Blogs from Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India, Asia

Trekking is fun and this one from Sankri to Har Ki Doon was no exception. We started our journey from Delhi on April 20th. Our first lap of journey was from Delhi to Dehradun by A C Express. We reached Dehradun early in the morning. Our tour operator Mr. Nautiar was waiting at the station. A bus and a jeep took us to our first pit stop at a Youth Hostel en route, for the breakfast. We, the senior citizens, were given a preferential treatment and were accommodated in the jeep. We got this special treatment right throughout the trek, and that made us feel privileged and proud too, of our younger generation which had a mix of adults and children. This, in fact is the real strength of our culture and upbringing. The 210 Kms ... read more

So.. Welcome back everyone! Here I am - sorry for the delay in the latest installment of this blog. I had been updating every week or ten days... I got a little lazy and shall try and get you quickly up to date on the state of affairs. When I last left you, I was at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. I had the most magnificent time at the temple and ate like a king. I left the temple to get to the train station, and arrived 45th in the que for a seat. I rushed in the train station, and found two of the conductors on the platform for the overnight train to Daradun. I inquired about my seat location on the train, and was told that I didn't have a seat at all. After ... read more

So Landour is actually a kind of neighborhood of Mussoorie; a quieter side to a popular Indian vacation city. The area we drove through on the way up was Landour, and Mussoorie is farther down the road. Mussoorie has wider streets and many western businesses like Baskin Robbins and Reebok, and delicious dining. Hindi is a difficult language for a beginner, as it has a different sentence structure from most Latin languages, with the verb coming at the end of the sentence. There is also a lot of memorization involved (obviously), and the pronunciation of many sounds often confuses me. We are simultaneously studying Hindi script and characters, and luckily the writing is phonetic (unlike English!). I have already learned more than I thought I would learn. I have spent a lot of time exploring Landour ... read more

Hey everyone, Thanks for all the messages and comments! I don;t know how to reply to them, but I've definitely been getting them, and the support is really amazing! I've had trouble loading pictures, but I'll keep trying. I'm still in Mussoorie, and I will leave next weekend. I've been taking Hindi classes, and though I've been busy mispronouncing every possible sound in the language, I've also had a lot of time to acclimate better with Indian culture and society, and also to enjoy the serene landscape and fresh mountain air! The town of Landour is actually a lot bigger than I thought, and when compared to the bustling tourist scene at Mussoorie, only a few minutes down the same road from Landour, is very low-key. Actually, it just is low key, with vegetable stands, a ... read more

Delhi is a notoriously hectic city, and so the trip to Mussoorie was a welcome respite. After a ten hour bus ride from Delhi to Dehra Dun, one where the landscape changed from dusty plains to green forest, and the smoke transformed from smoke to mist as we climbed in elevation. I stayed awake the whole time just to watch. Once reaching Dehra Dun, we transferred to taxi jeeps and vans, with four passengers to a taxi. The drive was along a skinny, almost one-lane road that wound around a mountain. However, the taxis traveled at ridiculous speeds, lapping one another just in time to miss an oncoming car, and flying around hair-pin turns with only a honk to warn cars coming the other way. I was silent the whole time because I didn’t want to ... read more

Waiting for the day to come Its hot summer here in hyderabad, and its time to escape the heat for few days and chill in the cool breeze of himalayan wind and get wet in the wetness of ganges. My trip to mussorie starts on 29th May and I am sleepless from almost a week thinking about the sceneries that I get to see. Its first time that Im visiting the northern end of India. Excitement is all over me. I love traveling and this is a trip that Ive been planning for a long time now.. 1 More day to go for my trip to begin. Waiting for 29 May to come fast..... The D-day : Finally it was 29th May and my journey started from rajeev gandhi internat... read more

We have no money left now for the internet place so we have to make this a joint blog of all these places!! Haridwar, oh my god, we love it, but it is soooooooooooooooooo religious, everything here revolves around the millions of pilgrims that decend here every year. We have seen people walking miles barefoot over mountains with milkmaid like contraptions which are carried over one shoulder and are at least one meter in length. These are offerings to the Ganges to ensure that they come back as something better in the next life, as far as we can tell from answers in broken English!!These Pujas are decorated in carpets, tassels, tinsel, paintings of gods, pictures of families, pictures of gurus, food, flowers, green platic parrots, cobras, straw, the weirdest mix of objects I have ever ... read more

Dehradun was a nice place but didn't hold very good memories, so it was nice to gain some altitude again and head up to Mussoorie. It's a hill station that was originally created by the british and it's now an Indian holiday escape. It definately had the feel of an old english seaside town (but up a mountain side!). We decided to get the bus and got ourselves psyched up for the mayhem only to find a rather comfortable taxi at a reasonable price. Done. We arrived in good time to a rather chilly high street, spanish archer-ed our way through the hotel touts and found some food. It was the same old story. We have found it quite hard to find decent places to eat in India. Most people prefer to eat from vendors at ... read more

A group of us had planned to trek up to Mussoorie for over a week. I have to say that I had a great time even though my lungs were trying to jump out of my chest and head home. Yes, I wasn’t physically ready for this trek, but that’s ok neither was anyone else. We met up at around 6:30am and started our adventure through/over the mountain to Mussoorie. It took us about 4 hours to get there. I’m not exactly sure how many miles/kilometers we walked but my best guess would be somewhere close to 20 kilometers, but sometimes it felt like 200 kilometers. There were parts that were so steep you could only walk a short distance before you just had to stop and catch your breath. It was actually funny, in a ... read more