Life in a nutshell

“There are more writers per square centimetre in this city than any part of the world,” Ganesh Saili, author and Mussoorie resident, says as he sips on his tea and looks around his 100-year-old house, currently full of avid listeners. We are in his lovely paved courtyard as the sun sets into sharp azure tones, the green garden seat getting colder, but Saili’s stories are warmer than ever. He is reading out a passage from his next title, a book of anecdotes on his fellow Mussoorie writers, some cheeky, some not so cheeky.

Book readings in front of an authentic copper fire grate may seem too quaint to some, but in romantic Mussoorie, it is the perfect thing to do for an evening in. My home in the hill station, the five-year-old JW Marriott Walnut Grove and Spa, is ideal for the romantic at heart. Built around a walnut grove, the hotel is structured like steps around the mountainside. The lobby is the topmost floor, while the rooms are in the floors below.

Kachdi , a Garhwali tradition of villagers meeting every evening for tea and gossip, is recreated in the JW lawns, around an old walnut tree.You can sip hot tea (you know the pleasure when masala chai has intuitively been made just how you like it?) with roasted corn-on-the-cob from the farms next door, and a chaat and cookie stall for takers. Kids, if you have any, will inevitably be found lolling on the gently sloping lawns, or running around the nursery.

The nursery is like a jewel in the JW crown. Maintained by local gardeners, it is a riot of colour, almost too perfect to be true. If you plan a romantic escapade to this place (and no hill station is better) JW will organise a breakfast for you in the middle of this wonderland. We, however, were treated to something sweeter, and learnt how to make walnut tarts as big orange begonias beamed over us.

Organising breakfasts at unusual locations seems to be a preoccupation for the staff here. On our second day, we trooped down sleepily to the JW farms, past rows of lettuce, chilli and cherry tomatoes to look guiltily at a royal feast in the morning sun. On our third day, we rode down to the Himalayan Club, a steep trek to a Tennyson-worthy babbling brook, and sat down to a picnic breakfast on its banks. Hot parathas and chai, fruit yoghurt jars, even someone strumming on the guitar on a rock... it is difficult to forget a breakfast like that.

A visit to Mussoorie is incomplete without a walk through Landour, the oldest part of Mussoorie, mistier and dreamier than the touristy mall road. Cobbled streets and avenues form most of Landour. If you pass a cemetery where a lone sheepdog is sitting guarding a grave, the locals will tell you how he has been there ever since his master was buried. Lucky to have an old Mussoorie resident and wildlife enthusiast as our guide for the day, we soaked in the history of the place, from where the Emir of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed Khan, was exiled and put under house arrest, to the oldest church in the city, to the plant mansoor that gave this place its name. Our guide plucked at the wild sorrel, ginger and other herbal plants growing around. The Mussoorie National Park is full of such rare plants.

Winter’s here in Mussoorie, and a white Christmas and New Year may not be a distant dream. Find your nook before it gets snowed in, and sip some warm toddy at the bar overlooking those snowy peaks.

Tip : Pick a room facing the mountain ranges. For those with mountain sickness, keep Avomine handy. Ask for ginger tea, here will always be ginger tea to sip on, an antidote to that queasiness, and the cold mountain air will do the rest to make you feel better (or did in my case.)

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