The eco parks at Dhanaulti

The eco parks at Dhanaulti are the thing most people come to Dhanaulti for, and they are genuinely good. They are also the clearest example on this road of a place whose quality depends almost entirely on what time you arrive.

What they are

Deodar forest, managed and walkable, on the slope at Dhanaulti. Not wilderness — there are paths, and there are gates — but the trees are the real thing and the light through them late in the day is the reason the photographs you have seen look like that.

The timing, which is the whole thing

Dhanaulti runs on day-trippers from Mussoorie, and they arrive in a block from late morning. Two windows work, and they are opposite ends of the same day:

• Early. Get there when it opens and you will have the forest nearly to yourself. From here that is a twenty-minute drive, which is the single biggest practical advantage of staying on this side rather than in Mussoorie.
• Late afternoon. The deodar forest is at its best once the day-trippers have started back towards Mussoorie, and the light is better than it is in the morning.

The middle of the day is the version everybody complains about afterwards. Avoid it and you have a different place.

Staying twenty minutes away

The reason this matters to us, and the reason we keep saying it: a twenty-minute drive is the difference between arriving at opening and arriving at eleven with everybody else. If the eco parks are genuinely why you are coming, the comparison of where to base yourself is written out on Mussoorie, Dhanaulti or the road in between — and it is one of the cases where staying in Dhanaulti itself is the right answer.

What else is up there

Surkanda Devi is the other reason to be on this stretch, nine kilometres on from Dhanaulti and best at first light — that one has a page of its own. Together they make a morning rather than a day.