Delhi to Mussoorie, on two bikes

The plan was one line long

Somebody said "Mussoorie?" in a group chat and nobody said no, which is how most of the good ones start. Four of us, two bikes, one weekend. No hotel booked until we were already past Meerut.

Two bikesAnd four of us

The fleet was a Bullet and a scooter, which is a funnier sentence than it is a comfortable arrangement. Roughly 290 km each way, Delhi to the top of the hill, and the scooter did all of it.

Out of Delhi before it wakes up

We left before sunrise, which is the single best decision anyone makes on a ride out of Delhi. The road east is empty at that hour, the air is cold enough to be worth the extra layer, and you are past the worst of it before the trucks are awake.

Leaving before it got lightThe first proper stop

Then the sky does that, and you stop for it, and that is the first of many stops that were not in any plan. A roadside stall, four paper cups, chai poured well before dawn and therefore correctly. There is no version of this trip where we do not stop for chai roughly once an hour.

The plains are the tax you pay

Nobody writes about the middle. Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Roorkee: it is straight, it is flat, and it is where the ride stops being a photograph and starts being a job. Two hundred kilometres of sitting still while moving. The payment comes back at a dhaba, which on this road means dal makhani that has been on the heat since somebody else's breakfast.

Four cups, one stallDal, and something braver next to it

The road turns upward at Dehradun

You feel the change before you see it. The road stops running straight, the temperature drops a jacket's worth, and every corner starts arriving sooner than the last one. This is the part of the ride the rest of it is for. A Bullet on a hill road does the thing it was built to do, and the scooter, to its enormous credit, kept up.

Coming into the hillsFrom the saddle

Somewhere on the climb there is a blue shack calling itself SELFI VIEW POINT, breakfast lunch dinner, with a dog asleep in the sun who has clearly heard it all before. We stopped. Obviously we stopped.

Selfi View Point, and its dog

Then, through a gap in the deodars, the first white line on the horizon. Everyone gets off the bikes for this one, and shortly after it you are riding down the Mall with the whole town arriving at once.

Snow, through the pinesInto town

Mall Road, after dark

Mussoorie in the evening is one long pedestrian street with the mountain falling away on one side of it, and it is much better at night than the photographs of it in the daytime suggest. It is also, and I say this with affection, a hill station that has a Baskin Robbins open at eleven at night. We were not above it.

The Mall, after darkOpen late

The actual reason to be up there after dark is this. The whole Doon valley, lit, a couple of thousand feet below you, with the ridge lights of the town curling away to the right. It looks fake. It does not photograph properly and I have stopped trying.

The Doon valley, from the ridge

One of the cafes keeps a notebook out for people to write in, which is the sort of thing that should be unbearable and somehow is not. Ours is in there somewhere, between a drawing and somebody's bad decision. Dinner came at the hour when the only thing still being made is dosa.

The notebookThe last thing open

Kempty is not the good waterfall

Kempty Falls is the one everybody is sent to. It is a waterfall with a concrete pool at the bottom, shops built up both sides of it, and a queue. It is worth seeing once, mostly to understand what has been done to it.

Kempty

The secret waterfall is a walk. Down through the trees, off the road, following the water until the shops stop and the moss starts. No signboard, no stalls, no queue, and you only find it because somebody who has been there tells you where to turn off.

Off the roadThe pool at the bottom

Nobody was there. The water was cold in the way that stops being unpleasant after about ninety seconds. We sat on the rocks for an hour and did not say very much.

An hour on a rock

Up to the temple

The other ride out of town climbs until the trees give up. You park at a shed with orange flags snapping over it, and then you walk the rest.

The bottom of the climb

At the top there is a white marble temple, a cloud arriving sideways, and stone cold enough through socks to make the last few steps a decision.

At the topThe last few steps

The part nobody photographs well

What I actually remember is the sitting. There is a ridge above the town where the hills stack up in layers going blue, and the valley floor is so far down it stops reading as ground.

The valley, in layers

We sat there for a long time. That is the whole entry.

Straight downNot talking

The three of usA bench, pointed the right way

Odds and ends

A curio shop full of wind chimes and forty clocks, none of which agreed. Three doughnuts, bought for no reason, eaten immediately.

Forty clocksNo reason

And a greenhouse, warm enough inside to be worth standing in for longer than any of us admitted. We behaved ourselves for exactly one photograph.

Warm, for onceAnd then this

What I would do differently

Leave even earlier. The hour you save at the Delhi end is worth two hours at the Mussoorie end, because the climb is the only part you actually want to be riding in daylight.

Skip Kempty, or go at eight in the morning. Take the walk to the secret waterfall instead and give it the whole afternoon.

Pack one layer more than you think. It was warm enough in Delhi to ride in a hoodie and cold enough at the temple to regret it.

And do it on the bikes you have. The scooter made it. That is the point of the story.