Thursday, March 20, 2008

A Place called Maghra

Mussoorie is known as the queen of hills, but it is places in an around Musoorie that actually make you feel and realise the real essence of timeless beauty. Maghra , a small village of 20-30 people and completely hidden from the humdrums of Mussorie is one of these few places in India, worth visiting. If July and August are known to be the rainy months, the month of September brings all the blossom after the rains. It was the September of 1990 and we got our first opprotunity to go for an overnight hike.
If you have at any point of time imagined a place away from chaos , a place very serene & peaceful with a stream flowing and a guava orchid below it, the humming of birds, beautiful sunshine and an old temple to compliment the entire figment of imagination, then it's time to wake up & relive your imagination. It was not just me but all of us, who were simply awestruck with the beauty and the simplicity of the place.
The evening was spent collecting the wood and the night with a grand bonfire filled with songs , jokes and clumsy dance. The day next was trekking day and as luck would have it , our group lost the way. The general trekking rule says, when lost, walk along the stream. In our case it did not help us much.
The more we got lost , the more we seemed to enjoy it. Finally we four ( the lost group) just thought of going uphill and find some new way. It is not eazy to explain how we got back to our base camp but the two hours of journey was one of the best we could ever take. We made our own way.
If at any moment of your busy life , you want to take a break and add another memory to your journey of life, just go to Maghra and get lost amonst the stream ( and yes beware of the monkeys & langoors)