Blogs from Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India, Asia

I grew up without any religion or religious education. My family never went to any church services, never read any sacred scriptures, never prayed. The closest any of us ever got to any outward display of religiosity was my grandma, exasperated at the asinine behavior of one of us grandkids, yelling, “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Yet, somehow, I don’t think she was imploring to the patron saint of the papacy. I don’t think she (or anyone in my family for that matter) even knew the papacy had a patron saint. In other words, I was a God-less child. My religious ignorance was so complete that I thought that Jesus was like a magic genie, granting three wishes to those who asked nicely, please and thank you. By the time I was six, I still hadn’t learned ... 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

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

Our last two weeks in India... 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