2006 World Trip - Dehra Dun & Mussorie

Dehra Dun and Mussourie 

The next day we headed north to Dehra Dun.  We had two options for reaching it, firstly to get back on the train and go South to Delhi, stay a night in Delhi then get back on a train and go North to Dehra Dun; or get on a bus for 5 hours.

The bus was the obvious choice, but even so we were quite apprehensive about travelling on one of these contraptions.  reason one, we couldn’t speak hindi, and no one on the buses could speak english - so we could have ended up back in calcutta.

reason two: they looked like they could fall apart if anyone broke wind, burped or sneezed.

So cutting our losses we sign-languaged our way onto the appropriate bus, and sat on the backseat with our backpacks.

Mark struck up a broken english conversation with an cricket fan next to him, where according to Mark they chatted about the merits of spin bowling against speed bowling, but he could be wrong.  That’s what Mark was talking about anyway.

To make sure we got off at Dehra Dun, Mark began a conversation with another chap with a briefcase and no shoes, who communicated that he too was going to Dehra Dun - pronounced Dehla doon - so we kept an eye on him, and we he got up to debark he nodded at us and we hurriedly hopped off before the doors shut.

It was then that our love affair with Lonely Planet took a turn for the worse, when one of their maps was so unbelievably wrong that they nearly had us lost in Dehra Dun with night approaching.  The India Lonely Planet continued to let us down time and time again as our time in India went by.  The local police were unsure where are hotel was, and so what should have been (according to the Lonely Planet) a short walk to our hotel, turned into a highly stressful and slightly worrying journey.

So it was with great delight that we arrived (in a taxi) at our hotel, which turned out to be a brand-new, marble-pillared, room-serviced, multiple-star hotel.  We promptly presented ourselves at reception sweaty and stressed, with our backpacks on and a strange smell coming from our shoes, where the hotel staff were “delighted” to receive us.

We slumped on our bed and promptly ordered room service and a litre of beer called ‘The Guv’nor’, which Mark swears was the nicest beer he’s ever had.

Because of the difference in currency (Pound vs Rupee), we arrived in India incredibly rich, and were staying in nice hotels for between 4 and 10 pounds per night.  So as long as we didn’t opt for top end hotels we could afford quite reasonable accommodation every night; and being India there weren’t Youth Hostels on every street corner, so hotels and guest houses were our only options.

Food Poisoning 

The next day we headed North to Mussourie, by way of an old bus crawling its way up winding Mountain roads.  The trip was so bumpy that children were being held out of the windows so that they could vomit at the cars behind us.  Anna hurriedly shut her window so we wouldn’t get any flecks of puke speeding back at us from the people further up the bus.

We then headed off towards our hotel, and not getting lost once (Lonely Planet slightly redeemed themselves, but not massively) we got shown to our penthouse suite (mark’s words for where they put backpackers so the rest of the guests can’t smell them).

It was slightly cooler in Mussourie as we were at a higher altitude, so we were able to explore more and we enjoyed the holiday atmosphere that Mussourie has at that time of year.  To celebrate being slightly less sweaty we decided to go for a meal and treat ourselves, so it was with much salivation that Mark ordered a chinese dish - roast lamb with rice, it was so tasty that Anna had to have some as well.  Despite it not looking much like Lamb we had a really nice meal and wandered leisurely back to our hotel.

The next morning Mark felt slightly unwell, but put it down to never really being in great health.  As we packed up our backpacks to head back to Dehra Dun Mark made frequent visits to the toilet, getting through quite a large roll of toilet paper in the process.

We worked out that it was 1 pound more expensive to get an air-conditioned taxi back to Dehra Dun, than it was to get a coach.  And with Mark not feeling super we decided that we’d do that.  On the winding road back down Mark’s body decided that it wanted to be sick, so our driver stopped by the side of the road in the rain.  Mark wasn’t sick, but it provided enormous amusement for passers by.

Arriving back at our previous hotel Mark made it to the toilet just in time.  Soon afterwards Anna began to feel slightly ill, and for the next 4 days we couldn’t leave our room but took it in turns to use the toilet and ask room service to bring up more toilet paper.  On the first day we each went to the loo thirty times, surely there’s a world record in there somewhere?

It was during this time that we realised that we hadn’t seen any sheep in India, but we had seen an abundance of stray dogs - something that a lot of backpackers had pointed out, and wondered aloud if locals ever cooked them; and thinking of it the lamb hadn’t tasted like lamb at all…