Day 4 & 5 Mussoorie and Landour Journey: A Physical and Spiritual Awakening

Over the past two days, the GEO adventurers have been on a journey through Uttarakhand, north of Dehradun. Mussoorie is a hill station built by the British as an escape from the summer heat. Yesterday, we boys left The Doon School at 7 AM and Jagdish-jaja kindly got us all chai wallah to keep us awake. We arrived shortly after at the base of the mountain, ready to begin our journey.

 

As we started our hike, we and the girls were joined by a Doon School Hindi teacher and his colleague, a Computer Science teacher. The boys had boxed lunches courtesy of Welham Girls' School (thank you so much :D) as we walked up, so we were not without energy. Quickly we were met with the rising sun, and the temperature rose rapidly, characteristic of this area of the globe. We passed numerous cute, but feral dogs and nice travellers, as well as motorcyclists. Three hours later, drenched in sweat, possibly crying, we made it to the rendezvous point and hopped in the cars, grateful for shelter from the sweltering heat, and also feeling accomplished, having conquered a physical and emotional mountain.

 

After about a fifteen minute drive, everyone arrived at an outdoor mall which was bustling with people. The city is trying to industrialize, adding pipes under the main road, so the road was very wet and covered in rubble, though the people there were unbothered by this. We walked through the streets looking for a place to eat.

 

Upon the summit of the mountain, we walked through a busy street mall to a hostel and restaurant where we had tea and lunch with Sejal, the director of the World Wildlife Fund in India, as well as the owner of the hostel. Sejal made us feel at home and inspired us through her experiences in conservation, helping sea turtles find their home in the sea and protecting local leopards in the high-altitude wetlands.

 

After lunch, the group began to look for ATMs to exchange money, but there weren't many locations that accepted cash. Finally, when we found an ATM, we exchanged money and began shopping at various stores. Max and Tea bought a Rubik's cube, many other friends bought traditional clothes, and when everyone was satisfied, we drove to our next stop: Landour.

 

We stayed overnight at La Villa Bethany in Landour. Landour is very interesting because it is also a British residency base. Its infrastructure and property has not changed since Indian independence in 1947, and remains the same as it looked. La Villa, once the home of Sunita and her husband, has been converted into a homey hotel for all of us. We ate very tasty Indian food and promptly went to bed. The girls stayed in the main building, the teachers stayed in the Hobbit hole, and the boys in the log cabin.

 

The next day, about half of the group rose early to take a 15ish-minute walk down the road from La Lilla Bethany in order to see the sunset. As we walked, Landour rose with the sun, with shops opening, an increasing number of motorcyclists filling the streets, and the low hum of the town coming to life. We watched as the pink horizon lit up the scene around us with a rosy light—it was like something out of a movie. We kept walking, eventually stopping to get chai tea and coffee at a coffee shop, and watched as two groups of stray dogs had a standoff at an intersection in the road. Monkeys climbed down from roofs to investigate our food and drink, and more and more dogs came down until there were about 15 of them, all growling and standing alert. Afterwards, we came back to the hotel for a warm breakfast, and an hour later we met outside for some reflection time.

 

After a few minutes of silent meditation (and sleep for some), we shared our opinions of our reflections. People mentioned feelings of community among the group, gratitude for the opportunity to see India and feel everything it has to offer, appreciation for the "small moments" over the past few days, excitement about the food and animals roaming the streets, and intrigue on how the country has affected our own perceptions of ourselves and the realities we live in.

 

Following reflections a group of students went to a nature reserve, where we walked through trails on the hillside facing Landour, seeing trees like the Blue Pine and eating Rhododendron leaves. These students then met up with the rest of the students for a fabulous lunch at Woodside, the home of William Bissell, the owner of the clothing company, FabIndia.  

 

The entire group dorev down the mountain to Dehradun and returned to their respective campuses for dinner. Max, Kaiden, and Tea spent the evening composing this write up and talking with some doscoes and their teachers.