Early morning walk in the queen of hills, exploring twin towns of Mussoorie and Landour.

Namaste 🙏

Hope you all are doing great.

A very good morning from the queen of hills!!!

I visited Mussoorie and Landour earlier this month and had a wonderful time there. The twin town collectively called The queen of hills was a contonment town from the time of British colonialism in India. The town of Landour is named after a village in wales to signify British identity and the town itself tells about it’s stories when you visit there.

A good morning—

I had my Airbnb booked at the border of Landour and Mussoorie so that I could explore both. Landour is about 1.5-2 kms from the centre of Mussoorie town and this place is best explored on a scooter. We woke up early to see the sunrise for which this place is famous for.

The sunrise view from my Airbnb window

It was about 7 AM and we looked outside our window. The sun was slowly rising up the distant foothills of wester Himalayan range. We looked for a good sunrise spot online and found one about 2 km away from our Airbnb.

The view of Landour town

The town has quite narrow streets as you can see in the photos below and because of this, only one car can pass from here. This is the reason people mostly use two wheelers and only taxis here. You will rarely see a private four wheeler here and when they come in abundance, traffic gets jammed for hours.

Narrow streets of Landour

You will find a lot of two wheeler rental shops across the town and they provide the same a quite affordable price. If you want to get a scooty (that most people do) it only costs around 500 rupees per day which is quite affordable.

Scooters for rent

We found just the shop we were looking for!!! As it was early morning time, the shop was not open yet but we took snap of his mobile number so that we could contact him later for the scooty rental.

The street art—

After walking for a while, we came across a wall which was beautifully decorated with the street art. The art was inspired from the lifestyle of local people before this town was modernised. The artwork was three dimensional and not paintings which enhanced it’s beauty a lot.

There is restricted forest area starting just above the artwork and it goes all the way upto the highest point of this area that is Lal Tibba.

3D artwork

There was no sun in the street yet and we were on our way to the sunrise point that was about a km away from here. It looked like the street was getting steeper now and we were seeing the sunlight at a little distance.

The walk upto the sunrise point—

In the centre of Landour market, lies Landour taxi stand. We saw a lot of taxis-parked there.
It was around here only that we saw some space in the street where the taxis were parked.

Landour taxi stand

After walking for another 5 minutes, we reached upto a point from where we could see the whole Landour town and also some part of Mussoorie from here. The town looked so beautiful from here. In spite of a lot of development, we saw some old colonial style buildings.

Old colonial buildings

Another thing that I noticed was the influence of Tibetan culture here. After the entrance of Tibetan refugees in India, this place became home to many such people and their influence can clearly be seen here. There and many Tibetan monasteries, restaurants and homes here that you can tell by their famous Tibetan flags on top of each building.

Tibetan influence on the town

Now the road really got steep and there were lot less traffic on the street too. The sun was up now and we were getting the early morning sunlight onto us. We were about to reach the sunrise point now!!!

Steep road leading to the sunrise view point

Reaching the sunrise point—

We reached the sunrise view point after a short while. It was a rain shelter too. It was on the edge of the cliff and from there whole town could be seen. We reached there at just perfect time as the sun was just rising up slowly.

The sunrise view point

We could see whole town of Mussoorie, Landour and even the distant Dehradun city. The weather was also clear that day so we were able to see upto a long distance. It was a view to be remembered!!!

Half of the town still didn’t got the sunlight yet and we sat in the rain shelter and waited for the sun to come up. It was a remarkable experience sitting there inside the rain shelter. We sat there for about half an hour and headed back to our room. It was a morning walk that will be remembered forever!!!

Thanks for passing by.

Peace ☮️