Ghost Homes

 Someone once said: “A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.”

So true,

A house that is not a home

Ghost homes are houses in the mountains that are left vacant by the owners, to be visited a few times each year or not at all. I am writing of Binsar WLS, but this could be equally true of other houses in the hills.

just locked up...

...or dilapidated

...to be visited on festivals

If they are opened a few times a year, then it is generally done so on a festival, as the mountain folk are normally very religious. These are people who have left for better job opportunities in the cities. Or their children who have left for as these villages offer few opportunities.

...another house falling apart

The first to fall is the roof, grass grows between the slates and water seems to seep in. Then the beams fall, the beams are of pine and water is fatal...

...and another

...the last to fall seem the walls, these are traditionally of mud and stone, and without cover of the roof, the weather plays havoc with the walls. The windows look out sightlessly on a patch overgrown with weeds. 

the house-owner keeps his belongings...  

...in a small part of the house. The part he has covered in corrugated iron. Traditionally there is no glazing on windows, simply planks of wood, keeping the house warm in the severe winters of the mountains.

The walls of brick and mud still stand, but the roof and beams 
are dilapidated

Maybe slate quarries are in the Wildlife Sanctuary and so inaccessible. Maybe t raditional building methods are expensive, the materials difficult to difficult to find, and the craftsmen, the few that are left, very difficult to come by. It could be a combination of all these factors.

...homestays are mushrooming

Who doesn't want a slice of the tourist pie?  Views this way and that, almost every village has multiple homestays. Members of the families who want to watch what they want to, do so on their mobiles. Yes, mobiles have percolated into every nook and cranny of their lives.

Huge and fancy houses

A disturbing trend is these homes are long-leased to people from the plains who build incongruously huge houses with retaining walls in the ‘balmy surrounds’ of a wild life sanctuary; for bragging rights perhaps?

Home is not a place…it’s a feeling