Trip to Mussoorie

Before trip Planning:

Date of trip: 10 Feb 2019 to 13 Feb 2019

Persons involved : 4(including me)

You will get to know why I mentioned these details here.

One of our friend invited us for his wedding ( date 13th Feb) at Balotra near Jodhpur. 4 of us decided that let’s plan for Jodhpur trip and then we will attend the wedding. So we decided from 11th morning to 12th evening we will enjoy in Jodhpur and then will go to Balotra for wedding functions. We booked 4 train tickets from Delhi to Jodhpur and didn’t plan anything as we are engineers, kaam end m hi karte Hain.

You may be thinking that blog post is about trip to Mussoorie, but till now I didn’t mentioned about it. This ambiguity will be resolved as soon as we enter day 0 of trip.

Everything was sorted like who was going, no. of days for Jodhpur trip i.e 1.5 day, no. of days for wedding i.e. 1.5 days.

As time passes by, wedding date was coming closer day by day. One of our friend who was coming to Delhi from Banaras changed his plan and booked direct ticket to Jodhpur.

Now comes the twist. As it was time of mid February, and you know places like Mussoorie, Manali or Shimla starts trending in NEWS or SNS for its awesome weather. And then suddenly our minds started looking for Mussoorie trip instead of Planned Jodhpur trip. We(excluding friend from banaras) started planning for Mussoorie Trip non seriously as we knew its impossible to attend marriage of our friend and in the same time we can have Mussoorie trip. But we are engineers, we don’t give up so easily, we thought in order to enjoy wedding and Mussoorie both we have to avoid Rail journey of Delhi to Jodhpur to save time. So we started looking for flight option but flight cost was high, it was crossing our budget so till 8-9 Feb Jodhpur trip was still on. While Mussoorie trip’s non serious planning was going on we forgot that one friend, who was coming to Jodhpur directly on 11th Feb. He was completely out of picture now.

Suppose from morning to afternoon consciously or unconsciously you came across the number 7 many times, and then if someone ask you to guess a no. the probablity of 7 as your answer tends to 100%. Same way our mind was stucked in Mussoorie planning as such places become perfect getaways in good weather and they start trending across every online platform.

Here comes the twist.

Once you searched for flight in any android app it keep pushing notification saying “flight fares decreased Book Now”. Luckily it worked this time. Price from delhi to jodhpur was around 1500. Seeing this we were not able to resist ourselves from booking. We without giving a thought booked 3 tickets from Delhi to Jodhpur of 13th Feb 2019.

If you were reading thoroughly you must have doubt like why 3 ticket when four people were in starting and why 13th Feb, it should be of 11th feb. Why So?? It is because we are engineers, and we have one bad habit of bunking, so in this case we bunked first day of our own friend’s wedding and decided to go in wedding on 13th instead of 12th.

But in this we had done one thing wrong i.e. we didn’t inform about our plan change to the friend who was coming to Jodhpur hoping we will be there on 11th. We told him on 10th that we will not be coming to Jodhpur.The Trust Broke. Unfortunately he was not able to come to wedding as some riots were going on that time in Rajasthan so train routes were closed. So now we 3 left for trip.

So this is how trip planned to Jodhpur of 4 people changed to trip to Mussoorie of 3 people.

DAY 0

So one friend from Bangalore and another from Jarshuguda (Odisha) came to Delhi in morning and our bus to Mussoorie is in night so we decided to enjoy thrilling rides of Worlds of Wonder(WOW), Noida.

Our bus boarding point was Kashmiri gate at 10:00 PM. But bus didn’t arrived and redbus customer executive said sorry for inconvenience your booking amount will be credited in 2-4 working days. But as we were at Kashmiri gate which is hotspot of buses we easily got another bus to Dehradoon. 

DAY 1

We reached Dehradun around 6 am and from there we boarded another bus for Mussoorie. Bus dropped us at Mall road.

Seriously speaking hiring taxi in Mussoorie for day wise tour is so costly. So we decided to prefer public transport and mostly walking-cum-trekking.

Our next objective is to search good enough hotel and luckily we found one around 200m far from mall road. 200m in hilly terrain is not equivalent to 200m in plain area. Walking to and fro from mall road to hotel consumed most of our energy.

So after freshen up we left hotel and our first stop was Dhanaulti.

After asking locals how to get to dhanaulti eco park, we decided to take public transport which is 1.5 km away from our hotel and as you know we didn’t hired taxi so we had to trek 1.5 km.

