Landour

Landour, a small town contiguous with Mussoorie, is about 35 kms (22 miles) from the city of Dehradun in the Northern state of Uttaranchal in India. Mussoorie-Landour, taken together, is a well-known hill station of northern India and is widely known as the "Queen of the Hills". On average, Landour is about 1,500 feet (450 meters) above Mussoorie, which itself is mostly at an altitude of 6,000 to 6,600 feet (1,800 to 2,000 meters). This altitude differential, aided by Landour being Tibet-facing, has a marked effect on the temperature, which can be 3-5 degs. Fahrenheit (2-3 degs. Celsius) cooler in Landour than in Mussoorie. In a given year, Landour receives perhaps twice the snow that Mussoorie does; it also takes longer to melt especially on the north-facing slopes.

If one travels from New Delhi by train or bus, one has to make a change at Dehradun. Buses and taxis, and even "shared taxis", are easily available. There are also some direct buses from New Delhi, and of course one can easily negotiate with taxis at any of New Delhi's railway stations or at the Delhi airport. East of Landour lie the small hamlet of Dhanoulti and the Surkhanda Devi temple; further east are Kanatal, Tehri (now submerged by the Tehri dam) and Chamba (not to be confused with the town and district of the same name in Himachal Pradesh).

Since the British Raj, Landour has been a hill station and sanatorium. It is located in Dehradun (or 'Dehra Doon') district of the former United Provinces, and was initially built for the use of the British Indian Army. From the 1820s, Landour was a convalescent station for British soldiers and officers, and hence much of Landour is a Cantonment. The first permanent building in all of Mussoorie-Landour was built in 1825 (some say 1823) by Captain Young, the "discoverer" of Mussoorie. The building, Mullingar (hinting at Young's Irish blood), was the Young family home during the hot summers in the plains. The house sits prominently atop Mullingar Hill in what is now the cantonment. The house was subsequently expanded and is now in disrepair, though still occupied by squatters (on which more below).

In terms of area, Landour Cantonment comprises two-thirds of Landour. Thanks to the strict building and zoning restrictions of Indian cantonments, Landour Cantonment is -- unlike Landour itself -- largely free of the crass commercialization that has scarred much of Mussoorie proper, especially along the 'main drag' of Mall Road where budget tourists throng in the summer. (Mussoorie-Landour's proximity to Delhi, Chandigarh and Ambala is both a blessing and a curse).

There are no commercial hotels in Landour Cantonment, and only a handful of rudimentary, quasi-legal "guest houses". Also, there are fewer than two hundred detached private homes in the Cantonment. The remaining buldings belong to either the military, or to the state-owned broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio, who have powerful repeater stations atop Lal Tibba hill, the highest point in all of Mussoorie-Landour. Ergo, the year-round population of the cantonment is under 2,000, and if you include Landour proper it is under 5,000. In the summer the population of Mussoorie doubles to about 60,000 with the influx of budget tourists, but the population of Landour only goes up by perhaps 2,000, given the paucity of hotels. And the summertime population of Landour Cantonment goes up by only 500, if that; there is simply no place for outsiders to stay, since the cantonment consists of almost entirely of either (a) military/government buildings, and (b) private homes.

Like Mussoorie and Dehradun, Landour has long been a center of secondary education. The towns have had several schools for both European and mixed-race Anglo-Indian children since the mid-1800s. Also, there were many missionary-run schools, of which the most well-known was (and remains) Woodstock School, founded in 1854 for the children of American missionaries. Practically all of the other prominent schools including Wynberg-Allen, St. George's School, Waverley Convent (now CJM) and Vincent Hill (now Guru Nanak School) are in Mussoorie rather than Landour.

Unlike Mussoorie, Landour for the most part is carpeted by old-growth forests of Chir Pine, Deodar Cedar, Himalayan Maple, Rhododendron, Oak and other tree species. A logging ban has long been in place in the Reserved Forests around Landour, and for the most part, the ban is well enforced.

Birdlife is outstanding in its breadth of species; over 300 species may comfortably be seen at various elevations over the course of the year, including both endemic species and migratory species from Tibet, Central Asia and Siberia. Several endemic species of pheasant are among the more attracive species that can be seen by the trained eye. As for wild mammals, leopards are seen from time to time; their prey is mainly dogs, including strays from Landour-Mussoorie and also from the neighboring villages. Also seen are some kakar (barking deer or muntjac), and the odd Sloth Bear. Among smaller mammals, Civets, Himalayan Weasels and Yellow-throated Martens are seen more regularly. Pesky rhesus macaques and langurs are as present in Landour as anywhere.

Landour offers striking views of the Garhwal Himalaya, with a wide vista of up to 200 kms (125 miles) visible from West to East on a clear day. The views are even better than those from Mussoorie. The visible massifs and peaks include (West to East) Swargarohini, Bandarpoonch, Yamnotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, Chaukhamba (Badrinath) and even Nanda Devi. At its closest point, Tibet is about 70 miles (110 kms) away; it is through Landour that Heinrich Harrer escaped to Tibet during World War II after breaking out of a British internment camp in Dehradun.

The denizens of Landour Cantonment, in particular, are known to guard their privacy jealously. Many of them, in their "other lives", are part of The High & Mighty in the national capital of Delhi. (Some are less high and less mighty than in their self-image, of course). Privacy aside, the locus of Landour Cantonment is so-called "Char Dukan" (or "four shops"), where locals and tourists park themselves for a sandwich, a cuppa, a bit o' gossip or just a rest. Char Dukan is on the way to the tourist lookout spot of "New" Lal Tibba ("Old" Lal Tibba having been taken over in 1975 by Doordarshan and All India Radio to build a towering mega-transmitter). Char Dukan can get a bit crowded during the day in the summer when droves of budget tourists flock to New Lal Tibba.

Architecturally speaking, Landour is akin to other Raj-era hill stations of Northern India. Since Mussoorie-Landour never rivalled Shimla in administrative, political or military terms, there are few 'grand official buildings' to speak of. The private homes are largely the commonplace Raj-era pastiches, with pitched roofs (usually painted a dull red). Most homes do have a verandah, important given the heavy monsoons. About the only "architecturally significant" building was The Castle on the aptly-named Castle Hill, now part of Survey of India, where the deposed boy-king Duleep Singh of Punjab, the son of the iconic Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was often "kept" for convalescent purposes in the 1850s and 1860s. The Amir of Afghanistan too was in the town in quasi-exile at various times in the early 20th Century as Raj officials engaged in their customary machinations of map-drawing and re-drawing across the Subcontinent. Landour has two Raj-era churches, both very much in use today: Kellogg Church (which is also home to the popular Landour Language School) and St. Paul's Church in Char Dukan, where Jim Corbett's parents married in 1869. A third Methodist church in Landour Bazaar fell into disuse after the Raj ended and was eventually seized by squatters for commercial purposes by way of 'kabza'.

Landour also has a outsized presence on the literary map of India, it's most famous resident being the Anglo-Indian author Ruskin Bond. Another resident is the self-styled "rabid thespian" Victor Banerjee, formerly of Calcutta. Other bohemians who call Mussoorie (but not Landour) home are the writer Bill Aitken (born a Scot) and the husband-wife travel-writing team of Hugh and Colleen Gantzer. And then of course there is Allan Sealy of Trotter-Nama fame, down in the valley in Dehradun.

Landour has, in large part, survived "untouched" thanks to the military presence and also given its small size. Apparently, that's the way the locals like it, uh-huh uh-huh.

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References

•   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public ___domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

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