Mist, heat, Mussoorie in 1875

Just a few words and thoughts about our upcoming trip to India, partly stimulated by two recent Facebook posts -

     A) the monsoon has arrived in Mussoorie (23rd June 2019) which means cooler weather for the coming 2-3 months compared to the recent heat wave. As reported by Stephen Alter - more on him - the writer and resident of Mussorie below.

     B) What was Mussoorie like in 1875? Very deforested, according to a Facebook post.

     And C) what were the temperatures at Mussoorie, Jabalpur, and Delhi like during the days last year - hint: highs in the 90s (but not 100s) and lows in the mid 70s.

     A) First, here's a post by Stephen Alter announcing the arrival of the monsoon and its mist in Mussoorie on June 23, 2019. 
     Stephen Alter June 23 2019·The monsoon arrives in Mussoorie as mist envelops the deodars.[pine trees]

      I added my comment to that Facebook post - Philip McEldowney "Ah the mist! does it mean there are rhino, stag, bamboo and other beatles under Tehri road's misty lights tonight?" 
     My comment is because that what I remember most about monsoon nights growing up. I was hoping our family group would be able to meet Stephen when we went to Mussoorie in July.  But he leaves (left) for the US on June 27th (2019) so we will miss seeing him while we are there.

     Stephen Alter's an interesting guy, who also went to Woodstock School, in a class some years behind me, and has lived in Mussoorie for many years. He's written over 42 books (see this link) - both non-fiction and fiction.  One of his recent books is on Jim Corbett, a British government official, who grew up in India (around Nanital) and became famous for hunting and killing man-eating tigers in the Himalayan foothills. Stephen's book is a fictionalized biography of Corbett, called "In the jungles of the night : a novel about Jim Corbett" (2016). I really that book, since the first of 3 sections is about Jim growing up in the foothills of the Himalayas. And I was really moved by some of his writing in the final third section, when he is reflecting back to his experience during the Great War (WWI). I liked that so much I made a audio recording of part of that third section. [Listen to this video of me reading 16 minutes]

     If you get a chance, read some of Alter's writings.  And, who knows, there might be a slim chance of meeting him sometime in the future.

        B) my second topic is stimulated by a Facebook post and photo of Mussoorie in 1875.  It shows the hillside barren with few trees, as a result of deforestation at that time, since there was a railroad boom and trees had been cut down for railroad ties. But by the time I was a child at Woodstock School in Mussoorie (the 1940s and 1950s) there was a reforestation in the 1930s and since, so that wonderful wooded hillside I grew up in had only recently been transformed. I did not realise it had not always been that way until I read this post. Along with the photo there is a lengthy explanation of its forest history.

     From Facebook:Winterline Mussoorie added a new photo — at Mussorie Library Road.  June 13 2019 at 3:37 PM · Mussoorie, India

      "A classic 1875 view of Muss from the lens of the iconic #SamuelBourne. As seen from the Dunsvirk area, across Gun Hill towards Landour, looking ENE. Christ Church is at centre, above an eerily un-peopled Mall Road.

     "Why are the hillsides so bare? #Deforestation, of course. Practically all the precious #hardwoods, esp. #Deodar cedar and Himalayan #Oak, were clear-felled from these hillsides by paisa-minded timber contractors, egged on by the EIC and its successor, the British Raj. Moreover, all railroad ties were made, until the 1970s, of hardwoods. The first Indian railway boom had begun in the 1850s two decades prior to this image being captured. Further, there was a pseudo-scientific belief that dense forests "harbour germs", and hence clear-felled hillsides were then seen as more "salubrious".

The archives of the Imperial Forest Dept. (predecessor of today's #IndianForestService or IFS) for this area, in District Dehradun, record the rampant timber-felling in the 1800s into the 1900s. This entire region was in the Western Circle of the United Provinces, run by a Conservator of Forests (CF)-rank officer. Some local armchair 'historians' (read gasbags) claim the Muss Hills are now "over-forested", versus pix from the early-mid 1900s, which of course is total #BS. One need only look at the well-forested #PariTibba (i.e. Witches' Hill or Fairy Hill), made famous by Ruskin Bond's ghost stories, to see what the Muss Hills were like prior to the local arrival, in 1816, of the EIC.

As for the felled timber, it was delimbed and rolled down to the local rivers (incl. the Nun, Rispana, Song & Aglar), tributaries of both the Ganges and Yamuna, and floated down - in the monsoon - to huge timber yards (esp. near Haridwar & Asan), whence they were sent downriver, having been tied into rafts. These were tricky operations, and indeed the Doon had its own #Pahari #lumberjacks doing their thing. Logging work was ill-paid, risky, injury-prone and seasonal. Yet, the contractors -- both desi and British, incl. the notorious "Pahari Wilson" -- made handsome profits. (Though Wilson operated not within #BritishIndia but mainly in forests, e.g. in the Bhagirathi valley, he leased from the rulers of #TehriGarhwal, an ill-governed 'princely state' if ever there was one.)

     "Finally, the #reforestation of the Muss Hills is entirely a post-1947 phenomenon, having accelerated in the 1970s-1980s via the famed #EcoTaskForce of the Indian Army."

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     C) My third and final topic of this post is about temperatures. I looked at the dates we (the McEldowney party of 6 family members) are going to be in the three towns in India in 2019, and what was the weather like last year (2018 July August).  It doesn’t look too bad – in the upper 80s for highs and upper 70s for lows. –Philip Mc

2018 weather in India on dates we will be there in 2019

2018 July 24 Mussoorie High 90 Low 77 Precipitation 0

2018 July 25 Mussoorie High 85 Low 78 Precipitation 0.28

2018 July 31 Jabalpur High 84 Low 75

2018 August 1 Jabalpur High 86 Low 77

2018 August 4 Sat. Delhi High 95 Low 84

2018 August 5 Sun Agra High 88 Low 81

2018 August 6 Mon Delhi High 84 Low 81

Based on, for example Agra, at https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/india/agra/historic?month=8&year=2018