My sister and mother were visiting us for a few weeks, and we were trying to decide where to take them. It is fun going out on road trips with the family. Possible destinations were Mussoorie, Nainital, and Corbett. After some quick browsing, we narrowed in on Mussoorie. We were sufficiently warned of two possibly bad scenarios - crowds and rains. God willing, we did not face either of them. With that said, let me dive into the travelogue.
The trip was planned for 3 days. We started off on a chilly Saturday morning - around 6:45am. I was the only driver in the group - so we wanted to start early and reach early. The weather was beautiful throughout the day - cloudy and cool. The drive did not start off very smoothly though. This was my first time only this route. I took the wrong turn within 20 minutes of starting at Ghaziabad. After about 5 minutes of not finding any national highway milestone, we decided to ask someone, and thankfully, we found an old sadhu who showed us the right way. We crossed the Hindon river, turned into the Meerut road, and we were on our way.
We had packed breakfast (dosas) from home. So midway, we stopped around 9:30a, under the shade of a large tree, opened up the boot of my wagon-R, which serves as a beautiful canopy, and had a sumptuous breakfast. We reached Roorkee, and fortunately found the correct turn to Dehradun. The road from Roorkee to Dehradun (if you can call it a road) was horrible. Potholes galore. Dehradun was reached around 1pm. We quickly found a good restaurant on Rajpur road called Tirupati. Excellent food. I would give it 5 stars for cleanliness, good and speedy service, and food quality. We headed out towards Mussoorie. This was my first mountain road driving in India. I had driven before in the mountains in the US, and people in my group had scared me enough about the jalebi bends en-route to Mussoorie. I actually found the mountain road to be pretty easy - and the road quality also pretty good. I think it was really good for a first timer. We reached Mussoorie around 4:00PM.
Cars entering the Mall Road are allowed to enter only after paying Rs. 100/-. Each time you exit and re-enter, you need to pay. This is to ensure minimal vehicular traffic on the mall road. Mussoorie essentially sits on a ridge. The mall road is a road bordering the ridge, from which we get beautiful views of the Dun valley. The road retains its old English charm - the old street lights on a misty morning a striking example.
I had rooms booked at the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN) - a unit of Uttaranchal State Tourism Department. I have had good experiences with GMVN hotels and rest-houses before, and GMVN- Mussoorie reinforced my good opinion of them. They have clean and Spartan rooms, very neat bathrooms, and hot water in the morning. What more can you ask for? GMVN Mussoorie has its own private parking. Parking on the mall road is prohibited by law. Here in GMVN, one can take their rear gate and drive your car all the way to a porch leading to your room. This is very convenient, especially when you are on a road trip. Unpacking and packing your car is easy.
Since there was lot of sunlight remaining for the day, we decided to explore the local sights within walking distance. I had done some research on what-to-see from a brochure from GMVN, and the Outlook Hill Station Getaways book. So we set out to see Gun Hill. The ropeway to Gun Hill starts from very close to where GMVN is. It is a 4 minute ropeway ride to the top of Gun Hill. One gets beautiful views of Mussoorie and the Dun Valley from the cable car. One can get some really good mountain vista photographs from on top of Gun Hill. When we were up there, it was misty and foggy. So we could not really get to see any snow peaks, but the view of the mountains were majestic none-the-less. Gun Hill is very commercial - hawkers galore. The most common type of stores/hawkers are the ones who want you to dress up like local folk and get photographs with the mountains as backdrop. Do not shop for clothes in Mussoorie (advise from a fellow group member) - they all come from Delhi. Wooden stuff on the other hand is cheap. Wooden ladles, trinkets, etc are very cheap compared to what they are priced in Delhi. My sister and mother bought some wooden stuff. It was then time for a steaming cuppa chai. Nothing can beat drinking hot masala tea on top of a mountain with mist surrounding you! It was then time to return back.
It was around 6ish, and the sun still was not showing any signs of setting. We then decided to do a rikshaw ride on the camel back road. You can get some good views from here too. Do not expect to sit cushy on the rikshaw for the entire ride. On steep slopes, the rikshaw-wala will ask you to get down and walk with him. On a more philosophical note, this was actually soothing for the conscience (I could never have had the heart to sit on the rikshaw while he was struggling to pedal). The ride is a very enjoyable one lasting about an hour, and I think we timed it just about right. Midway, we stopped at a view point for one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen (I am big sunset photography buff). Around 8:30pm, we returned back to GMVN to retire. We decided to have dinner in the restaurant at GMVN - which turned out to be the only mistake in our trip. Bad Mistake. The restaurant was horrible. Anyways, let me stop describing the restaurant for the fear of expletives escaping me.
