Mussoorie
Mussoorie is a hill station and a municipal board in the Dehradun district of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is about from the state capital of Dehradun and north of the national capital of New Delhi. The hill station is in the foothills of the Garhwal Himalayan range. The adjoining town of Landour, which includes a military cantonment, is considered part of "greater Mussoorie", as are the townships Barlowganj and Jharipani.
Mussoorie is at an average altitude of. To the northeast are the Himalayan snow ranges, and to the south, the Doon Valley and Sivalik Hills ranges. The second highest point is the original Lal Tibba in Landour, with a height of over. Mussoorie is popularly known as The Queen of the Hills.
There were 3.02 million travellers to Mussoorie in 2019.
History
Mussoorie has long been known as Queen of the Hills. The name Mussoorie is often attributed to a derivation of , a shrub which is indigenous to the area. The town is often referred to as Mansuri by Indians.In 1803 the Gorkhas under Amar Singh Thapa conquered the Garhwal and the Dehra, whereby Mussoorie was established. On 1 November 1814, a war broke out between the Gorkhas and the British. Dehradun and Mussoorie were evacuated by the Gorkhas by the year 1815 and were annexed to the district of Saharanpur by 1819.
Mussoorie as a resort was established in 1825 by Captain Frederick Young, a British military officer. With F. J. Shore, the resident Superintendent of Revenues at Dehradun, who explored the region and built a shooting lodge on Camel's Back Road. Young became a magistrate of Doon in 1823. He raised the first Gurkha Regiment and planted the first potatoes in the valley. His tenure in Mussoorie ended in 1844, after which he served in Dimapur and Darjeeling, later retiring as a General and returning to Ireland. There are no memorials to commemorate Young in Mussoorie. However, there is a Young Road in Dehradun on which ONGC's Tel Bhawan stands.
In 1832, Mussoorie was the intended terminus of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India that began at the southern tip of the country. Although unsuccessful, the Surveyor General of India at the time, George Everest, wanted the new office of the Survey of India to be based in Mussoorie; a compromise location was Dehradun, where it remains. The same year the first beer brewery at Mussoorie was established by Sir Henry Bohle as "The Old Brewery". The brewery opened and closed twice before it was re-established by Sir John Mackinnon as Mackinnon & Co. in 1850.
By 1901, Mussoorie's population had grown to 6,461, rising to 15,000 in the summer. Earlier, Mussoorie was approachable by road from Saharanpur, away. Accessibility became easier in 1900 with the railway coming to Dehradun, thus shortening the road trip to.
The Nehru family, including Nehru's daughter Indira were frequent visitors to Mussoorie in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and stayed at the Savoy Hotel. They also spent time in nearby Dehradun, where Nehru's sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit ultimately settled full-time.
On 20 April 1959, during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, the 14th Dalai Lama took up residence at Mussoorie, this until April 1960 when he relocated to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, where the Central Tibetan Administration is today headquartered.
The first Tibetan school was established in Mussoorie in 1960. Tibetans settled mainly in Happy Valley. Today, about 5,000 Tibetans live in Mussoorie.
Geography and climate
Mussoorie has an average elevation of about. The highest point is "Lal Tibba", at a height of about, although the name Lal Tibba is now also used to describe a lookout point, a short distance from the peak.Mussoorie has a fairly typical subtropical highland climate for the mid-altitude Himalaya. Summers are warm and very wet, with July and August averaging approximately of rain per month due to orographic lift of the extremely moist monsoonal air. The pre-monsoon seasons in April and May is warm and generally dry and clear, giving way to heavy rainfall from mid-June, while the post-monsoon season is also dry and clear but substantially cooler. In winter, rainfall is a little more frequent than in the pre-and post-monsoon seasons, and the general weather cool and partly cloudy. Mussoorie usually receives a few spells of snowfall in December, January and February, although the number of snowy days has come down in recent years due to a combination of local and global factors, such as deforestation, construction activity and global warming. Between October and February the town shows the rare "winterline" phenomenon.
Government
The Mussoorie Municipal Council is the civic or urban local body that governs the city. It is essentially the city government and differs from the MDDA, which is a state run organisation.This corporation consists of 13 wards and is headed by a chairman who presides over a deputy chairman and 12 other corporators representing the wards. The chairman is elected directly through a first-past-the-post voting system and the deputy chairman is elected by the corporators from among their numbers.
The council is composed of elected officials like the mayor and corporators, administrative officials, like the executive officer and technical officers who have expertise in various domains.
Water supply
, Mussoorie's demand for drinking water stands at 12.6 million litres per day. According to the National Green Tribunal, the water supply will be inadequate by 2052, due to a decrease in available water and an increase in demand.Demographics
As of the India census, Mussoorie had a population of 30,118. Males constitute 55% of the population and females 45%. Mussoorie has an average literacy rate of 89%, higher than the national average of 75%: male literacy is 94%, and female literacy is 84%. In Mussoorie, 9% of the population is under 6 years of age. In Mussoorie Nagar Palika Parishad, female sex ratio is of 812 against the state average of 963. Moreover, the child sex ratio in Mussoorie is around 918 compared to Uttarakhand state average of 890.Landmarks
Tourism, concentrated during summer and winter, is the most significant segment of the Mussoorie economy.Bhadraj Temple
is a temple in Yamuna Valley. It is dedicated to Balarama, the brother of Krishna. People visit here to go trekking and for camping. Greenfield is a safe place for camping here. There are views of the Chaukhamba and Bandarpunch peaks.As of October 2023, the drive from Clouds End to Dudhli village is cumbersome in a difficult terrain. It would be preferable to trek from Clouds End to Dudhli village. The trek from Dudhli village to the Temple is about 5 km in steep gradient.
The Bhadraj Temple officials also organised a Rainy Season Fair - held in the hills of Mussoorie during the monsoon.