Lansdowne

It's been a while since I last updated anything apart from poetry. There are many things which I had on my mind. One of them was about my short visit to Lansdowne, this year in end September.

Lansdowne is a small, cantonment hill station located in Uttarakhand. The fact that it is a cantonment area makes this place even more clean, fresh and peaceful, unlike other hill stations. It is covered with unending alpine forests and picturesque view of majestic mountains.

As mentioned above, I visited this place in late September and the weather was nearly perfect. We (which refers to me and my cousins) chose our personal car as the mode of travelling. Started in the early hours, we managed to touch the town around 2 in the afternoon with the help of reliable GPS and kind people all over India.

en route... just a few kms before the destination.
And that's my brother's hand.

The hotel where we stayed was 'Fairydale', situated near the main market. Like many other residences of military colonels, it is a huge bungalow converted to a hotel which kept the homely ambiance intact. The food was good, the staff was courteous, oh, and they had an adorable Labrador who, unlike Frodo, spent his time meditating nonchalantly and basking in the sunlight instead of drooling over everyone's lunch table. Clearly, he was on another level.

What I loved the most about Fairydale were its rooms. We had one master bed on ground floor and the other one went upstairs and ended in an extremely cozy haven like compound. I remember how I was left with the widest smile that day, the moment I climbed upstairs and snuggled deep inside the thick blanket.
After all, this is what one craves for, after a looong hectic travelling.

And so the holiday began.

You see her? The girl in  pink track pants? Yes, that's my little cousin Mishti.

cozy cocoon.

Poser!

The mornings we witnessed were wrapped in dense fog and absolute silence. Perhaps this is the reason why Lansdowne to me is a perfect harborage of quietude.

Earlier I had thought that taking our car wouldn't be a good idea because of the exhaustion it would cause. But honestly, it was the best decision. We had independence and privacy in a new city where one is usually dependent on the cab or bus driver. I thoroughly enjoyed our long walks in dense morning fog, through the alpine forests and then chilling for a while in the middle of nowhere while we knew we had no reason to rush. It was fun. Not the usual kind, but I did enjoy those happy moments.

This moment, right there, it was scary and calm at the same time.

A very famous church and utterly gorgeous too.

Let me share a little secret. I had never ever been to a church before. No wait. I did, once, in Goa. But the problem was that it wasn't structured in a traditional manner. It was hemispherical in design while I always wanted to visit the one where there is a narrow aisle and two paralleled seating arrangement on both the sides, the usual movies wala church. So my silly desire was finally fulfilled in Lansdowne.

Eeeeep.

After the church visit, we went up to the highest point, referred to as Tip-in-Top. It was drizzling and we were cold so we could't stay out in the open for long. But we did enjoy tea, pakoras and played carom.

Tip-in-Top point.

Aren't we adorable?!!!

Tea and pakora time. And yes, it was elaichi wali chaai. ^.^

By the way, most of these pictures are clicked by Mishti.

Not me!

Don't judge by his concentration. I won the queen. Wuhooo!

By the time it was evening, we retired to our beds and started the best part of the journey..a never ending game...Monopoly!!! To say that it was the charm of our trip, is and would always be an understatement. Period.

The next day was lazy. We started off late. It was just too hard to leave that beguilingly warm bed, okay! And also because there isn't much to visit in Lansdowne. Apart from a couple of churches and tip-in-top point, there is a picnic spot, highlights of which are boating in an artificial lake and a small children's park. Lansdowne is ideal for those who want a weekend getaway from Delhi or some nearby area. You don't need more than two to three days to devour the beauty of this place.

A family of definitely more than 10 people hopped onto this poor bridge 'together', while we were crossing it. Gosh!

  

And the entire trip, in a nutshell.

________

P.S: Did I ever mention how dearly I wish to be a travel blogger? And that I've had dreams of travelling to far off lands and breath-taking places, with a small pretty diary in hand and a camera hanging around my neck? Like literally.

It's normal, right?