Tall Stories 515: Escaping the urban jungle on Mumbai’s Malabar Hill Forest Trail

Escaping the urban jungle can be particularly tough in the dense metropolises found throughout South Asia. But with small yet clever interventions, a simple raised walkway can reconnect citizens with nature and remind them of a part of their urban environment they may have otherwise forgotten. You're listening to Tall Stories, a Monocle production brought to you by the team behind The Urbanist. I'm Andrew Tuck.

In this episode, Rahul Khadri, the principal architect of IMK Architects, who are behind the Malabar Hill Forest Trail, takes us for a nature walk in Mumbai. The Malabar Hill Forest Trail is situated in Mumbai on Malabar Hill. It was a forgotten part of the city This was land owned by the hydraulic department It sits on top of the hill There's the water supply for the city as a whole And there's one side of the hill That was owned by the hydraulic department That has been sealed off to the public For the last 35 years And since I, as a young boy Used to run around over here With my Doberman dog at the time I knew this forest existed.

During lockdown, my wife and I were walking nearby and I told her, come, let me show you something. And we jumped over the fence and we were in this forest. It's a 12 and a half acre forest in the middle of the city that nobody knows about. And for many years, I been considering more people need to know about this Open spaces are so rare in the city So this time we kind of said okay let put it together as a project And instead of suggesting it myself as an architect and urban planner I decided to do it as the chairman of the Citizens Association of the area, which I happen to be.

So we went to the government at the time and they loved the idea. And the environmental minister was also the tourism minister at the time for the state. He said, he loved it. He says, come show me this space.

So the very next day, we went across and we saw it. And he was fascinated. And he says, this is something we must do. When we began to design it, what we were worried about is what will happen if thousands of people come in.

I mean, this has been sealed off for 25 years. And suddenly, if you have thousands of people walking in, what will happen? So it was very obvious then that we should raise it off the forest floor to contain people on a specific path and they can't wander on the forest floor. Because there are also lots of snakes here, cobras here.

We decided that we should touch the forest floor only at one point. So the foundation should be at one point. And we have a V-shaped steel structure which supports a wooden walkway. Wood, as we all know, is the most sustainable way to build.

The carbon cycle is the shortest. And any other material we also felt wouldn't really go with the feel of the forest. We initially decided to use a local sal wood, which has been used by the Indian railways for centuries. But then the contractor who was doing the job located a Malaysian teak wood, which is now grown in India.

which had a much finer texture and took polish better And he was willing to do it at the same price So after testing etc we decided to use this Merlbau teak wood And yeah, it's beautiful. Mumbai, it's fairly dense. And Mumbai as a whole, per capita ratio of open space is 1.2 square meters per person.

In comparison, London is 20. Our national standard is supposed to be 10. So open spaces are really at a premium in the city. And this was one space which was there and unused.

So basically the idea was how can we use it in the most sustainable way. So actually what we worked out with the government is that to maintain the quality and the silence, only 200 people are allowed to go on the walkway every hour. To buy a ticket and it's hour on hour, starts at 5 in the morning. So you want to keep it quiet so that these people get to be with nature, which is just rare.

If you walk the Malaba Hill Trail today, it's half a kilometer long in a forest. It's got these beautiful rocks on one side and it's thickly forested when you first come in. So you're walking on a wooden deck, which in India and Bombay is rare in itself because we don't use wood for construction much at all. So you're walking on a grazed wooden deck through this very dense forest and then as it curves along the hillside, the landscape changes.

So you soon come across a meadow and then when you go further on, the vistas open up much more and you can overlook the historic view of Jopati Beach There a raw simplicity to walking through a forest and because it in such a dense part of the city it just feels liberating that this can exist in this space. It's been fascinating to see how much people enjoy the simplicity of being with nature And just walking in the forest People have been coming from all over From as far as 250 kilometers away The booking slots, they're full 2-3 days in advance for the whole day Weekend especially People come there with their families People come with their elderly parents on wheelchairs.

I think for most people in the city, it's really disbelief that this exists. I've had people from all walks of life come back to me and say just how connected they felt to nature when they were walking here. I think most of the people really enjoy the simplicity of being in the forest. Tool Stories is a Monocle production from the team behind The Urbanist.

This episode featured Rahul Kadri from IMK Architects and it was produced and edited by David Stevens. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive new episodes every week. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening, city lovers.