India – Jaipur & the Hill Stations

Tuesday, 29 October 2024

In October I was in India, I started in Delhi where I was surprised to encounter lots of Lamborghinis at Delhi’s rather marvellous Imperial Hotel. Then I continued to Jaipur where I was wheeled around by Women With Wheels, a terrific program to put women behind the wheels of taxis, something which only a few years earlier might have seemed totally impossible.

◄ Entrance to Jaigarh Fort, Jaipur – I was in Jaipur to join the GX tourism conference, put on by adventure travel company G Adventures. I was staying some distance out of Jaipur – at the Rajasthali Resort & Spa – so on this occasion I was not a Jaipur tourist at all. Apart from venturing into the Jaigarh Fort for the party which brought the conference to a suitably energetic close.

▲ A sign which didn’t require much obedience, sounding the horn continuously comes very naturally to rather too many drivers in India

The rest of my India trip was devoted to Indian hill stations and holy cities. I’ve been to a number of hill stations over the years from Shimla (also Simla), Dharamsala and Manali in the west to Darjeeling in the east. Recently I’ve been involved in launching the Wheeler History of Travel Writing Programme at Warwick University in England – where I studied engineering many years ago. The new programme is part of Warwick’s history department and one of the programme’s first PhD students is Alfisha Sabri whose doctorate study is going to pursue ‘The Real and the Remembered: A Study of Mussoorie & other Colonial Hill Stations through the Tourist Gaze & Local Perception (19th-21st centuries).’

That felt like a very good reason for me to have look at Mussoorie, a hill station which I’d never visited before, so from Jaipur I travelled to Dehra Dun and a wild and terrifying taxi driver took me up the steep and continuously winding road to Mussoorie. Blowing his horn continuously as we climbed.

▲ In Mussoorie I moved into the delightful Savoy Hotel, originally opened in 1902 the Savoy was the very height of colonial-era hill station glamour. Then the hotel fell on hard times, the standards deteriorated and it was closed for a spell before a complete restoration and reopening in 2013.

▲ Today it’s the perfect place for some colonial era nostalgia and there’s even a nightly changing of the guard as the hotel’s flag is ceremoniously brought down before the very military looking guard march it away. Do the cleaning staff don uniforms for the occasion? Next it’s happy hour in the Writers Bar, which really has to work overtime to scare up enough writers to give the place some sort of literary history. Although I do spot, amongst the big collection of vintage black & white photographs around the hotel, a visit by Pearl S Buck. She doesn’t feature in the Writers Bar, but Ruskin Bond certainly does, Mr Bond turned 90 years old earlier in 2024, but he’s still very much the centre of Mussoorie’s literary scene.

▲ There’s plenty of opportunity for walking around Mussoorie and indeed the Savoy Hotel leads pre-breakfast morning walk for more energetic guests. I followed the hotel’s walking guide along the Camel’s Back Road, it’s just as well there’s a sign alerting you to the view of the Camel’s Back Rock because it’s not very conspicuous.

Shimla was the colonial era summer capital, where British Raj era officers and officials retreated from the summer heat of the plains. But Shimla was hard work, if it was fun you were after then Mussoorie was where you went. Mussoorie was the place for romance, flirtation and dalliance as a change from government business. Like Shimla there’s even a Scandal Point on the Camel’s Back Road, a favourite meeting place for young lovers.

◄ From the Mall Rd I also took the cable car up to Gun Hill for views of the hills and Himalayan Peaks. Or at least there would be views of the mountain peaks later in the season. It would be a few weeks before the clouds really drew back and the clear weather started.

▲ Along the Mall Rd and then up Landour Rd there’s an amusing collection of bas relief panels, like this one illustrating wildlife you are very unlikely to encounter around Mussoorie. Check this website for more about walking the Mall Rd in Mussoorie.

◄ Then there’s the Landour Clock Tower, built in the late 1930s.

▲ Soon followed by Sabri Bought & Sold in Landour Cantonment. It’s the charming antiques shop run by Ayub Sabri whose daughter is at Warwick University working on her Mussoorie hill station PhD. After showing me around his shop Mr Sabri gave me a ride on the back of his ‘scooty’ steeply uphill to the km or so circuit at the top of the hill. There are a couple of churches along the Landour Peak circuit road, but the very top, higher than the circuit road, is military territory.

▲ My walks also take me to Company Garden which is frankly rather disappointing. If there’s a patch of lawn there will be a ‘keep off the grass sign on it.’ The Wax Museum, however, is definitely worth a visit although mainly to see how terrible the images can be, waxwork figures usually are, aren’t they? Yes Amitabh Bachchan, Hindi movie star, and Mr Bean both feature, but Princess Di was my favourite.

From Mussoorie I travelled 60km downhill to Rishikesh, my driver Azad Singh was the one sane and sensible male driver I encountered on this trip. No mad overtaking, no last minute braking and I doubt the trip took us more than a few minutes longer.

▲  Yes, we do love Rishikesh, made famous by the Beatles from their 1968 sojourn beside the Ganges with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Sadly their guru has been located on the astral plane for some time now and in fact he departed our plane from the Netherlands, not from India. His Ashram was derelict for some years, but has now been reopened as a sort of Beatles tourism site, even though they had nothing further to do with it after their 1968 visit. It’s not far from the Janki Bridge on the Swarg Ashram side of the river, but I did not manage to pay a visit. Click here for more on the Beatles and their Rishikesh connection.

