Presenting: The Landour Literature and Arts Festival!
Editorial: With the intention of promoting the arts borne and inspired from Landour, Mussoorie, and the Garhwal region, The Chakkar and the Mussoorie Heritage Centre [MHC] are launching the Landour Literature & Arts Festival. The first edition of LLAF will shine a light upon history, literature, art, music, poetry, film, and more.
There was a time, not too long ago, when an afternoon walk around the circular ridge in Landour’s cantonment area, ‘the Chakkar’—for which this website is named—could be a transformative, personal experience. It was a time before honking cars and bikes bottlenecked the road, before piles of trash flooded the khud-side, a time so silent that the loudest noise was the shrug of the deodar trees that shaded the pristine route.
It was a time before most visitors knew the name ‘Landour’, for it meant nothing to those who weren’t already familiar with the many other small extensions around the touristy hill station of Mussoorie. It was just as significant as Cloud’s End, or Gun Hill, or Barlowganj, or the Camel’s Back Road.
All we had were the mountains and ourselves, where hours could be spent in thought. For many of us, the mountains have always been a source of creativity, where the silences have inspired us to hear ourselves better, to communicate with the world in a deeper way. It’s no wonder that Landour, and the larger Mussoorie/Dehradun valley, has inspired legions of our best writers, artists, poets, musicians, and visual storytellers.
Alas, the only constant is change, and with increased attention from high-end luxury travelers, students on low-budget bike trips, and everyone else in between, Landour has become one of the most sought-after destinations in North India. It is a quick getaway for friends, families, and honeymooners, a respite from the heat and pollution of the Delhi/Punjab/Haryana/UP region, and an Instagrammers delight, with charming postcard-ready vistas offering lovely Himalayan peaks, ‘quaint’ coffee shops, and many, many troops of aggressive rhesus monkeys, who are only “cute” from an (extremely) safe distance. Everything from hotel rooms to that plate of chocolate-banana pancake at Char Dukan is now significantly more expensive. There are more hotels, more guest houses, more little cafes and shops selling trinkets and souvenirs, and many more cars jammed on the twisty path that first elevates up from Dehradun to Mussoorie, and then from Mussoorie to Landour’s chakkar area, some 7,500 feet above sea level.
The increased attention has, of course, brought major financial windfall for the local community, but it has come at a heavy burden upon the Himalayan environment—with more pollution smoking up the skies, more road development projects carving into forest and mountain land, and noise that has deafened the trees into a solemn silence. More than two million visitors headed for Landour and Mussoorie in 2024, prompting the cantonment board to limit the vehicular traffic allowed up to the hills.
Furthermore, the many unchecked ‘development’ projects, mining, road construction, dams, pollution from agrochemicals, and more around the Garhwal Himalayan region have caused major ecological imbalance, leading to flash floods, landslide risks, and pushed the world’s highest mountain range into critical danger. With Himalayan snow reported at a 23-year-low this year, the changing conditions could threaten water security for hundreds of millions of people.
For those from the region—or outsiders like me who have grown an intimacy with the Himalaya over the years—these are dire forewarnings. In Landour, the greed for greater consumption, greater ‘advancement’ and ‘development,’ have robbed the pristine region of much of the charm that first attracted people here.
During some walks around the chakkar, I’m often approached by tourists who have fulfilled their checklist of seeing Lal Tibba, the churches, and posed for photos outside the coffee shop. They ask, “What is the attraction here? What is there to see?”
Photo: Karan Madhok
I look around at the sunsets, the snow peaks, the trees, and moss crawling up the pushtas, the old cabins, the friendly stray dogs, the clear-blue skies. I think about the relationships I have made here, the smiles of recognition that we offer each other in our evening strolls, the conversations and friendships, the long treks to the many scenic villages and forests around the area. I think of a place that must be sustained rather than exploited. A place that owes us no ‘attraction’, no touristy shortcut to excitement; but rather, offers us a setting to contemplate, grow, create, and give back.
This, I think to myself. This is it. What more could one want?
It has been with the intention of reframing Landour and Mussoorie back to this very thisness that The Chakkar has joined forces with Mussoorie Heritage Centre [MHC], to launch the Landour Literature & Arts Festival [LLAF]. The first edition of this event will be held at the Café Ivy (Devdar Woods Hotel) in Landour on Sunday, September 28, 2025.
Landour has become one of the most sought-after destinations in North India. It is a quick getaway, a respite from heat and pollution, and an Instagrammers delight, with charming postcard-ready vistas offering lovely Himalayan peaks, ‘quaint’ coffee shops, and many, many troops of aggressive rhesus monkeys, who are only “cute” from an (extremely) safe distance.
The Chakkar’s partnership with Mussoorie Heritage Centre has been invaluable. The MHC has served as a memory bank for the hillside, holding exhibitions, hosting heritage walks, storing archives, and helping preserve a database of the town’s history, much of which exists at their storefront at the historic Clock Tower area. The MHC is managed by the art and history researcher Surbhi Agarwal, who has also curated many editions of the Landour Lecture Series around Mussoorie and Landour since 2011, offering a platform to over a hundred speakers from around the world to speak about the arts, education, wildlife, entertainment, technology, and more.
The first edition of the LLAF will shine a light upon a variety of our interests: history, literature, art, music, poetry, film, and more. Some of our speakers are from the local area; some have adopted it as their second home; some have been inspired by Landour, Mussoorie, the Himalaya, the Garhwal region, and more of Uttarakhand in their work; and some will arrive for the first time to glean upon that thisness of this place, to find bliss in our shared enthusiasm for the hillside.
The complete schedule for the sessions can be found on TheChakkar.com/LLAF, featuring writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers including: Ganesh Saili, Narayani Basu, Amit Ranjan, Anil Raturi, Siddhartha Kapila, A.M. Gautam, Sanyukta Sharma, Shikha Saklani Malaviya, Desna Sharma, Sterre Sharma, Shubdarshini Singh, Kunal Narayan Uniyal, and Prateek Santram, as well as the co-organizers, Surbhi Agarwal and Karan Madhok. Furthermore, we will be providing space to promote the work of more local artists, poets, dramatists, and environmental activists from the region as well. For those of you who will only be able to follow remotely, please check in with our social media accounts for regular updates: Instagram: @LLAF_Landour and X: @LLAF_Landour.
We are eager to welcome you to the festival. It is our intention that we help foster a space of creativity, inspiration, and sustainability on the hillside, we’re both entertained and moved, where we can reflect and offer reflection—and perhaps, leave a little transformed.
On the right day, a stroll around the chakkar still has the potential to be transformative, a path that brings us back a little better with each revolution. Hopefully, we can all find a moment of quiet in that next walkaround. For how else will we hear the trees? How else will we hear ourselves?
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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar. He is the author of Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis In India (2024) and A Beautiful Decay (2022), both published by the Aleph Book Company. His work has appeared in Epiphany, Sycamore Review, Gargoyle, Fifty Two, Scroll, The Plank, The Caravan, the anthology A Case of Indian Marvels (Aleph Book Company) and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022 (Hawakal). You can find him on Twitter: @karanmadhok1 and Instagram: @karanmadhok.
