On a Sunday walk to Landour

One develops a territoriality, stakes a claim on a specific spot at their frequently haunted place. It is as if one has acquired ownership rights by virtue of planting one's behind on a seat for long. How much more rightful must the peasant feel who tills the land!

The library has a peculiar smell. It is the smell of books of old, the letters, the pages, the ink, the binding and the glue, the pictures, the characters and the abstractions of human thought- all breathe. They inhale and exhale, a smell of knowledge, a smell of parched curiousity quenched by a rain of Dewey Decimals.

One sits and breathes. Forget sometimes to exhale and sometimes to inhale, according as the plot rises or falls.

One gazes out of the window from time to time, a day changes, days change- yesterday is like tomorrow which will be like today. A bird sings in the back ground, melancholia filters through air thick with the spirits of the unread books, thick with the spirits of books thumbed through, licked, torn, highlighted, mutilated, loved, issued, returned, stolen.

The sun rise was spectacular today.

A sunrise to watch

The full moon loomed larger than life while the sun light lit up the tops of the hills one by one.

Full moon crashing on to pine trees

Vincent Hill catching the first light

We figured a revisit to the Lal Tibba might be a good idea, now that the snow peaks seem tantalizingly close. The sky was a fifty shades of blue.

A shade of blue

However, the view itself was a disappointment, from Lal Tibba. For one, the trees block the view. And the two tourist traps of cafes/tea stalls were closed and access to the 'Govt Approved' binoculars was cut off by multiple locked doors. There were other places from where the view was quite good, like the point where the road forks, near chaar dukaan. Swargarohini massif was yellow beryl in the first rays of the sun. The honour passed to the Gangotri range peaks-Srikanta, Kedarnath and Chaukhambha as the sun light found these peaks at length. One can spot the various buildings of the academy from afar. The maligned Polo Grounds look innocuous enough from these great distances.

Spot the Polo grounds if you can

The quiet of Lal Tibba yielded fantastic opportunity for bird watching. The quiet also attracts the quiet minded people.

One can reach Lal Tibba by taxi but the fun is in walking and taking in the sights. Then there is Doma's Inn, a restaurant with kitsch interior decoration.

Cute kitsch.

It is a good place to pack in some calories exhasuted by nearly 2 hours of walking and pack some more for the next two hours of exhausting walk. All in all a day well spent.