(Mussoorie/Dehradun): Avoid the rush, stay at home! An irate tourist shouts for everyone to hear as he negotiates his way out of gridlock Mussoorie. He is not the only one who feels that way.
Smell of fuel, exhaust and cordite welcomes the tourist to the Queen of hills Mussoorie again this summer. Soaring temperatures, vacations, dirt and dust of the plains, proximity by rail, air and road is all that it takes to have the hill-town overflowing at it seams from end of May to early July, just when the monsoon sets in.
From crack of dawn, residents of this sleepy town wake up to mile long jams, horns, hooters and the all-pervading smell of cordite. To make matters worse wrongly parked vehicles, abandoned by tourists and locals on the roadside add to the chaos.
From miles, one can see a slowly moving glacier of vehicles of all shapes and sizes inching their way up or down the hill-station, which is way past its carrying capacity.
A few brave hearts who made it to Mussoorie tell us tales of how taxis at Jollygrant Airport or Dehradun railway station refuse to head to Mussoorie stating, “long queues and jams in the hill-station are best avoided this season.”
As if that were not enough, driving to getaways like Kempty Fall, Dhanolti, Kanatal is strictly for the bold, the brave or the loony.
DG Traffic Dehradun Kewal Khurana gives us some hope of respite when he updates us, “2 unit CPU, 30 constables, 4 sub-inspectors, 4 home guards, 1 platoon PAC will be permanently stationed in Mussoorie until the season gets over.”
As for the town’s newly elected Chairman Anuj Gupta, he has an uphill task with some very stringent actions in mind, “there is no way that traffic snarls can be solved unless and until strong infrastructure is developed. We are planning to find an alternate place for the Picture Palace taxi-stand so that the bottleneck at the approach to the town is clutter free and also completely ban road side parking.”
Until these promises are met, the tourist’s sane advice, ‘avoid the rush, stay at home,’ should be abided by.
