A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia (particularly in India), but also in Africa (albeit rarely), for towns founded by European colonialists as refuges from the summer heat and, as Dale Kennedy observes about the Indian context, "the hill station ... was seen as an exclusive British preserve: here it was possible to render the Indian into an outsider". In India, which has the largest number of hill stations, most are situated at an altitude of approximately 1,000 to 2,500 metres (3,300 to 8,200 ft).