Homes with character in Pune, Maharashtra

The Pune house is the wada, and the wada is fort logic applied to family life. Basalt from the Deccan traps for the plinth and the lower walls, teak for the columns and the overhanging upper storeys, one high gate, and behind it a chowk, an open courtyard that every room looks into. The larger wadas string two or three courtyards in a row and the family spread into whichever it needed. Shaniwar Wada is the famous one and is not typical of how people lived. Vishrambaug Wada in the old city is closer, and the smaller wadas still standing on the ghats and squares of Wai and Nashik show the type at the scale it was usually built. Later the Cantonment added its own bungalows in Camp, which is why two unrelated house grammars sit twenty minutes apart.

Pune is five hundred and sixty metres up on the dry side of the Sahyadris, and the ghats an hour west collect the rain the city itself does not get. The southwest monsoon from June to September turns Lonavala, Bhimashankar and the Mulshi valley solidly green. October is muggy and short. November to February is the good stretch, cool at night, dry, with Sinhagad and the Sahyadri forts walkable again.