◄ In Rishikesh I stayed at Aloha on the Ganges, which overlooks the river, but from quite a height above it. The ‘on the Ganges’ claim is a little far-fetched. Gently drifting down the Ganges on an inflatable is a very popular Rishikesh activity and this scene is just above the Lakshman Jhula bridge which unfortunately has been closed for repairs since 2022. Or for complete replacement, a new bridge appears to be under construction immediately adjacent to the shuttered crossing and unfortunately it is not going to look anywhere near as graceful as the decaying Lakshman Jhula.

▲ As well as scooters, motorcycles, autorickshaws, cars, trucks and buses the main road through Rishikesh is also jammed with cows. Yes, they’re holy animals and treated with religious respect, but in India being a holy cow does not ensure you’re looked after very well. Nobody would consider gently persuading a holy cow to shift away from a dangerous middle-of-the-traffic-clogged-road resting place and move to somewhere safer and more comfortable.

◄ I dodged the traffic and the cows downstream to the Ram Jhula Bridge, crossed to busy Swarg Ashram, walking further downstream passing not far from the Beatles Ashram and passing riverside spots like this image of the monkey god Hanuman baring his heart to devotees.

▲ By this time the sun was setting, neatly centred on the Janki Bridge.

◄ I crossed the Ganges again on the Janki Bridge, overlooked once again by Lord Hanuman. From Rishikesh I continued another terrifying 30km to holy Haridwar. This is where the Ganges emerges from the Himalaya and starts its long gentle run across India, passing through the holy city of Varanasi and eventually spreading out in a huge delta to enter the Bay of Bengal between Kolkata in India and Dhaka in Bangladesh

▲ In Haridwar I stayed right on the Ganges in the Ekaanta Hotel from where it was only a two km walk to the Har-ki-Pauri Ghat.. This is a very important bathing spot and generally very crowded. It’s also very crowded on the narrow streets beside the river, the walk from my hotel may not have been far, but it was an impossibly crowded two km distance. I noted that it felt like a very crowded day on the Piccadilly Line on the London Tube, but with a motorcycle or scooter forcing its way through the train carriage crowds every few minutes. Not fun!

◄ Prakash Lok was an excellent retreat from the riverside crowd and the place to sip the best ice-cold 60 Indian rupees (70c US) lassi in Haridwar. Near the lassi location I boarded the ropeway cable car for the ride up to Mansa Devi Temple. It costs 199 INR (I get a 1 rupee coin in change) and paying for it is remarkably like buying an Indian Rail ticket, they need my mobile phone number and of course it causes problems that I don’t have an Indian one. The ride up is managed fairly efficiently, but the temple is a bit pointless for a non-believer. There’s nothing to see externally and internally you just make an extremely crowded circuit past assorted little shrines where assorted priests bless you, or whatever.

 

 

I exit, put my shoes back on as quickly as possible and then set out to walk back down to the river, rather than take the return cablecar. It is rather astonishing how many economical pilgrims are making the long ascent, many of them with children or of reasonably senior years.

Holy Haridwar was my final stop and from there I made the five hour 10 minute, 251km trip on the 19020 / HW BDTS express back to New Delhi’s Nizamuddin Railway Station. I’d paid 1210 Indian rupees (US$14.40) including the 35 rupee ‘convenience fee’ for a First Class Air Con seat. Now airline tickets in India – I flew with IndiGo on this trip – are quite straightforward, why is getting a train ticket still a bureaucratic nightmare? On my last visit to India in 2016 I thought I’d sorted out Indian Railways, I’d taken an overnight train from Bangalore (Bengalaru) to Hampi, then another train to Goa and a couple more trains up the coast from Goa to Mumbai. On that trip I’d even set up an account with Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and my account name and password still worked, but would IRCTC sell me a train ticket? Absolutely not.

A lot of the messing around with Indian bureaucracy comes down to mobile phone numbers, they really want you to have an Indian mobile number and if you don’t then you risk disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. Which is where I went, IRCTC and other railway booking websites did not want to know about my Australian or my UK mobile phone or assorted made up or borrowed Indian mobile numbers I tried to provide. Eventually the front desk at the Savoy Hotel let me borrow an Indian mobile number (the ticket was sent to me by email, no mobile number necessary!) and all was well.

▲ Haridwar Railway Station – just like railway stations always look in India

Except I only had a ‘wait list’ ticket, would I get on the train? No problem, I may have had no idea where to go on the train, but that was no problem, a conductor led me to my seat, he knew where I was going even if my ticket didn’t. And the train was pretty much right on time into Delhi although it was then followed by another kamikaze-India-taxi-driver-from-hell eight km ride to my hotel. Convincing me yet again that being on the road is the worst thing about visiting India. Please hand over everything to Women With Wheels.

There was still a final Indian disappointment, Rishikesh and Haridwar are vegetarian and dry, by the time I’d wrestled with Indian Railways ticketing and survived another Indian taxi ride I was definitely in need of a stiff drink. Tough luck, I’d arrived in Delhi on Gandhi Jayanti, it was a ‘dry day,’ no alcohol available.