Mussoorie is known as "Queen of Hill Stations" although having gone to study in the Nilgiris from 1955 to 1962, Ooty (Ootacamund or Udhagamandalam) has always been Queen of Hill Stations for me.

Mussoorie is just 32 kms from Dehradun where I am staying at present. I have done this distance by office car, taxi, bus (Rs.39 one way) and even scooter.

Apparently Mussoorie gets its name from a so-called "Himalayan Shrub" whose botanical name I havent been able to find as yet... a shrub called "Mansoor".

This morning I went for a walk to the Dehradun Railway Station and then through the Paltan Bazaar to Ghanta Ghar which is at the heart of the city. In Paltan Bazaar (Paltan is almost certainly derived from "Platoon" and means army or "fauj" in Urdu although I dont have my Hobson Jobson dictionary of Anglo Indian words at hand... I did a search on Google but not much luck in the limited time I have. In Malayalam and Tamil we hear the word "Pattalam" for Army which is probably derived from Battalion)

I passed a number of newspaper agents bundling their newspapers to be handed over to carriers who would take it to the four corners of the city. I pulled out my wallet to buy a news paper and was pleasantly surprised when the busy looking young man refused to accept money from me... "Complimentary Copy, Sir" he said... and I nodded in disbelief making a mental note to come on this route more often!

I am attaching a scan from The Tribune newspaper which talks about the Mansoor berry among others with names like "Hissar", "Kaafal" and "Kingod"... I am sure there is a legend behind each one of these berries... like "this one was fed to Sri Ram when he was wandering through the forest by this female devotee"... or something like that... its amazing how you can find a small island in the middle of any big river in India and it would invariably be called "Lanka"...

A friend wanted to know why I decided to call my blog, "Travel to the End"... nothing heroic there, just a take-off on Harry Belafonte's version of "Old King Cole" in which the Sergeant shouts, "March till the end"... It is also, I suppose a very old fashioned notion of the lengths to which one would go for someone!