The Land Chooses Us
Have you ever found yourself standing in the middle of nowhere and feeling like you’re exactly where you’re meant to be? Not because it’s easy, or because it makes sense, but because something inside you tells you this is it. This is the place where you’re supposed to build something—something lasting, something meaningful.
That’s what it felt like when I first stood on that dry, unremarkable patch of land with dried up crops and full of weeds near Vani Vilas Sagar Dam. The sun was high, burning its way through the clear blue sky, and the ground beneath my feet was cracked and hard, with barely a trace of life. Nothing about it looked promising. And yet, I knew. Deep down, I knew.
It’s funny how you can see something that doesn’t exist yet. How you can stand in a barren field and imagine a lush forest. Or a home. Or a life. But that’s what hope is, isn’t it? It’s seeing the possibility in the impossible.
But hope doesn’t show up all at once. Sometimes it drifts in slowly, over time, while you’re busy making decisions that don’t seem all that important in the moment. Sometimes hope needs you to wander first, to get lost before you can be found.
And we wandered. My father and I, sometimes accompanied by relatives, scouted land after land, meeting agent after agent, chasing the faint hope of finding a place that felt right. Most of the land we saw was either too expensive or too impractical for what we had in mind.
Template I followed during our search to allow for comparing during decision-making
I approached the search with the same meticulousness I bring to my work. I created a detailed template to capture everything about each plot we visited—soil type, water sources, access roads, proximity to markets, even the community around it. Every visit was documented, every possibility analyzed. It wasn’t just about finding land; it was about finding the land that had potential to check maximum boxes for us if not already checking. Because dreams need a solid foundation. (I know it’s a little nerdy, but it kept us focused.)
There was one piece of land adjacent to an actual forest that seemed promising at first—a sprawling plot with a great lake in it, but the lake looked like it could potentially block the entrance to the land every time it rained. Something in my gut told me to walk away. You can tell, sometimes. You can feel when a place isn’t meant for you, just as much as you can feel when it is.
Here's some of the land we were shown during our search although we visited many more
Then something strange happened. Over the course of our search, three different agents—all at different times—brought us to one specific piece of land. It wasn’t grand. It wasn’t the biggest or the most beautiful. But it was the same plot, over and over again. Almost as if it was calling out to us. Almost as if it had chosen us.
Do you ever wonder if life is trying to tell you something? If the universe keeps pointing you in the same direction, again and again, until you finally listen?
That’s what it felt like when we saw the land for the third time. It was as if destiny had decided that this was the place we were meant to build. It didn’t matter that it was a little rough around the edges or that there were other places that might have seemed better on paper. This land had found us. And sometimes, when you stop fighting, when you stop searching for the perfect thing, the right thing just shows up.
It wasn’t easy, though. Just because something feels right doesn’t mean it’s handed to you on a silver platter. By the time I was back in the UK, 2022 was closing in, and with it, the pressure of time. We couldn’t afford to wait much longer. The land needed to be secured, or it would slip through our fingers.
That’s when my father stepped in.
I think about that often. How, even after his heart attack, even after the doctors told him to rest, to take it easy, he was the one who fought for this dream when I couldn’t be there to do it myself. While I was halfway across the world, my father, along with a few relatives, took on the negotiations for the land in January 2022. And when I say “negotiations,” I don’t just mean discussing numbers. I mean navigating a web of personalities, of expectations, of unspoken rules.
Have you ever thought about how much trust it takes to let someone else carry your dream? To know that while you’re away, someone you love is fighting for the thing you want most? It’s terrifying. Because you’re not there. You’re not the one making the calls, reading the room, looking into the eyes of the people across the table. You’re just waiting, half a world away, hoping that things will go your way. But life doesn’t always follow hope. Sometimes it tests you first. And this was just one of several more to come. Way more.
It was by this stage January 2022. In the next post I'll share our experience of negotiating for the land.
Until then.