Early next morning, we were up at around 7:30am. We had spotted an Udipi restaurant near GMVN. We peeped in. A tamil dude hailing from Madurai, stepped out and took our orders. In about 5 minutes after we gave our orders, we had the steaming hot dosas, upma, and pongal on our table. Being south Indians ourselves, we were extremely surprised at the quality and speed at which the guy prepared the meal. The temperature, a nice 18 degrees, steaming hot dosa and sambar - ah bliss! We set out on our sight-seeing binge around 9:30am. We wanted to go to the Tibetan Buddhist temple in "happy-valley". No one seemed to know where it was. Thankfully, eventually, the toll collector guy at the barrier of Mall road knew where it was. ("Take the down-road next to the LBS Academy"). The road was a precariously narrow and steep road, which leads to a secluded Tibetan temple. It was one of the most peaceful places I have ever been to.
It was on to Kempty falls from there. The road is a well laid out road to Kempty. Only at a couple of places, there were hints of an earlier land-slide being repaired. I had heard that water fall at Kempty was not too wide but definitely a high one. Yes, it is true. It is beautiful. They have now recently opened a rope way to get down to the falls (since June 2005). There was not too much crowd. My family spent about 1.5 hours wallowing in the water - which is ice cold.
It was around 1:30pm, and we were becoming hungry. There are a variety of restaurants on the half kilometre of road which is Kempty. We narrowed in on a restaurant named "Uphaar". It was empty but looked clean. What we were about to see was the ultimate example of Just-In-Time inventory - yes, the stuff that is talked about in "management books". We sat down and ordered bhindi masala and a paneer dish. The next minute a small boy ("the quintessential chotu ") was off running to the shop on the other side of the road. To our shock and surprise, there he was, buying bhindi and some tomatoes. I peeped into the kitchen, a cook just started kneading the wheat flour. I had seen dhabas work in this fashion, but they had most of the ingredients - they did not procure the raw materials on a need-basis. To our pleasant surprise, we had our food in about 10 minutes - steaming hot rotis, very tasty bhindi masala, the paneer dish, some rice and some curd (being the good south-Indians that we are, we need a hearty curd rice to complete our meals).
At around 2:30pm, when we finished our lunch, we had a choice. We could either drive back in the direction of Mussoorie and drive on to Dhanolti - or we could continue down the same road that we were on, for about 16km to a place called Yamuna Bridge (or Jamuna bridge as the locals call it). Being the adventurous driver that I am, I chose the latter. We drove down the road - now precipitous and narrow. After about 10 km, one starts to see the Yamuna meandering in the valley - enjoying its freedom, now that it has reached the valley and very close to the plains. You can even hear the roar of the river thundering down below.
The place known as Yamuna bridge (even the milestones keep track of this place) is just that - a bridge over the river Yamuna. A small, dilapidated board says that, this is the launch point for white water rafting on the Yamuna. The river does have rapid status in these parts. We spent some time by the Yamuna, enjoying the breathtaking beauty of a powerful river thundering down the mountainside. We left around 4pm. We wanted to reach Mussoorie before it got dark.
We reached Mussoorie around 6pm. We then decided to take in the local atmosphere a little bit. We wandered towards a place called Kulri market. I asked around for a good vegetarian eating-place. An old shop keeper suggested a place called "Royal Caf�" and gave us directions. We wandered in that direction, and asked a couple of more people for suggestions (just to be sure). All of them suggested the same place. Now we were really excited. We wanted to see what this place was, that everyone was suggesting. It is a small 6-table affair - serving extremely good vegetarian food. It has good service and fast turnaround time. What more could 4 hungry weary travellers want? On the way back, my sister spotted a place called "Chick Chocolates". Weird name, but amazing ice creams. They had their home-grown flavour which seemed to be the local in-thing - we saw several people having it. The home-grown flavour is nothing but a mish-mash of 7 of the flavours that they had in their Amul ice cream parlour. We were 4 very happy campers by now.
We started walking back to GMVN, which was a good 2 km from where we were, and it was 9:30pm. On the way we spotted a nice lookout point, from where, we could catch a night-time view of the Dun valley. I had heard several people compare this to a field with diamonds sprinkled over. I could now understand the comparison. It is indeed a beautiful sight. We were back in our hotel rooms and snugly tucked in by around 10pm.
In the morning, we got up lazily, had a good breakfast of dosas and idlis again in the Udipi Caf�. We started back home around 9:45pm. We stopped by Sahasradhara on the way back. Sahasradhara translates to thousand springs. This is a brook with several small mountain springs gushing into it. It is believed, that some of these are sulphur springs, and the water has medicinal value. We did not get into the water. The place was very poorly maintained and not clean. We left on our way home by around noon. We stopped by a dhaba after Rourkee to have lunch. The newly opened caf� coffee day just outside Meerut Cantt. is a blessing for roadies. We had some great coffee, refreshing our mind, soul, and body. We were back home in one piece by around 7:30pm.
The trip to Mussoorie was a very memorable one, and it has been wonderful writing this travelogue. I hope this travelogue helps someone make a similar great trip to the queen of hill stations.