Lot Essay
Mussourie is a popular hill station on an outer spur of the Himalayan Mountains in the State of Uttar Pradesh. The scenery is very beautiful, with deep, wooded gorges and fine views. A narrow ascending spur about 180m. long on which bungalows and barracks are built, leads to Landour Hill which rises 273m. above Mussourie. To escape the hot weather on the plains, Simpson went on his second Himalayan tour. As he had been to Simla the previous year he decided this time to explore the hills from Mussourie where he stayed from 6-19 April 1861, employing his time making sketches and outfitting himself for his hill expedition. Simpson's second Himalayan tour was much more arduous than the first: he reached the source of the rivers Jumna (Jumnotri) and Ganges (Gangotri); experienced terrifying encounters while crossing some of the passes - the Manji Kanta, Roopin, Purung, and Tunglung; and trekked through 'bleak, uninteresting country' in Tibet before arriving at Kashmir and Jammu. Not surprisingly for a Scotsman, Simpson loved mountains, but the Himalayas he especially praised by writing 'The Hindus believe it a place for the gods. You feel like the lotus-eaters - Far above the world and all its strife and troubles. The life is simple and healthy, and in all my experiences I know of no more pleasant kind of existence in this world than that of wandering in the Himalayas.' (The Autobiography etc., op.cit., pp.150-51).