TREK!! Yes you read it correctly. Normal walking in hilly terrain is considered as trekking as it utilizes more energy than walking in plain area. So after this trek we boarded taxi to reach dhanaulti’s eco park.

Here you can enjoy the snow. Beauty of this place is mesmerizing. One can found some adventurous activities like Burma Bridge etc. Seeing these mountains covered with snow is perfect scenic beauty.

As we saw the snow covered mountains for the first time in our life we enjoyed there for about 2-3 hrs.

In lunch we had a maggie and pakodas.

After spending splendid time here we started searching for return cab.

Our next stop was lal tibba sunset point.

After asking locals how to reach lal tibba sunset point, they all in return ask what’s our mode of transport and proudly we said our legs and in return they said it’s not possible to reach there on time to watch sunset.

But we are engineers, our efficiency increases as deadline comes closer. So we decided to complete this task and prove them wrong. Within a second we decided our leader for this task. And unanimously our friend who’s origin is Kanpur become our leader for this task.

STEP 1) Navigation added in Google maps

STEP 2) timer equal to time remaining for sunset in Mussoorie was set.

STEP 3) GO

Josh Josh m humne decide to kar liya ki kar lenge task achieve but hum bhool gaye it’s a hilly terrain not a plain region.

Literally halat ye aa gayi thi ki jai mata di ka jaikaara lagana pad raha tha.

But thanks to our leader without his moral support it was impossible for remaining two of us. He was constantly adding +ve energy in us by saying just one line “we can do it” , simple yet so effective.

From this I learnt any task is possible if a leader is leading from front.

Serene beauty of this place is incredible.

It’s a must visit place when you are in Mussoorie. Fried Momos were so delicious there.

Till today I didn’t find such Momos in Delhi.

Our next stop was our Hotel as our shoes and socks which were not meant for ice activities socked so much water in dhanaulti’s eco park that now we started feeling cold. As we had budgeted hotel so heater was not available but desi jugaad to avoid getting sick was used.

After taking preventive measures we went to mall road. I love window shopping as it gives you idea of what’s new in market and offcourse it’s a great timepass too.

We bought a gift from one shop named U.P. cottage and village industries for our friend’s marriage. It’s a must visit place if you love window shopping.

Had dinner and went back to hotel and slept well.

DAY 2

Good morning!!

We were so indulged in enjoying Mussoorie, we forgot that we have to attend wedding too. When out friend in morning called us asking where are we, are we coming or not.  And then in return we said Bro, we are coming but didn’t you watch TV due to riots going on trains are running late but don’t worry we will reach on time. Speaking lie with confidence is also one quality of engineers which we showcases here but we forgot other person is also engineer from same college but we had one advantage in terms of our leader from Kanpur. The way he speaks lie is unmatchable. 

As we have not planned anything for todays tour so we asked Google about places to visit in Mussoorie. So we picked one suggestion of Google i.e. Kempty waterfalls.

We left hotel and asked locals about route of Kempty waterfalls and they said go to library Chawk and you will find solution there.

We started walking towards library Chawk with. In middle we brokedown. Due to yesterday’s treks our legs were not with us today because we didn’t had proper diet to recover them. We had to take rickshaw in order to reach library Chawk.

From there we boarded bus which has predefined stops in which one was Kempty waterfalls.

Our first stop was Mussoorie lake.

Many adventurous-cum-fun activities like zorbing, boating, zip-line, paragliding etc. available here. Few of them we tried.
Zip line was good but paragliding is not up to the mark here.

Time of flight was only about 1 min. From the picture below you can have an idea of height between take-off and landing site.

There is nothing adventurous in paragliding here. After doing this our main concern was how he manipulated or convinced guys like us ( 1) Data Scientist 2) Guy from Kanpur) to try it. Anyway bad experiences are part and parcel of life.

Our next stop was Kempty Falls.

Astonishing beauty of this place is incredible. A normal person will spend quality time here by having bath. But as we were young and curious too, we decided to find out the origin of this waterfall, in order to do so we started trekking alongside waterfall in upward direction but we failed.

Anyway trek was good. After trek we decided to reach bottom of the waterfall.

One can enjoy the bath if weather permits.

Our next stop was Santura mata temple.

Finally we reached Library chawk and day 2 trip ends here. As you can see no. of places visited is less but we had a great time enjoying natural beauty.

From Library chawk we went to our hotel, collected luggage and then boarded bus from mall road to Dehradun. From there we on spot booked another bus to Delhi.

Thanks………