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The
Great Hill Stations of Asia
by Barbara Crosette
- Synopsis
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, and malaria as well as
little-examined indispositions that in hindsight would
probably be diagnosed as clinical symptoms of depression.
Later, medical scholars coined a phrase for it:
"tropical fatigue." 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 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 give them
their spectacular settings and pleasant climates. 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.
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