Featured image courtesy: Atik Bheda

The interviews and reporting for this feature were conducted in 2024.

“What do you mean it’s not a replica of Hagrid’s house?” I ask Raghav Kumar (30), one half of the brother duo that has conceptualised a 600-sq ft beauty in the heartland of Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. As fans of the seven-part fantasy series ‘Harry Potter’ will immediately guess, I’m referring to the eight-foot-tall giant Rubeus Hagrid’s cabin on the edge of The Forbidden Forest — an ominous wood filled with wizarding creatures.

Cosy fires, larger-than-life teacups, and a drooling boarhound Fang filled most evenings that Harry and his friends spent at Hagrid’s. I often found myself craving to be there.

My wish might just have been answered.

Raghav and Ansh’s ‘Tiny Farm Fort’ is reminiscent of Hagrid’s abode. Creating the 15-ft doppelganger homestay, the brothers say, wasn’t the goal that backed their transition from their city life in Delhi to the mountains in 2021. Instead, it was a consequence of it.

Both architects, Raghav and Ansh (27) were keen on living an “intentional life closer to nature” — a dream they felt couldn’t be achieved by being a part of modern corporate architectural projects that prized demand over sustainability.

“There was a disconnect between the architect and the labour involved in these projects. There was a lot of greenwashing,” Raghav notes. Prior to 2021, the Delhi-based boys had their week cut out for them — weekdays spent working long hours and weekends trekking to North India.

The seed for Tiny Farm Fort was sown when, after one particular trek to Rishikesh in December 2020, Raghav and Ansh found themselves wishing they could stay back in the mountains and not return to the monotonous hustle. And they decided to do just that.

Once completely bewildered by topics of gardening and a rural lifestyle, the journey of building Tiny Farm Fort has stretched their understanding in these regards.

Today, they invite us into their home.

Knock on sustainability

Anyone who passed by Dhunar Gaon in Rishikesh in 2021, was met with an unusual sight. Albanian folk songs reverberated through the air, interrupted only by the beats of Japanese rock music, German techno, and Daler Mehndi’s ‘Tunak Tunak Tun’.

And grooving to these lively tempos were a group of 90 individuals. A closer look at them would reveal their vivid origins — Brazil, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, Slovenia — 18 nationalities, to be precise, Ansh states. Their rhythms though unchoreographed, would seem almost synced to an........

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