Two days in Dhanaulti

Before you set off

Two days in Dhanaulti works, but only if you are honest about the driving. Most two-day plans you will read online quietly assume you teleport between places. From Delhi the drive up is seven to nine hours, which means day one is mostly a travel day whatever you intend.

So this plan does less than most. That is deliberate.

Day one: arrive, and do not over-plan it

If you left Delhi at first light you will get up here in the afternoon. Check in, put your bags down, and do not get back in the car.

The best thing to do on a first afternoon is walk. The ridge road has deodar on both sides and the ground falls away on the valley side, so you do not need a destination — you need an hour and somewhere to turn round. If you want a target, the Eco Park deodar forest at Dhanaulti is the obvious one, and it is at its best late in the afternoon when the day-trippers have started back towards Mussoorie.

Day one, evening

Eat early and go outside afterwards. On a clear night up here the sky is genuinely dark — no town glow on this stretch of road — and that is something most people arriving from Delhi have not seen in a while.

Then sleep, because of what day two starts with.

Day two: Surkanda Devi at first light

This is the part worth setting an alarm for.

Surkanda Devi is a temple on a bare summit at about 2,750 metres, one of the fifty-one Shaktipeeths, roughly 9 km from Dhanaulti. You drive to Kaddukhal and climb from there; if the walk is not for you there is a ropeway of around 500 metres that takes ten to fifteen minutes.

Go at dawn. The summit is bare, so the view runs a long way in every direction, and early morning is when the air is clearest and the crowd is smallest. Later in the day it is a different and much busier experience.

Back down for a late breakfast.

Day two, afternoon

You have a choice, and it depends on what you came for.

• If you want more hills: carry on past Dhanaulti towards Kanatal and Tehri. The lake is a long afternoon rather than a short one, so only do this if you are staying a third night.
• If you want a town: turn back towards Mussoorie and Landour, about 25 km the other way. The Landour walks and the bakery are the pick of it; the Mall is not, on a weekend.
• If you want to do nothing: do nothing. This is the option most of our guests wish they had taken.

If you have a third day

A third day changes the trip more than a second one does, because it is the first day that is not shaped around driving. Spend it on the quieter things — Devalsari, Tehri Lake, or a long walk with no particular end — rather than adding another landmark.

What we would skip

Said plainly, because nobody else will:

• Kempty Falls on a weekend. It is busy enough to undo whatever the drive up did for you.
• Trying to do Mussoorie and Dhanaulti properly in one day. You will spend the day in the car and see neither.
• Any “sunset point” you have to queue for. The view from a quiet stretch of the ridge road is the same view.