MUSSOORIE. November 10th-11th.

Arriving at Mussoorie. There are two bus stands in Mussoorie, one at Gandhi Chowk, called the Library bus stand, and the other, 2 kilometres away, and at the other end of the Mall, called the Picture Palace bus stand, near the market. All the el cheapo accommodation is within walking distance of the Picture Palace. Get off there, and walk to the Hotel Broadway, on Camel's Back Road. I had rung them from Shimla, but it's all news to them. Have a small room with private bathroom, 200 rupees, and an excellent view once you've stepped out of the room. And monkeys take a short cut across a horizontal bar just above the bedroom window. Camel's Back Road is a 3 kilometre scenic walk to Gandhi Chowk, with excellent views across the valleys and to quite large sections of the snow-capped Himalaya in the far-distance. Take some great photos, none of which I could upload to my blog, because the camera setting had been on 'video'. After this first day there was continual low cloud, with nothing visible, and I have since sticky-taped the setting on the camera to 'automatic'. At Gandhi Chowk I have an ice-cream cone, possibly my first ice-cream in India. There are many Indian tourists and holidaymakers around. Mussoorie is another 'honeymoon' destination in India. My main interest in visiting Mussoorie is because my Mum used to spend time here during the hottest months, but also my 3 brothers were at boarding school here, and when I was a kid my second-oldest older brother often used to tell me yarns about it. On the way back along the Mall, I stop at a bookshop, and ask if they have any books about Mussoorie in the pre-war period. The English-speaking bookshop man pulls out half a dozen, and when I mention that I'd be interested in visiting the site of St George's College, the old school of my brothers, he says that St George's is still alive and well, and gives me directions on how to get there.

I see an internet shop, and ask the man if I can upload some photos to my blog, using a usb cable. You have to ask, because some places don't like you doing it. The internet shop man says 'no, but I can put them on to a file, and you can upload them from that'. The same thing had happened in Kasauli, with excellent results, and so I agreed (unfortunately). Two hours later, after he had made numerous experiments on 'speeding up the process' it was taking about 7 minutes to upload one, instead of the normal 2 minutes. And he'd minimised everything (in the interests of speed), so that several pictures were in the space of one, etc. etc...
I finally pleaded an (imaginary) dinner appointment, and made my escape. The next night, at another internet shop where I was allowed to do it myself with a usb cord, I had to scrub all the previous night's pictures, and start again.

As I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I went to the only decent-looking place in town, the Tavern, an upstairs bar and restaurant, where I ordered a Chinese meal. The only other occupants were 4 westerners having a beer. An urbane Indian guy was doing covers of some traditional numbers, and the 5 of us would clap. The others left, and he had a rest for a while. Then a crowd of about 10 Indian young people arrived, and he started up again, but I'm the only one giving him a hand
(I'm locked into it now). So he starts doing all country and western numbers, obviously just for me, ones that I knew, and I'm sort of singing along with him. We had exchanged smiles at the end of a couple of earlier numbers, but now he's grinning at me all the time, and I'm thinking xxxx, I've gotta get out of here a.s.a.p., which I do as soon as I've finished eating.

Tuesday morning I have breakie at the hotel, and am able to get porridge, the first since McLeod Ganj. The bookshop man has said it's a straight road to St George's, about 6 kilometres past the clocktower. Do my usual party-trick of taking a wrong turning, at the clocktower, thereby adding a couple of kms to the trip by the time I've realised my mistake. A young fellow on a motor-bike that I ask, says to me : 'in my experience, I find (when travelling), that it is imperitive to keep asking, all the time'. "My God, yes, what a brilliant idea, thank you ever so much". I ask, and I ask, and I ask, including two guys in a mini-van, one of whom appears to think that I'm the funniest thing since Charles Chaplin, and screams hysterically, uttering the few odd English phrases he knows, and I retreat, uncharitably muttering about some poor village that's now short of its idiot. I get pointed up so many unlikely-looking roads that I resolve to leave early on the return journey, so as to leave time for back-tracking from wrong turnings.

St George's is at the end of a quite thriving-looking village, with a big arch bearing the name of the school, and two guards in guard-boxes, in uniforms that are suspiciously police-like. I explain that I need to go to the office, and get waved through. The office is closed till 1.30, and as it's just past one, I have a stroll through the school, and take some photos. When the office is open, I explain to the lady there that I'd like to find out any info I can regarding my brothers' time at the school, and she organises for someone to bring me a sort of entry and exit register for the years 1908 to 1940. This is a mine of information, as I find that my eldest brother started there in 1928, but it didn't give an exit date, which was probably 1930, as I know that he signed up for the British Army in that year. My other two brothers started there in 1930, and finished there at the end of 1931 (with 'good' characters). I've just about finished copying the entries for each of them in my notebook when one of the Patrician Brothers arrived to get his mail, and started talking to me. I explained my interest, and he said 'Oh come with me, and have a look in the archives, we have all the year books there'. In my brothers' time all the Patrician Brothers there were Irish, except for one (token?) Anglo-Indian. Now there are only two Irish Brothers left, and Brother Muldowney, 40 years at the school, is one of them. He walks at a fast clip, with me lagging behind, answering questions as we go. 'Grandfathers English?' "One, and one Irish" 'Name?' "O'Donovan", and I note an imperceptible wince. These archives are something of an achievement, because although the school was originally founded in 1853, the archives were only officially opened last month. Unfortunately, the collection of 'Manorites' (the Yearbooks) are a bit thin on the ground for the late twenties/early thirties, so we go to his office in another part of the school, where he has a collection of several decades worth that an old boy of the school left them. I do find that my eldest brother was in standard 7 in 1930, that he won a prize for being fourth in the class, and although I have no memory of him, I was able to identify him in a class photo, from other photos that I have at home. After this Brother Muldowney said 'tea!', and then 'where the hell is that boy' and after he'd called to a servant outside 'Chai. Tea!' we went to a sitting room where cake etc. had already been set for the Brother's afternoon tea. None of the others turned up though. 'I expect they're off running or playing sport with the boys - sport mad, they are'. He told me that he had at one time been on a study tour to Australia, mainly Sydney, and he rattled off the names of the suburbs that had Patrician Brothers schools that he'd visited, and they were suburbs I'd either lived in, or knew well. Finally he walked with me to a separate exit from the school, and pointed out a more straightforward path where I could walk towards the main road and back to the town. Along this path I came across the most incredible war memorial, an actual fighter aircraft from WW2, mounted on a thick steel stanchion, and silhouetted against the sky and the valleys below. A plaque listed a dozen or so old boys of the school who gave their lives in WW2.

After deleting the photo disaster from the night before, and uploading everything again, I thought about dinner. After lashing out for the past two nights, first at the Ashiana in Shimla, and then at the Tavern in Mussoorie, I thought I'd better control myself, and made for a fairly-basic looking place in the Mall. They don't have a toilet, so I order, and go down some wide steps on the other side of the road that they point to. I wander down this slope, and as it's fortunately dark, use the first bit of greenery that doesn't look as if it belongs to someone's house. I think I might have mentioned this before, that for a man at least, India is one giant toilet, you constantly see guys having a wee virtually wherever they feel like it. Back at the cafe, the lights are out, and I lend the guys there my torch. One of them brings out what looks like a candle off a birthday cake, and lights it for my table. All through the meal the lights intermittently go on or off.