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Published: June 21st 2009
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 international airport in hyderabad. I got into Indigos 6:00 AM flight to delhi and landed in delhi at 8:00 AM. We were on a package tour and hence pickup from delhi airport was part of that package, the driver of the cab was ready for us and we got into it and then started our delhi local tour.
Delhi was
just like hyderabad with streets full of people, roads full of vehicles, but the additional thing that was very much visible was the security, the main roads were full of policemen and armed guards, and why not its the national capital and has been target earlier, so its quite obvious to have tight security.
The places covered in delhi local tour were qutub minar, lotus temple, raj ghat, akshardam, india gate, parliament, rashtrapathi bhavan,supreme court, IIT, AIIMS. I am not describing these, as most of us know about all these places and my main intent is to describe the tour to mussorie, haridwar and rishikesh. (Although I must confess that I thought lotus temple to be a sacred place for hindus but I came to know that its a bahais meditation place, only after visiting it, thats why we must travel 😊 ).
The journey to Mussorie :
After visiting many places in Delhi, it was time for us to start for mussorie. The departure time for the bus to mussorie was 9:30 PM and it was 8:00 PM in our watches, when we checked out of hotel, had some light dinner and took boarding passes at
A Real looking setting
Another awesome ashram in haridwarthe southern travels office and were ready to get in to the bus. At 9:00 PM, bus arrived and along with other families we got into the bus. In another 15 min, the tour guide (shankar, popularly known as shankar guide) entered the bus and started explaining the itinary.
As the bus started, the introductions round was held, where all the passengers/tourists in the bus introduced themselves and then the guide took the charge again to explain the halting places and tour description as a whole. It takes around 8-10 hours to reach mussorie from delhi and the halting points are kua-hadi border(the UP-Uttarakhand border), haridwar and dehradun. Kua-hadi border is the inter state tax collection point, so every tourist bus has a halt here. So, as the bus passed the delhi border, the driver raised the speed and we were slowly moving into sleep, waiting for the exciting next day to come fast......
It was 4:00 AM early morning the next day and my sleep suddenly broke to some sounds....and I found that the bus was on a halt. I got down the bus and looked around to find everything absolutely green and the temperature was around
Sadhus in haridwar
Orange clad sadhus 12 degrees or so. It was kua-hadi border and the bus was stopped to pay the interstate tax. Our bus was on a halt there for some 30 min and then we proceeded towards haridwar.
Setting the stage:
So, as the bus started from the kua-hadi border, the surroundings became greener and greener and it started to drizzle and temperature started to fall, setting the stage for a perfect day ahead. From kua-hadi border, a journey of 2 hours takes us to haridwar(via roorkie), which is the fresh up point for all the tourists traveling to further places like mussorie or badrinath ect. Haridwar in detail is covered in the return journey from mussorie, so at this point its just a fresh up point.
Haridwar, like rishikesh is full of ashrams and temples and our guide planned our fresh up point at an ashram, so that we can get an idea of how life in ashrams will be like. Our bus moved slowly through the lane full of some very beautiful architectural buildings(ashrams), and I was surprised to see how big and beautiful ashrams are... I was just not expecting ashrams to be so beautiful(of course
not all ashrams are so big). We got down at sadbhavna mandir, also known as sadbhavna ashram and we were divided into teams of 4-6 people and were allocated rooms, so that we take bath and get ready to move ahead. We were given 1 hr to get ready and we had to stick to the timings, as we had to move on and cover a lot of places ahead and also because we had to clear the rooms for the pilgrims and tourists coming into haridwar. Exactly after 1 hr, all of us assembled near the door of sadbhavna mandir and we were welcomed with hot tea and coffee, we then we took a few snaps to remember the place and then moved on from there towards mussorie(via dehradun). The most surprising thing was that, not even a single penny was charged for using the rooms in the ashrams and for the wonderful tea and coffee. Great !!! People in ashrams really don expect things....they just come there and set up ashrams for serving others.....WOW !!! (ofcourse not all ashrams).
Journey through the clouds:
Now starts the real tour... Towards Mussorie...our bus started from haridwar,
Special mussorie fruits
Hybrid al bakra fruits, sweet n sour fruits surroundings were filled with only 2 colors...orange and green. No prizes for such easy guess.... sadhus..and sadhus every where.. filled haridwar with orange color with their traditional attire and green ofcourse, when a place is on the banks of Ganges, it would be green and gorgeous. The route to mussorie (via dehradun) is quite hilly, so the driver slowed the bus, providing us with more time to enjoy the beauty of surroundings. Though haridwar is such a famous piligrimage, it has still maintained to sustain the look and feel of a typical piligrimage point, which is very good to see, afterall we all visit places to experience a change from our routine life.
Now after travelling for one more hour or so..we reached a very neat, posh looking place, our guide took charge of his microphone and started explaining about the place called dehradun. The place is very neat and has a very rich look, all villas, I hardly found other kind of houses in dehradun. Dehradun was just a pass by point in our package, so we were just shown the doon public school, the very famous school very our ex PM, rajeev gandhi had studied and was the
school which was featured in many movies.
