Lansdowne

Summer Road Trip – Birding in Lansdowne

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The next two days are packed with bird watching. The commonest of the birds around command our attention for they are new to us plains dwellers. The ubiquitous Himalayan Bulbul, Blue Whistling Thrush and the Russet Sparrows are everywhere. In fact, we do not see any house sparrows there at all! The Streaked Laughing thrush is trying to catch our attention by peaking at us from just beyond the tree trunk. The Black headed Jay is wandering around as common as the Rock Pigeon in the plains!

Meanwhile, two green birds fly up to a nearby tree. There is a distinct yellow on them and the flight indicates woodpeckers. We hurry and try to get in position for at least a record shot to identify the specie. The Lesser Yellownape it is! Hard on the heels of this pair is another pair, this one of the Brown fronted Woodpecker… birds are raining down on us hard and fast! The Himalayan Woodpeckers are also plentiful. The Grey headed Woodpecker makes an appearance… I am very happy. The bird count for the trip is increasing rapidly.

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A quick tour toTarkeshwar – तारकेश्वर महादेव

A quick tour toTarkeshwar – तारकेश्वर महादेव

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I always have two sets of Ghummakari. One is with my family, where we book good accommodation and with all gears ready and behaving like “अच्छा बच्चा” (or rather achha buddha now LOL). The other set of trip is with group of my childhood friends (Laxman, Awasthi, Vijay & Pradeep).

With friends, our trip is quick, without any hotel bookings or preparations for the way and with minimum budget . It is so quick that sometimes we decide at night that tomorrow morning we are going. I keep a small tent, purchased from Scotland, in the boot of car, , which houses two and can be fitted in 20 minutes… but like our trains we can 3 or 4 slip into that in emergency.

Our trip to Tarkeshwar Mahadev was such a quickie. A day before we decided to dash and lo…next morning 4 am we were on the road with petrol tank full. all five of us packed well in the car and crossed Meerut in one hour. Road from Meerut towards Kotdwar is not easily recognised during traffic hours as it looks like a small bazar, but in the wee hours it welcomed us with open lanes.

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Rising Above the Clouds

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I could see why people rated Lansdowne so highly as a monsoon abode. Not everywhere do clouds come down so low and create an aura as if you were up somewhere in the 10,000 ft ASL range. Truly amazing experience it was. It was what I had made this trip for. To see it rain buckets full in unexplored and unexploited mountains. I had got more than what I wished for. I was in a state of pure euphoria. Riding no longer was a conscious effort on my part. My Bull and I were one with the surroundings.

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Oak Grove Inn, Lansdowne – Review

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There aren’t too many options to stay and most of them offer very basic amenities. After a lot of research on the internet, we realized that all the hotels with decent reviews (Blue Pine Resort, FairyDale Resort, GMVN Tourist Guest House etc) were booked for the weekend. I was trying to get in touch with anyone who’d give us a room to stay so that we could escape the city and accidentally found just one review of Oak Grove Inn on one of the hotel review websites. That gave me a lead, I googled further and got to the hotel’s website with contact information and called Colonel Rawat (the owner) to check if they had any space left. To my surprise, he plainly said that all the rooms were available and we’re welcome to stay over the weekend.

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