Man Plants One Tree, Grows 235-Acre Green Paradise

When Ashwani Khurana planted hundreds of trees at his Delhi farmhouse at age 25, watching them flourish felt overwhelming. "It was like seeing a kid growing up," he recalls, and that moment changed everything.

Now 63, Khurana has turned that passion into Karma Lakelands, a 235-acre eco-resort in Gurugram that proves luxury and sustainability can thrive together. What started as a business pivot in 2000 has become an environmental oasis in one of India's busiest cities.

The resort features four distinct forests including a sacred forest inspired by traditional Coorg village practices, a bamboo forest, and a rewilding forest. A 25-acre nursery grows seasonal vegetables, Chinese oranges for welcome drinks, and herbs that supply the resort's kitchens.

The nine-hole golf course banned all single-use plastics from day one. Golfers receive drinks in glasses, not bottles, and a dedicated sewage treatment plant processes 500,000 liters of water daily to keep the greens lush without depleting groundwater.

Khurana credits his inspiration to a chance meeting at 19 with Nek Chand, creator of Chandigarh's Rock Gardens. "Something clicked," he says, and he visited Chand on every trip to Chandigarh afterward, drawing inspiration each time.

When designing Karma Lakelands, Khurana rejected traditional planning that would have required cutting down existing trees. Instead, Australian master planner Phil Ryan surveyed every tree on the property first, then designed the resort around them.

Guests can experience beekeeping, watch plastic being recycled into eco-bricks, and tour the nursery to learn about sustainable horticulture. The resort pursues zero-waste practices across all operations, embedding environmental responsibility into every experience.

The Ripple Effect

What makes Karma Lakelands remarkable is how it demonstrates environmental solutions at scale. This isn't a small community garden but a full-scale commercial resort proving that sustainable practices work financially while benefiting the planet.

The resort shows other businesses that green infrastructure creates competitive advantages, not just costs. Every guest who tours the nursery or plays plastic-free golf carries those ideas back to their communities.

Khurana's journey from planting one tree to creating four forests proves that small actions compound into extraordinary change when nurtured with dedication. In the heart of urban Gurugram, nature and humanity are growing together.