Mussorie, the queen of the hills is a popular hill station in India. My first impression of this place was that I was a terribly late in visiting this place. It seemed that scores of Delhites and possibly the rest of Indians have made Mussorie their backyard. Like all hill stations, Mussorie also has The Mall road. This pretty much resembled Karol Bagh as many restaurants flaunted “dilli ke mashoor aaloo ki tikki aur chole bhature”. I was wondering why would one travel all the way from dilli to have dilli ke mashoor snacks. Hmm, don’t have so much grey matters to ponder so I would leave that to the shop keepers to figure out.
Anyways, the good thing about Mussorie was that it was a lot more organized than what I had experienced some 7 years ago when I visited this place briefly with my friends. Then, I could only see hordes of car elbowing each other as if there was a grand prize for the car that would reach Mussorie first. As I reflected upon my first experience I instantly thought that the traffic jam could have been a good occasion to flaunt “dilli ka mashoor traffic jam”. Now, Mussorie had dedicated parking for outside cars & taxis and in order to enter the mall road by a vehicle one had to shell out 100/- for each trip. I am sure the price was meant to be so exorbitant to keep unnecessary vehicles at bay and it worked.
With Mussorie, the first place of interest that comes to mind is Kempty Falls. The next day, we quickly packed our stuff and proceeded towards Kempty falls. Now, I had read many stories about how bad Kempty falls have become owing to mass tourism. Although I was excited about visiting this place I was also a skeptical about the status of the falls. Once we reached there, my fears turned to reality as I could see what a badly managed tourism had done to this beautiful exponent of nature. I mean, I sometimes wonder about the innate ability of cavalier tourists to transform a beauty of nature to a burgeoning backyard of commercial waste. Water which is usually colorless everywhere else was dotted with colorful packs of chips, tetra packs of juices and plastic bottles. Being an avid traveler and an admirer of nature in its raw form, the surroundings of Kempty falls were nothing less than an eyesore. The other thing that surprised me was the many small houses that were mushrooming around the falls. Ironically, the very structures erected for the convenience of the tourists completed eclipsed the view of the waterfall. Anyways, we came, we saw, we took some photographs and returned to our hotel.
Rest of the day was spent lazing around the hotel and engaging in senseless nothing. In the evening, we decided to take a stroll on the Mall road and also go by the famous ropeway to Gun Hill. Now guys please don’t get me wrong but the ropeway to gun hill and the place itself was a big disappointment. Here again, many shops have sprung up completely masquerading the very view for which gun hill was known for.
The return journey from gun hill was not great as there was a huge line waiting for the ropeway. After spending 20 agonizing minutes with my little son along, we finally got a chance to get back to Mussorie. After doing the regulation “window-shopping” on the Mall road, we eventually returned to our hotel marking the end of day-1 in Mussorie.
My verdict on Mussorie-it’s a nice, little hill station which can be visited as a welcome break from the mundane activities of daily life. It has many pluses and minuses but my impression was that the minuses were taking the better of the popularity of the place. The approach roads are bad and the places of interest around Mussorie are nothing but a mere congregation of commercial establishments out to make money exploiting the resources. The only thing that I really liked about Mussorie was the view of the town during the night. That was spellbinding and had no parallel. But apart from this there was something that we really enjoyed in Mussorie. That will be covered in part-3.
Good one !!!!
We use to go almost every Sunday during our School’s Summer vacation. Have you been to one of the oldest revolving restaurant of India, it is located on the mall road.