The real ghat road to mussorie begins from dehradun and the ghat road is very very thin, so the government had ordered only light vehicles to ply between dehradun and mussorie, so there is no entry for big and bulky vehicles like our volvo :-( so we had to get down our bus and get into the mini bus arranged by our tour operator. RAWAT travels bus was ready in the parade grounds of dehradun. We all got down the volvo and got into the RAWAT travels bus and the driver of the bus assured us of a great ghat road experience ahead.
All right we were on a fantastic trip, but it doesn mean we don feel hungry 😞 shankar guide, forgot about it and asked the rawat travels driver to start for mussorie, it is when a bunch of hungry young men started yelling for breakfast, and so did the light in shankar guides brain glew and took us to a dhaba. It was a small dhaba, but our guide assured us of very tasty food, only 2 items were available in the dhaba, egg omlete and alu parata,
I being a pure veggie, ordered paratas for me and my family. I must admit those were the best best alu paratas Ive ever had in my entire life, wow so tasty, paratas served with paneer curry, butter, orange juice and all this for just 25 rupees, would you believe?? The paratas were so tasty, that I had to mention them in my blog, I guess most of the readers mouths would be watering by this time.. ha ha get ready to go to mussorie to experience this taste 😱
Ghat road that takes away your breath:
The best part of journey to mussorie is the ghat road, which is around 20-30 kilometers long and very very steep. Ive traveled on a few other ghat roads like the one in tirupati and srisailam, but the ghat road connecting mussorie is the only one which frightened me 😊 and kept me excited all the way up. Our bus (Rawat travels) was driven by a very young guy, around 25 years age and I was in doubt whether he would be able to control the bus, as the ghat road was not as wide as the other roads
Ive mentioned earlier, but he drove really well and at a pretty fast pace. There were people of all ages in our bus, and some were praying, some were continuously chatting to escape the fear, and kids were enjoying the ride, as they knew no fear. It took around an hour for us to reach mussorie. All the vehicles are stopped at the entrance of mussorie and people have to carry their luggage to the hotels, from the entrance. So we all got down and carried our luggage to our hotel (hotel deep), it was just 5-10 minutes walk from the entrance of mussorie.
The temperature was around 6 degrees, and it was really getting difficult for people like me, as we are not used to such low temperatures, and it is what I really came to mussorie. By the time I walked to our hotel, I was shivering and was tired. Our guide gave us some time to keep our luggage in our rooms, so that we can leave for our first sightseeing spot in mussorie.
The way to second highest peak in Mount Everest range
As we left our hotel rooms, our guide
All my fellow tourists
All people with red and white caps....yep we all travelled along together.. shankar started explaining about the scene we were about to see....we were about to get onto to a cable car to reach run hill point, a pretty high point in mussorie, from where we can see the himalaya mountains (with snow) and infact from a point on run hill point, we get to see the second highest peak in the Mt Everest range. I was very excited to hear that..Right from my childhood, Ive been hearing about the snow clad himalyan mountains, but I was getting the chance to witness them now. A few minutes walk from the hotel rooms got us to the point from where the cable cars start and we bought our tickets and got into the cable car. Mussorie was already very cold for visitors like us from down south and as we were going high and high to the top most point in mussorie, the cold was becoming a bit too much to bear, but that was fun to watch people around you shiver and ofcourse I was also trying my best to hide my shivering 😊 . As our cable car came to a halt, we all rushed out to witness the himalyan peaks, and they stood right infront of us, just not disappointing us, covered with snow. At this place, photographers will be ready to take snaps in the traditional mussorie dress, don miss this oppurtunity to see yourself dressed in a "Maharaja style dressing".
After spending some time there at the run hill point, we decided to sip in some hot tea at the tea stall at the same spot and wow it was amazing to sip in hot tea, looking at the himalayan mountains covered with snow and at around 5-6 degrees temperature.
Kempty waterfalls
After locking the views of himalayas in our brains, we got down the run hill point by the cable cars and had some thing to eat for lunch and started for Kempty waterfalls, which is the other tourist spot in mussorie. Kempty water falls is a bit far from the main mussorie town, so we had to get back into our bus to reach it. The road connecting kempty water falls was much much thinner than the previous ghat road mentioned and people in my bus again started prayers :-) .
After traveling for some 15-20 minutes, we reached kempty water falls, it is said that the water falls was discovered by a bunch of british officers and they often used to visit this beautiful place for camping and used to have Tea very often, hence the name kempty (camp + tea = kempty). The water in kempty falls was chilling and people there store the kempty water in tubs and use it as freezer. Well I didn dare to get into the freezing water fully, though a few of my fellow tourists jumped into the water, the moment they arrived and shivered all the way back to hotel rooms, as a result of that :-).
We got back to main mussorie town after spending enough time at the kempty falls, and our guide left us to go around, do some shopping and taste some local mussorie cuisines.
It was night and after having our dinner, we went around mussorie, not caring about the temperature and finally got back to our hotel rooms. The next day we had to get up at 3 AM to leave for rishikesh to catch the morning AArthi.
The next morning with great difficulty, we got up at 3 AM, all the fellow tourists got ready by 4 AM, and we all took our luggages and started moving towards our bus, which was parked outside mussorie town......and hence we completed our journey of mussorie.............. I must say this journey left everlasting memories........
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Nice narration
Hi..The narration is pretty good and like the way its started...shows the excitement that journeys bring ..and excites the readers as well....would like to read the complete blog though......