, and the story they tell reveals a lot about how colonial life was lived. They also have a future, if environmental damage and overpopulation do not destroy the forested hills and mountains that gave them their spectacular settings and pleasant climates.Hill stations began to appear, albeit at different times in different places, when the era of initial exploration and conquest was waning, wives and families arrived in substantial numbers, and life had become a bit more routine. By then, colonial societies could take stock of their longer-term needs and, regrettably, look for ways to build walls around themselves to shut out native populations. Through the age of European mercantile empire building and colonialism that began with the turn of the sixteenth century, hill stations were largely a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Most were established between 1820 and 1885, though the Dutch were early with Bogor in Indonesia and the French came later with Dalat in Vietnam and the Americans with Baguio in the Philippines. The British themselves built a second generation of hill stations after World War I in southeast Asia.In early 1997, Barbara Crossette set off on a journey of several months to see Asia anew through its great hill stations, moving from mountain to mountain from Pakistan, across India, to Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. A year earlier, Crossette had made a trip to the highlands of Indonesian Sumatra, the land of the Minangkabau and Batak people, where the idea of this kind of journey came together.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Asia, India

259 pages, Hardcover

First published March 26, 1998

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part colonial history, part modern, postcolonial travelogue, this book was an unexpected pleasure. Journalist Crossette combines accounts of imperial life in the hill stations - those European-built higher elevation towns where colonials, and sometimes entire governments, moved to escape the heat and malaria of the plains - with her own experiences traveling for work and pleasure. She examines outposts in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The text is enlivened with personal opinions and details, such as Benazir Bhutto's frumpy clothing, the frigidness of her room at the near-empty Savoy Hotel in Simla, India, and the choking stinkiness of a cab whose driver boasted he had spent the night in it in order to pick her up more promptly. Her bibliography is quite good. The one thing lacking which the book could have benefited from is several good maps.

[Jules · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got told I was doing some consulting work for one of the towns in this book and I’m a big fan of travel writing/general social history so thought I’d give it a gander. Big mistake. Miss girl, 1998 is wayyyy too late to be trotting out racist tropes of south Asians who can’t take care of their own buildings or unfettered imperial nostalgia for the old ways.

It’s not like I’m wokeatron 2000 or anything; I know some of this is just the nature of the beast with old travel writing but it’s egregious. More importantly it also prevents greater engagement with old myths of “going tropo” and what imperial engagement actually meant for these places; instead we’re treated to b-tech lonely Planet X Robert Byron wannabe slop.

[Bruce Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review will focus solely on Dalat, the Vietnamese town in the book. As someone who has lived in the town for eight years, it looks like a reasonably deep dive of the history and a skim of the city.
By the way, if you really want to investigate Dalat, this goes much deeper: Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina by Eric T. Jennings.
Staying at the Palace Hotel is an exercise in separation. It has one of the coolest views of the city, but it stands in glorious isolation.
Nguyen Thi Thi, is mentioned

for the sin of creativity.

But the female architect who designed Dalat's 'Crazy House' turned creativity into a massive tourist draw.
The train trip to Trai Mat is a mere four miles or seven kilometers! It is one of the most absurd train journeys on earth.
Bao Dai's palace number three is mentioned, but number one is more exciting. Imagine having a secret trapdoor in your bedroom, so you can escape through a tunnel and board a waiting helicopter! When Bao Dai lived there, Dalat served as a capital city for French Indo-China. None of these things were mentioned.

[Zander · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were parts of this I liked a lot, but mostly I felt Crossette indulges too much in romanticizing colonialism while doing little to hide her contempt for local Asian capitalists remodeling these hill stations for the tastes of wealthy Asian tourists rather than European ones

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a cross between a travel narrative (the author visited all of the hill station towns in order across Asia on a single trip) and a history of those hill stations. Unfortunately for me, an avid reader of travel narratives, it leans more towards history and is thin on the travel. Where the author does tell about her stay in these fascinating places, it works well but too often, she front loads the history and only mentions her visits as asides.

[Arwen Downs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Currently obsessed with any travel-related book about Eastern Europe and Asia, this is one of the more in-depth and well-written of the books I have read thus far. While acknowledging that the hill stations she is writing about were a direct result of the less-than-favorable colonial governments in Indis, Malaysia, etc., Crossette does a beautiful job of describing the landscapes and timeperiods of the hill stations when they were built, as well as contrasting their current states.

[Rahadyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: Ms. Crossette is a former colleague but we have never worked together. For a time in the mid-1990s, while she was between assignments at The New York Times, she was given a small office near my desk.

I enjoyed immensely Ms. Crossette's chronicle of her travels among many "hill stations" in South Asia and Southeast Asia, especially those in my respective parents' native lands: Bogor (Indonesia) and Baguio (the Philippines).

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book about 15 years ago, and have found it an excellent primer for the PBS/Masterpiece series Indian Summers, now in its second season. Crossette's book is well written, and was the product of extensive travel to the hill towns she mentions.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found it interesting that Barbara traveled to other countries that have hill stations I found her complaints to be too many to really enjoy the book.

[Sachithra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well detailed boo for the lovers of colonial times and the railway.