Lansdowne

At times you get bored of the routine life day in day out doing the same thing. Then one feels that a break is needed. Especially for a person like me who does not socialize much with friends. So often I travel to some lone and quiet place to recharge my batteries. Now a days for a chance I am in Noida from where hill stations are not much far.
So my brother, my Agony Uncle, advised me an adventure trip. I always make a point not to follow the advice of my brother but every time I end up following his words.
Fortunately I got a 3 days break from my office and started for a trip to hills without any plans in mind. Reached ISBT, Delhi bus stand and took a bus to Uttarakhand. To add more to the adventure I took a proper local bus, with seat back sitting at 90 degrees. On my way I had made my plans to visit Lansdowne, a very small hill station in Uttarakhand. Lansdowne is an hour journey from Kotdwar, which is at the foothills of Garhwal hill range.
After 7 hours of strenuous journey of a local bus with local people will all sorts of smell of gutkhas, beedis I reached Kotdwar. Though a notice board on the bus advised “No Smoking” but how can you ask passengers not to smoke when the Bus Driver and Conductor were themselves lighting beedis every half an hour.
By the time I reached Kotdwar, it was only afternoon and I could have gone to Lansdowne an hour journey from there but decided against it and took a room there. Kotdwar is a very small town and I feel the population of the place will run only in few thousands. The most surprising thing of the place was the innumerable sweet shops and they definitely out run all other type of shops. I still wonder how such small place will consume that much quantity of sweets. Though I must say the sweets were really very tasty as I ate lot of them.
Finally next morning I took local conveyance, a jeep, for Lansdowne. The roads were quite typical hilly terrain and I was sitting next to the driver. I felt driver was busier in his beedis and mobile calls rather than driving. He used to be on calls even on the steepest of turns. Then I thought these drivers are masters in driving in hilly terrain with a turn in every 25 meters and would definitely land up in accidents if given to drive in some express highways.
Lansdowne, is a small place at a height of 1500 meters above sea level and the place was quite cold. There was nothing much to see apart from couple of temples, church and a lake. The beauty of the place was in its silence, climate and topography.The silence was so prominent that you can hear the sound of your own breath. In fact, there are many such small hill stations in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh which used to host the Britishers when they were tired of the dusty and extreme climate of plains. Perhaps these places used to give them a touch of England because of climate and dust free environment.
In Lansdowne, there is hardly any new construction and most of the buildings are more than a century old build by the English men, now mostly occupied by the Garhwal Regiment of Indian Army.
The place is of such a beauty that you can spend hours and days there just enjoying the climate and honest and nice local people, except the shop owners.
One more thing I cannot miss to mention about Lansdowne is the gigantic aaloo parathas you get there and one paratha is as good as a proper full meal.
My mother always told us that , if a person needs something(addicted) he will find it even on a barren land and same came true as I was able to find a wine shop (no bar is there) amongst crowd of innumerable sweet shops.
On my return Again I took a local conveyance for Kotdwar and was again sitting next to driver. This driver was not busy with beedis but was instead giving a full aroma of Paan. On one of the turns I noticed that the gear lever of the vehicle out of its place (the lever lost one of its joining bolt) and to my utmost surprise driver blamed me as the reason. I still can’t believe that why the hell will I even try to do so. When the seat is for only one person and two person sits there that can be the reason for that missing bolt or the beautiful condition of the vehicle. Finally the driver fixed the missing bolt by a thin wire, the great Indian Jugaad technology.
I was fortunate enough to witness second vehicle break down on my return journey to Delhi, when the bus refused to take off at Meerut some 3 hours before Delhi. People started arguing with the bus conductor for refund of their money for which the conductor was not ready. I was a mere spectator there watching the whole scene to my utmost amusement. I started looking for a different bus. Finally I heard that the conductor is returning the money but the queue was too long and by that time I got another bus for Delhi. I did not want to wait for few rupees and took another bus to Delhi.