Dehradun, May 12 -- The Castle Hill Estate. courtesy Rahul Kohlijpeg

Up until the 1960s, winter would see Mussoorie folk rent houses in Rajpur or Dehradun to escape the cold. Mrs Walsh rented a place in Chukkuwala and left her Landour home to the ministrations of her chowkidar.

Landour's tradition of boarding houses goes back to the 1900s, when the missionaries arrived to study Urdu and Hindi at the Landour Language School. Grand old bungalows were given licences to run guesthouses: among them were Rokeby, a three-minute walk from Char Dukan, Fairview, six minutes, and Wolfsburn, barely five minutes.

In the early days of the Convalescent Depot, circa 1827, reports came in of the troopers being lonely, depressed and drunk. Where were th...