‘Hill station’ provides relief from Indian heat
Published, Vancouver Courier
As seen in The Vancouver Sun and The Province
by Michael McCarthy
The blazing heat of the Indian plains did strange things to the British raj. During the 19th century, the British built several “hill stations” high atop various mountains all over India to escape temperatures that can reach into the high 40s. Several of these towns still exist, the crumbling buildings of the British serving today as holiday resorts for the growing Indian middle class. Of the hill stations still surviving, none is as bizarre as Mussourie in the Himalayan foothills in the northeast of that immense country.
Here, on a ridge top at 7,000 feet often wrapped in thick fog, old British hotels and assorted baronial buildings have been turned into a weird mix of tatty tourist shops, pizza parlours, pubs, restaurants, video game arcades and tacky carnival attractions, like some sort of Coney Island in the clouds. The weirdest attraction of all may be the town’s roller skating rink, a long abandoned ancient British ballroom replete with a crumbling hardwood floor, disco ball, haunting 1930s music and abandoned viewing stands that seem a perfect setting for a Stephen King movie.
While the rest of the country may be ablaze with heat, Mussourie hill station is usually wrapped in thick cool fog that only enhances the ghostly feeling of a town lost in time. Faces drift in and out of the mist and disappear; honeymooning lovers shiver in the damp breezes that waft off the ridge; little boys ride rented tiny ponies along the old promenade; and perhaps the world’s shabbiest carnival features a Ferris wheel powered strictly by human effort, the operator swinging feverishly among the spokes of the apparatus like some demented dervish.
My 12-year old son read about the roller skating rink in a tattered old guidebook. Eager for exercise, we went on a quest to find it. Locating the rink proved nearly impossible; there were no signs and no one spoke any English. We searched through the fog, peering into windows and ascending an endless series of stairs up and down the town’s many steep hills. Finally, in a crumbling brick building without any lights, we spotted an empty wooden floor and a sign indicating roller skating boots for rent for a few rupees.
An elderly Indian gentleman shuffled out a back room at the sight of a customer, perhaps the first in many months. He flicked on a dim overhead bulb and offered the selection of a few pairs of tattered old leather boots, all held together with bits of old twine. For another rupee, he offered to tie them up. We tottered onto the ancient wooden floor with great care, the old boards having rolled up on their edges and making for a bumpy ride. Vague shafts of weak sunlight trickled through filthy windows that may not have been opened in decades. The ghostly sounds of faded Bing Crosby tunes, snapping and crackling on a battered gramaphone, echoed around the vast empty hall. If a painted Victorian dowager in a crinoline dress from a previous century had suddenly appeared out of thin air toting a parasol, we wouldn’t have been the least surprised.
Wandering the narrow crooked streets of old Mussourie we came across the oddest sights; an elderly man sharpening knives using a battered bicycle for power; an even older man repairing broken umbrellas by hand; troops of monkeys swinging through the trees; pony men leading their beasts; little children snacking on nuts and candy; gaily dressed families strolling the foggy promenade as if they were on a beach vacation.
Westerners are virtually unknown in this remote region, far from the usual tourist haunts of Delhi, the Taj Mahal in Agra, or the yoga retreats of Rishikesh. Politely, dark hued Indian ladies would come to ask to pose with us, strange ghostly-white apparitions from a faraway land of snow and ice. Feeling like strangers in a strange land ourselves, we posed with them in the fog, wondering what century we were in. Despite what the scientists say, time travel certainly is possible. So is rollerskating in the clouds, if you just know where to look.