A hand-built, fully off-grid sanctuary above the Kodaikanal hills. Solar power, spring water, 32-foot vaulted ceilings — set inside 25 acres of forest, waterfalls and mountain views.
Drone footage of the earthship, the land and the valley it sits above — filmed on the day we opened after the 2025 refinish.
Why We Need An Off Grid Lifestyle — Drone Footage Of Earthship Karuna. A short by Sai Ram with Alex.
Earthship Karuna is mainland India's first earthship — a self-sufficient, passive-solar home built from rammed-earth tyres, glass bottles, lime-plaster and timber by Alex Leeor and a small crew of artists, masons and apprentices. It was completed in 2012 and freshly refinished in March 2025.
Inside the 1,200 sq ft round building, a spiral staircase climbs to a sleeping loft beneath cathedral-like vaulted ceilings. Hand-painted murals soften the bathrooms. Living plants and small trees grow indoors. The acoustics — once you put on music — are unforgettable.
It exists to prove a single point: off-grid living can be more luxurious, not less.
Two bedrooms, one hand-finished bathroom, a fully equipped kitchen and a private garden with the kind of views you forget to photograph.
Everything that lights, warms, fills and powers the home comes from the land it sits on. None of it asks you to rough it.
A freshly upgraded solar system runs the home year-round. A backup generator exists, but it rarely turns on.
All water is drawn from a local mountain spring and nano-filtered at the kitchen tap — clean enough to drink straight.
Unlimited fibre Wi-Fi reaches every corner. There's a proper desk, chair and quiet workspace for remote workers.
Sculpted earth walls, hand-painted murals, a sweeping spiral staircase — finished by Alex and a rotating crew of international artists.
Pots, pans, fridge-freezer, gas hob — a complete kitchen. Shops are far, so cooking is done from provisions brought in.
The earthship sits within Karuna Dham — a yoga retreat and self-sustaining off-grid community in the hills above Kodaikanal. For over two decades, they've grown their own food, built homes from earth and local wood, and drawn power from sun and river. The land borders a wildlife sanctuary; trails leave the doorstep in every direction.
An earthship is a passive-solar building that heats and cools itself, generates its own power, harvests its own water, and treats its own waste. With free energy from the sun and free materials from waste, it's based on earth-rammed tyre walls that store thermal mass like a battery — releasing warmth at night, staying cool through the heat of day.
It's a holistic model. At its simplest and most powerful, it lets people re-integrate with nature through their homes — where a conventional house only encourages more dis-integration.
Earth-rammed tyres form massive walls that soak up heat during the day and radiate it back at night — no heating or cooling needed. The building is the battery.
Photovoltaic panels (and, where needed, wind) provide all the electricity. The home is sized to run comfortably off its own power, year-round.
Rain and snowmelt are caught off the roof, stored in cisterns, filtered and used — then reused as greywater through indoor planters before going back to the land.
Sewage is treated on-site with simple natural systems. Indoor planters grow food year-round. Nothing leaves the site that the site can't absorb.
Every tyre rammed. Every wall plastered. Every beam raised — by Alex and a small rotating crew of volunteers, masons and artists. Here's how Earthship Karuna went from a patch of red earth to the home it is today.
A patch of red earth, a pile of old tyres, a small crew in flip-flops. The first rammed-earth tyres went down after months of site prep, hauling tyres up the mountain, and sourcing local materials. Two guys with sledgehammers against 800 tyres of work.
The first courses of tyre walls took shape. Each tyre packed with earth, pounded tight, stacked and staggered like rammed-earth bricks. Slow, heavy, rhythmic work — and the first sign that the shape of a house was coming out of the ground.
By month-end we hit the 12th course of tyres — walls strong and stable. Cement filled the voids to reduce wobble on our unusually tall walls. Rebar lintels went in above the window frames. Kaila Binney, a permaculture teacher from the USA, joined us and laid out the interior greywater planters — three linked planters running the full circumference, all gravity-fed.
