Mussoorie�s top spot the �Trolley� that takes you from Jhulaghar to Gun Hill.

Going Back In Time 1823, Dehradun. Captain Young and the then Superintendent of Dehradun, Shore, scrambled up uncharted goat tracks on the Mussoorie hills flanking Dehra in search of game. Awed by the beauty and the wild, they soon set up a shooting box on what is now Camel�s Back road. It was to be the birth of the Queen of Hills and its very own Malibu, albeit a pine and deodar-festooned mountain belt, 7500 ft above sea level called Landour.

Bird�s eye view of Landour Bazaar immortalized by Ruskin Bond�s stories.

At the outset, all the high-altitude action was in Landour. Young built his first home, Mullingar, in Landour. In 1827, it became a convalescent depot for British troops and soon enough, a summer retreat for Britons unable to take the heat of the plains. Seven kilometers above the main hill station with trademark Himalayan fauna and a chill in the whispering breeze, Landour started as an army cantonment and stayed away from the bustle that overpowered Mussoorie. And by the turn of the century, while Mussoorie got popular as a renowned hill resort with plenty of homes and boasted The Savoy - complete with Edwardian furniture, grand pianos, Victorian detailing and unmatched service standards, Landour receded to the background, away from the hill hoopla, home to the wild, the shepherds. This was when the original Brit inhabitants were unwilling to move back to the UK. Landour was home for them.

NOTHING FEUDAL ABOUT IT: The rickshaw yet remains the preferred local transport in Mussoorie and Landour.

Mussoorie blossomed into a royal retreat starting with the then Princess of Wales - Mary, who trotted in on horseback (back then there was no road) to Jawahar Lal Nehru, who came here with his convalescing wife and mother, and his daughter Indira, then a baby. And Indian royalty with their fabulous summer homes: Kapurthala, Nabha, Alwar. Charles Dickens', weekly magazine Household Words in its March 1857 edition, introduced Mussoorie by way of a piece written by John Lang, a barrister who represented the Rani of Jhansi against the East India Company. Rudyard Kipling was here in 1888 and stayed at the charming Charleville hotel and scribbled an ode to the hills. The steady stream of who's who continued unabated, from emperors to the Dalai Lama and, all the while, Landour remained ignored. Ignored such that it has flourished in the anonymity.

Yipee! Here comes the warm, winter sun!

And though each time I coax Dad to drive us up to Landour and Ma grunts muttering �Surely, we won't make it up alive this time.� I know Dad can do it. Yes, the drive is nothing short of the Death Well, and I don't mean to deter you! As you take the narrow road up from Picture Palace, Mussoorie and screech, halt and crawl through the Landour bazaar, an avalanche of humanity, shops and cows cram into a narrow winding road. Screeching past the Clock Tower, foot cavorting between break, clutch and accelerator you realise this was just the test drive. Taking you up to where the breeze is pristine at Char Dukan and beyond, is but a posh mule- track scaling up hideously, narrow enough to barely fit in all four tyres - God help us if there's a car coming down as we drive up! My husband refuses to take the wheel, nor would any daredevil city-bred, you have to be a hill-born to change gears and drive a car full of loved ones up this roller coaster.

"After much research, Ganesh Saili and Ruskin Bond discovered in the Library of Congress in America, Kipling's little prose on Mussoorie. �And there were men with a thousand wants, and women with babes galore, but the dear little angels in heaven know that Wudzler never swore�� Wuldzner was probably the manager of the Charleville hotel, where Kipling stayed, and witnessed Mussoorie�s notoriety!"

Dad does it with practised ease and turns around ever so often paying attention to some innocuous statement, that I feel the already strained vessels in my chest will explode. �Can you focus Papa?� I quiver. Ma starts rambling, �I am getting off, I can't take this�� and at that very moment hauls in a big Ambassador upfront, hidden till this moment by the sharp curve. It always happens and yet none of us save Dad can call it routine. Post fifteen minutes of terrified eternity, when he laughingly delivers us at Char Dukan, Ma's knees are wobbly, Hubby's face with trademark disbelief as to how the retired Colonel pulled it off yet again and I declare a tea break.

Landour boasts a large Tibetan settlement who add their serenity and colour to the landscape.

Char Dukan is quite literally four shops. This is where you sit down to sip tea, munch on bun omelettes, toast or the house special cheese-flavoured vegetable Maggi and then attend to the bank or the post office - both right across the road. And as you bite into all of it, appetite spurred by the mountain air, one among the Hindi learning missionaries walks past trying out, aap kaise hai? on you. Further up from Char Dukan, an even steeper but brief climb is what is now ITM (Institute of Technology Management)- the original depot for British soldiers and a little further the Oakville estate, home to the Alters. Tom Alter's family - his parents and two brothers - lives here.

FIT FOR KINGS!: Cheese-flavoured vegetable Maggi or Wai Wai, scrambled eggs and cheese toast at Char Dukan with the family is a royal feast!

The other extreme end (if you don't take the popular road to Lal Tibba that has for the past 50 years boasted a telescope that tourists peer into to glimpse the upper Himalayas) of Landour's cantonment, a tranquil 15-minute walk from Char Dukan amidst skyscraping trees, is Sister's Bazaar.

One of Mussoorie�s two entry points, Library Chowk is always the hub of action. Till a few years Mussoorie was a seasonal resort functioning only in the three summer months but now it�s high season year round!

