Have you heard about Chikhaldara or Chikhalda? It's a small hill station some 155 miles from Nagpur to the north-west, in the present-day district of Amaravati. Surrounded by the Satpura range of mountains and located in the Gavilgadh hills, Chikhaldara has a charm of its own. Cool and dry for most of the year, the monsoons are beautiful in this part of India. Chikhakdara is located on latitude 21degrees 29' N. and longitude 77 degrees 22' E. The height of the Chikhaldara hill station above sea level is 118.130 metres (3.666 feet). While leading his troops to Nagpur after finishing off the Marathas in 1803 during the Battle of Assaye, Commander Major General Arthur Wellesley (laterly the Duke of Wellington) must have rode very close to it, when he was visiting the Gavilgad Fort and the town of Ellichpore (now Achalpur). But he miseed it somehow. The honour to discover the beauty of this lovely tiny place in 1823 goes to Captain Robinson of the Hyderabad Regiment. It was the very year in which regular troops were first stationed at Achalpur. But bungalows were not built there, it seems, till 1839. Thereafter, there was a small but continous European presence in Chikhaldara for a long time. The proof of this is the Christian cemetery there, dated 1876. The popularity of the hill station was very soon established and Meadows Taylor mentions its delights as early as 1840 when he was there with the troops. He visited Achalpur again as the Deputy Commissioner on 9th December 1857 and notes "how welcome were the large baskets of delicious peaches from Captain Hamilton's garden at Chikhalda and I wished I could go up there again and revisit the old scenes". Peach is still cultivated in Amzari garden and the Company Bagicha, now popularly known as the Forest Garden, as it is under the management of the Forest Department, though it has degenerated considerably since Meadows Taylor's time. Coffee of the finest quality is grown in the public garden formerly under the municipality, but now taken over by the Forest department and in good many private gardens and especially on the land belonging to the Roman Catholic Mission. At one time a great future was anticipated from coffee and tea plantations at Cikhaldara. But the tea plantation has now entirely disappeared. Now watch this video showing the Chikhaldara Christian cemetery = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EC-iOXkqKA --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar