This is travelogue of an old trip - to Lansdowne, Garhwal. Three of us wanted to go some new place and at first decided on Kumaon, but multiple delays caused us to depart from Delhi no sooner than 7am, and we eventually decided that it was better to just drive to Masuri / Chakrata or thereabouts.
Traffic jams on the road slowed down our speed even more, and we could manage to reach Raiwala (near Haridwar) only by noon. Still quite unsure what to do, we were just happy to be close to the hills. Then, my friend suggested Lansdowne. Promptly fished out his newly acquired laptop, connected his mobile internet connection (Reliance, I think it was) and found a map and a state road from Haridwar to Lansdowne via Najibabad and Kotdwar.
We drove through some exquisitely beautiful countryside to reach Najibabad. There is an old mud fort at Najibabad, the British used it as a prison. One of Jim Corbett's memorable adventures is set in this area. It describes his pursuit of a local "dakait" (bandit) called Sultana. http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/books/article61881.ece
I owned a film camera at the time, and didn't click many pictures. Now I feel I should have bought a basic digicam, and taken a lot more pics. Some pictures;
Expanse of the Ganga at Garhmukteshwar
A hill stream – possibly a tributary of Malin river
Lush green hills just after the monsoons
Bridge over the stream in pic 2 above
We almost ran out of fuel on this trip! We had a decent amount of fuel when we crossed Kotdwar and told each other that we would refill somewhere on the way up. Lansdowne is approx 40km up from Kotdwar. Being a army cantonment, we were quite sure that we will get a few litres of petrol there! We climbed up and crossed Dugadda. We came across two or three "authorised retailers”, who essentially had a 100 litre barrel of diesel, fitted with a hand pump(the kinds you would see at PDS shops, that vend kerosene). And that’s it. No petrol! The diesel itself carried a premium of 10 Rs per litre!
We were a bit anxious about the petrol now, as the car was running dangerously low on fuel! Some of the locals and the ‘authorised retailers’ assured us that we would get fuel from Abdul bhai, at the Lansdowne bazaar. And warned us to negotiate for the price, as Abdul bhai was wont to charge as much as 100% premium.
Nevertheless, we pushed on, enjoying the drive and some great countryside!
First view of Lansdowne
At the Lansdowne Bazaar. This is Gandhi Chowk, probably the only flat and open area in Lansdowne. The town itself is like stuck on the side of a mountain, unlike maybe a Masuri which is located on a longish flat ridge.
You can see our car on the left side – the grey Santro – parked outside Abdul bhai’s shop. As luck would have it, Abdul bhai had chosen the same day to go and visit some relatives in Kotwar! And no other soul in that blessed town had even five litres of petrol. Diesel, yes; petrol – you’d have to drive down to Kotdwar!
We apparently had no option to carry on. Then the next news struck us – Lansdowne had only two hotels! One a private property called Fairydales http://fairydalelansdowne.in/ and the other a GMVN hotel.
Fairydales was full and there was one more large party expected in town. Wasting no time, we went to the GMVN hotel and secured a hut for ourselves – 900 rupees for the night.
The hut was quite an experience in itself. It was a structure mainly built with metal sheets and located a little away from the hotel. The sounds at night were quite eerie. But the greatest thing was the loo, the drain pipes (fortunately only the water pipes!) of which were open and emptied on the mountainside! We were scared of snakes and other creepy things climbing into the hut at night through the pipes. In the morning we banged the walls and made a lot of noise before any of us ventured into the toilet!
We visited Tippin Top or Tiffin Top in the morning, nice little place for a picnic.
View of a house on the hill opposite Tiffin Top.
Church of St John in the Wilderness
The Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre. They have a little war museum there, which was closed on Sunday.
On the way back, we stopped at the stream and spent a nice couple of hours walking in the water, and dozing in the sun on the great slabs of rock in the river bed.
As it turned out, we didn’t run out of petrol after all, and made it safely to Kotdwar. On our return journey, we took the route from Kotdwar > Najibabad > Bijnaur > Meerut > Delhi.
