Highlights from "Roads to Mussoorie"
By Ruskin Bond
'Give me a companion of my way, be it only to mention how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines,' wrote Hazlitt.
On the open road there are no strangers. You share the same sky, the same mountain, the same sunshine and shade. On the open road we are all brothers.
The best kind of walk, and this applies to the plains as well as to the hills, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.
The adventure is not in getting somewhere, it's the on-the-way experience. It is not the expected; it's the surprise. Not the fulfilment of prophecy, but the providence of something better than that prophesied.
'All men are my friends. I have only to meet them.' In these hills, where life still moves at a leisurely and civilized pace, one is constantly meeting them.
Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals and birds, all play their part, both in mythology and in everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in these remote places, where gods and mountains co-exist. Tungnath, as yet unspoilt by a materialistic society, exerts its magic on all who come here with open mind and heart.
What is nostalgia, after all, but an attempt to preserve that which was good in the past?