Dear Friends,
Last weekend I visited a beautiful place Lansdowne in Uttarakhand. This place is a sleeping town which has the distinction of being the Headquarter of Garhwal Rifles. We started at 5:00 am on Saturday 8th March from Delhi. There was fog early morning so we were driving slowly. Route to Lansdowne is Delhi - Merrut - Mawana - Meerapur - Bijnor - Najeebabad - Kotdwar - Dugadda - Lansdowne. The whether was cool so we enjoyed the surroundings and reached Kiratpur a small town before Bijnor at 8:30 am. We enjoyed Pyaj ke Paranthe as breakfast at a small dhaba near Bharat Petrol pump. By 10:30 am we reached Kotdwar. Kotdwar is a town in tarai from where the journey to hills start it is the last railway station for reaching this part of Uttarakhand. From Kotdwar we moved to Dugadda it is a small hill market. There is a Durga Maa temple here below which the river flows. We stayed for an hour there and went down to the Temple and than river. Lansdowne is around 26 km from Dugadda. We reached Lansdowne around 12:30 pm and went straight to Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVNL) guest house. Deluxe rooms were not available so we took Economy rooms which were Rs. 650 a room. We relaxed for 2-3 hours and than went to Bhulla lake around 4:00 pm. Bhulla lake is a man made small lake made and maintained by Garhwal Rifles. It is a beautiful place with boating facility and ducks all around the lake. We did boating for 15 minutes and than came up for snacks. After spending around 1 and a half hours there we drove to Tip & Top a sight seeing point which is around 2 km from there. From there we can see the whole valley down. The whether was becoming cold and my daughter started feeling it so we rushed to our hotel. Took dinner and slept. Next day we started around 11:00 am back to Delhi. There are many places near by mostly Temples but as our schedule was tight so we did not went to Tarkeshwar Mahadev and Jwalpa Devi. Coming down before Dugadda we saw cars near the river we also asked the route from the locals and went down and enjoyed bathing in the river.
Note: Lansdowne is a cold place so do carry winter clothing for night. There are few hotels available there so do advance booking during peak season which is Feb - March. It is a very peaceful hill station and majority of it is Cantonment area so rules and regulation needs to be followed. Being a Cantonment area no mobile carrier works here apart from BSNL.
Regards,
Anubhav
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