When Landour was yet the convalescent depot this was where the nurses had their barracks. The barracks are still around, a disheveled old long building in desperate need of repair, but ownership is not clear. The locals refer to it as Dev Anand's but the vigilante point out that it now belongs to someone else. What gets me to Sister's Bazaar is Prakash's store, renowned thanks to Ruskin Bond's books for his home-made cheese, jams - plum, apricot, raspberry and the well-stocked larder boasting almost anything that a Brit supermarket would. Woolworth in the Himalayas? He's a tad steeply priced but that doesn't deter the sworn set enslaved to his wares. Locals of course, the every once-in-a-while tourist and then celebrities too. Word has it that the Nehru (Gandhi) family has long patronized Prakash's cheese. Motilal Nehru bought cheese here in the '20s and many decades later so did Rajeev Gandhi.

NOT MISS INDIA? Local �Garhwali� women complete with headgear, nose-ring and ghagra skirt are a common sight across Uttranchal. You�ll encounter them across Landour�s narrow mountain paths.

Ruskin Bond could well be the first citizen of Landour, though I'm sure he wouldn't agree with me. He might say that the first citizen is a reserved space occupied since the past century by Captain Young. Or he might argue that Miss Ripley-Bean in whose home he yet lives and who told him many an early tale of Mussoorie is well before in line. And yet I think that by acquainting the world to the deodars, the rhododendrons and geraniums, the whistling thrushes and woodpeckers that inhabit Mussoorie and Landour, he well deserves to be citizen no 1. Ruskin Bond lives up in Landour in between the Mullingar and Char Dukan. It's a little �shaky cottage� that he shared with Miss Ripley-Bean till she passed away, �near a forest of oak and rhododendron.� And here watching the clouds perform and the mist gather, he's been churning out bestsellers. Bond is a die-hard nature lover who keeps a diligent lookout for �ferns that go from green to gold� or then for Redstarts to fly in to Landour. And this he achieves by walking around and indulging in what he calls animal and human encounters! Yes, despite touching 70 he hasn't switched over to shiny new cars like his friends, he's yet on foot and reasons, �I settled in the Himalayas in order to enjoy walking among them and I am not about to stop now. The hills are durable in their attractions and my legs have proved durable too, so why should we not continue together as before?�

ONE FROM THE ALBUM: Victor Banerjee and Ruskin Bond parade their soles for buddy Ganesh Saili�s camera! A typically Landour evening of friends, laughs and warmth remains unchanged many years on.

�Often he's rambling along and someone will spot him - nothing makes him more uncomfortable!� says Ganesh Saili, friend of many years who once photographed and now teaches literature. �Kids love him and it is for them that he stops, signs an autograph and then escapes.� Saili who's also collaborated with him on books on Mussoorie and Landour is among the few that 'private' Bond calls friends. �Ruskin is always chasing television crews out of his home. Often two in a day!!� Recently when he agreed to do a television interview with Lilette Dubey, it was shot not at the Bond cottage but on Saili's terrace!

Ruskin Bond in his shaky cottage that borders the rhododendron and oak forest. Though he smiles at strangers he�s happiest when in the company of Landour�s natural bounty!

The Parsonage stands alone up on a hill almost held in place by the picket fence that climbs up, halts, swerves and climbs up a little more again. At the bottom of the white picket fence is a little wrought-iron gate, locked for now. Victor Banerjee once full time resident of Landour now divides time between Calcutta, Canada and then Landour. The locals all know him and tell the tale, �Victor came here in the 70s. He was here for the shooting of Doosri Dulhan with Shabana Azmi and fell in love with Landour.� Victor was charmed by the quaint, non-touristy haven of conifers and deodars that was so very secluded and yet well connected. Also with Mussoorie came the added advantage of world-renowned public schools. �He put his daughters in Woodstock and bought the Parsonage,� says Saili as the mist begins to thicken. (�We live in the mist for three months!� he adds.) Today you can't buy property any more at Landour, as cantonment laws govern it. You could only buy an existing place and renovate it without any structural change. And it costs a fortune - we are easily talking millions here. Saili and gang call Landour their very own Beverly Hills! Sanjay Narang recently bought a place, up ahead, and the talk here at Char Dukan is that he's lavished six crores on his mountain abode. And back then Victor bought The Parsonage for a mere lakh!

PICKET FENCE TO HEAVEN: Victor Banerjee�s Parsonage on a misty Landour afternoon

I ask Ganesh of the fire that gutted Victor's home. And he nods, �Yes, his home was burnt down completely but it was then that I saw the philosophical side to Victor. I wouldn't know another man who would take something so drastic, so well.� Apparently Victor was just back from Hawaii and on that fateful night asleep at home when the short circuit happened, and all was up in flames. He escaped unhurt and the little neighbourhood rushed in to help. Ganesh, Ruskin, the Char Dukan shopkeepers - �hamne raat bhar aag bujhai.� (We are a big party by now as the shop dwellers join in the local lore session).

"Queen Mary attended a tea party in the Savoy and also planted a tree, the plaque of which though rusty yet lies embedded in the tree trunk, a noble reminder of Mussoorie's infancy."

Victor Banerjee was undeterred - never mind his home, never mind the priceless Tagore artworks the fire engulfed. He stayed put and rebuilt The Parsonage from scratch. Only today as you walk past the locked gate you stand facing a boulder the face of which boasts a kitschy painting, and that Ganesh Saili tells me is the Goddess of Volcanoes watching over the Banerjee residence. �Pele is the Hawaiian Goddess of Volcanoes. Since when the fire happened Victor had just come back from Hawaii, he got Pele to watch over his newly-built home.