The call of Koel

In the muted quietude of dawn, the insistent cry of a Koel came startlingly clear through the dense foliage of trees. Buried deep in the bowels of Dehradun, the Walterre Resort built with much love and care and with painstaking attention to details, resembled a quintessential British home with an Indian touch. If the weathercock on the roof of the resort was any indication of the unexpected treat that was in store for us, then it was by far, a fair barometer.

The eclectic collection of items in the resort,  ranging from furniture to artifacts and fixtures gave it an aura of a comfortable home. The wooden flooring and the fireplace with all the paraphernalia of stoking the fire made you want to come during the cold winter months and while your time with a book!

Talking of books, the resort had a mini library of books catering to all tastes- fiction non fiction, thrillers history, biographies etc. You could ensconce yourself in any of the sofas, placed with much consideration around the house and lose yourself to the world of literature.

The owners of the resort, whether by fortuitous or deliberate intent, had installed yellow lights all over the house which gave it a feeling of warmth, comfort and pleasure. It had all the ambience of a home.
I had come here hoping to do some trekking but ended sitting on the balcony looking at the intense verdant greenery stretching far into the valley and without a pang of guilt indulged in the pleasures of la dolce niente.

The two tiered garden, that you typically see in hilly regions, was a veritable botanists delight to explore and to browse in. The garden was a kaleidoscopic assemblage of flowers and plants from the plains to the hilly regions. One could see that the same painstaking effort had gone in gardening as in decorating the resort.

As I sat in the garden just prior to my departure I tried to compose a list of memories that I would take away from here. The list was easy to compose: the incessant plaintive calls of the birds; breakfast on the balcony overlooking the treetops and the distant mountains; the lolling of the cows in the far distance, the soft cadence of the rivulet flowing in the cusp of the valley, the ethereal quality of the mists moving ponderously over the mountains.....I could go on and on ....!!