The concrete lintels were finished — the largest pieces of 18mm steel rebar bridging all three main windows and pinning the walls together. Major mezzanine beams and pillars went up. DNA Newspaper ran a full-page feature (Bombay, Pune & Mumbai editions). Two architecture magazines followed. We started forming the 13-foot, 16-sided centre ring for the roof.
Terracotta tiles laid out and trial-fitted. Because the roof beams didn't overlap the entire wall, we designed extensions that changed the angle around the edge — a detail that ended up being beautiful as well as functional. EDPM waterproof barrier would follow.
With the walls locked in and the structural timber in place, we pushed on with the roof itself — beam work, sheathing, waterproofing. The round building was finally reading as a building from every angle.
Time to fit the cap of the roof — an opening skylight framed in 100-year-old reclaimed teak, covered with plexiglass (thin, light, practically indestructible). First night sleeping under that circular sky-view: unforgettable.
A huge push between March and year-end. The roof opening mechanism was reinvented with three gas springs (over 250kg of pushing force, hidden inside) — way bigger than a standard hopper but now easy to operate with a hand-cranked winch. Waterproof even with the cap open. Mezzanine flooring finished. Homemade front door fitted. Spiral staircase ready. Ferrocement guttering done. A 200-litre solar hot water tank and the 1kW solar PV + 2kW inverter + 48V battery bank all arrived.
Finishing continued through 2012 — interior plastering, the hand-painted murals in the bathrooms, the mosaic staircase, the planters filled with living trees. It was hard to believe, but the earthship was looking stunning. Move-in was close.
After 15 years designing and building off-grid homes, Alex now offers bespoke Earthship Biotecture consultations — anywhere in the world. Every earthship is tailored to its site: climate, soil, materials, regulations, lifestyle.
Not traditional architecture, not a catalogue plan. Every concept is drawn from your site's own climate, soil, materials and regulations — an integrated regenerative system, not a pretty building.
Serious analysis requires serious work. Consultation cost varies with project complexity, site challenges and scope — the assessment form is how we can quote accurately.
Weather patterns, soil conditions, material availability, regulatory landscape — every variable is analysed so what we design actually works on your piece of land, wherever it is.
Filling out the form creates zero obligation. It just gives us what we need to send back consultation options, pricing and some preliminary insight into your project.
You complete the comprehensive site assessment form.
We analyse your project's complexity and requirements.
You receive consultation options and pricing, usually within a few days.
You decide whether you'd like to proceed — no pressure either way.
The form is long on purpose — earthships are integrated living systems, not catalogue homes. Your progress is saved automatically as you type; come back on the same device and pick up where you left off.
Two decades of building earthships on three continents, distilled — one as a book to read by the fire, the other as an AI-powered design companion you can talk to any time.
Your path to freedom — independence through sustainability.
Everything Alex has learned building earthships across three continents, distilled into one comprehensive guide. The physics of passive solar, the engineering of tyre walls, the surprise of comfort in any climate — and why real independence gets stronger as external systems grow weaker.
Get it on Amazon →An AI companion trained on two decades of earthship building — ask it anything, from passive-solar angles to tyre-wall specs to local-material swaps.
I built Earthship Karuna to show that off-grid living can be more luxurious, not less. More than a decade on, it still proves the point every day.
A few things worth knowing about the earthship and the land it sits on.
Two bedrooms — a king four-poster and a double — and one hand-finished bathroom, beneath a 32-foot vaulted ceiling with a mezzanine loft.
Solar power with battery backup, spring water nano-filtered at the tap, 24/7 gas-on-demand hot water and ~30 Mbps fibre Wi-Fi.
Deep in the hills above Kodaikanal — the final approach is by jeep, as the forest department doesn't permit other vehicles on the last stretch.
The surrounding land is vegetarian-only. Govinda's vegetarian restaurant sits a 5-minute walk away, beside a waterfall.
Steep paths run throughout the land, threading between forest, streams and natural pools.
The earthship is part of Karuna Dham, shared with long-term residents — quiet, and respect for the space, are the norm.
Earthship Karuna shows what's possible. Alex offers site-specific design consultations worldwide — and the full method is in the book.
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