Lavasa

Lavasa is a planned hill town near Pune, designed in a style deliberately evoking the Italian lakeside town of Portofino, with pastel-coloured buildings, a promenade and a lake at its centre. Conceived as India's first fully planned hill city in the post-independence era, Lavasa's development has faced significant financial and regulatory challenges over the years, leaving parts of the town's ambitious original vision only partially realised.

Despite these development complications, the completed sections of Lavasa offer a genuinely distinctive lakeside setting for a short visit, its Mediterranean-inspired architecture and waterfront promenade providing a visual change of pace from Maharashtra's more conventional hill-station scenery.

Conceived in the early 2000s as a large-scale planned hill city development, Lavasa's construction and financing has been marked by prolonged legal and regulatory difficulties, resulting in a town that remains, in various respects, an unfinished vision of its original ambitious masterplan.

About 60km from Pune, roughly 1.5-2 hours by road.