Let's Just Say, Extreme Ambivalence

But I hold my ground, allowing the bellboy to steer me to a golf buggy waiting outside. The driver smiles at me with the same cheerful lunacy. "I shall be taking you to your chalet, madam," he says. I marvel at the unselfconscious ease with which he says it, considering we are not in Switzerland but in the middle of Maharashtra.

Just about an hour ago, my geographical coordinates were quite clear to me. I was inching my way through central Lonavla on a typical monsoon weekend: the pot-holed roads, the klaxons sounding, the reckless Sumos blaring loud music; the taporis from Mumbai doing a rain dance at Bhushi Dam. It all felt pretty much like the madness of your average overcrowded hill station.

Then the Aamby Valley turn-off appeared, and the commotion fell away with a suddenness as the car wound 30 minutes up a smooth, mist-shrouded road that ended at the gates of this Sahara Group residential township.

Beyond these gates, however, there’s another sort of madness at work. The security is commando-style, and your car pulls over to the side as the guards make a show of checking your credentials, barking orders into walkie-talkies before waving your car to proceed.

This is a place trying so hard to be somewhere else. Verdant tree-lined paths, manicured lawns and an explosion of flowers—even the timber "chalet" smells faintly of pinewood.

But it’s Switzerland meets Disneyland. There is a bizarre something-for-everyone feel about the place, with the honeymooning couple gambolling in the wave pool, the teenagers crowding into the video game arcade, the office convention heading out for a speedboat ride. Who are those people who want to live here all year round? Have they seen a good shrink?

It gets better—or worse, depending on your perspective. There is an artificial beach, a temperature-controlled pool, golf links, a rock-climbing wall, stables, a helipad, a hospital, and a zoo. The Sahara spokesperson insists that this is not a zoo so much as a private menagerie that the company is licensed to own.

I visit it before I leave, compelled by my curiosity. A bunch of children is standing outside the chimpanzee cage, while their mothers point and scream, "Look, beta, monkey!" As if on cue, the two chimpanzees start beating upon the walls of the cage with their fists, the beat building up to a frenzied crescendo. The chimpanzees aren’t dancing—although I wouldn’t put it past the people at Aamby to conceive of something this outlandish as an attraction. The real explanation is that the chimps are crazed out of their minds in that tiny cage.

That makes three of us who aren’t buying into that happy Aamby feeling.