Landour

Landour, a small cantonment town contiguous with Mussoorie, is about 35 km (22 mi) from the city of Dehradun in the northern state of Uttarakhand in India.[2] The twin towns of Mussoorie and Landour, together, are a well-known British Raj-era hill station in northern India. Mussoorie-Landour was widely known as the “Queen of the Hills”. The name Landour is drawn from Llanddowror, a village in Carmarthenshire in southwest Wales.[3] During the Raj, it was common to give nostalgic English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish names to one’s home (or even to British-founded towns), reflecting one’s ethnicity. Names drawn from literary works were also common, as from those by Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others.

Location and climate
Landour 1869
Landour

Landour is located in the Lower Western Himalaya, in the Mussoorie Range, the second of the five parallel folds of the Himalaya. On average, Landour is about 984 ft (300 m) above Mussoorie, which itself is mostly at an altitude of 6,800 to 7,798 ft (2,250 to 2,377m). The town lies largely on an east–west ridge, with a prominent southerly spur connecting its western end to Mussoorie. The altitude differential, aided by Landour being partly Tibet-facing, has a marked effect on the temperature, which can be 2–3 °C lower than in Mussoorie. During the monsoon, Landour receives almost daily rainfall, often heavy. Additionally, pre- and post-monsoon showers mean a rainy season that can run from May to September, though it can be shorter. Before the rains arrive, April–May is the warmest period, with the temperatures rising to over 30 °C. (~85 °F) on hotter days. December to February is downright cold, especially if one does not receive enough direct sunlight, as on the northern slopes. It can snow anywhere between 3 and 15 times in the winter, at times heavily. In a given year Landour receives perhaps twice the snow that Mussoorie does; it also takes longer to melt especially on the north-facing slopes.

If one travels the 290 km (180 mi) to Landour from New Delhi by train or bus, a switch at Dehradun is needed. Buses and taxis, and even “shared taxis”, are easily available. There are also direct buses from New Delhi, and one can easily negotiate with taxis at any of New Delhi’s railway stations or at the Delhi airport. One can also fly from Delhi in just 40 min to Jolly Grant Airport east of Dehradun, which saves a lot of time, but it takes another 90 minutes to drive up to Landour from the airport.

Early history

Landour is within Dehradun District of the former United Provinces. The United Provinces themselves were carved out of the former Northwest Province of the vast Bengal Presidency, which stretched from Burma to the Khyber Pass; accordingly, early accounts show Landour as part of “Bengal”, which was technically true though the description was incomplete.

Landour was initially built by and for the British Indian Army. From 1827 when a sanatorium was built in Landour,[4] the town was a convalescent station for the military, and hence much of Landour is a Cantonment. The original sanatorium is now occupied by the Institute of Technology Management (“ITM”) of the DRDO; it is at the eastern end of the Landour ridge. In the early 20th century, a full British Military Hospital (BMH) was opened, with a medical staff that specialized in tropical diseases; the hospital closed soon after 1947. Also within the ITM premises is the former Soldiers’ Furlough Home, a holiday home for British and Irish soldiers and JCOs in Indian regiments who lacked the means to return to Europe regularly. Or, the holidaying soldiers were serving in British regiments on rotation in India, their tours of duty lasting anywhere from 6 to 48 months. In terms of area, Landour Cantonment comprises about two-thirds of Landour; the remainder includes Landour Bazaar, which stretches along the spur that connects to Mussoorie.
Mussoorie and Landour, 1860s

The first permanent building in all of Mussoorie-Landour was also built in Landour in 1825. The house was built by Captain Frederick Young, the “discoverer” of Mussoorie, who was also the Commandant of the first Gurkha (or Gorkha) battalion raised by the British after prevailing in the Gurkha War. Young’s house, “Mullingar” (hinting at his Irish blood), was the family home during the hot summers in the plains. Young’s Dehradun-based battalion, then called the Sirmour (or Sirmoor) Rifles, was initially raised in a Gurkha POW camp in Paonta Sahib in Sirmour District – hence the name. The huge L-shaped building, with an outsized courtyard inside the bend of the “L”, sits prominently atop Mullingar Hill in Landour Cantonment.