At some point, the buildings on either side would turn into mofussil-meuble, and the narrow road would trickle you out into the highway. As the sun rose, bright yellow mustard fields would appear from the surrounding grey-green. You would go through the wannabe urban smudge of Modinagar, then, in a couple of hours, through Meerut, and then through northern UP. After about two-and-a-half hours the driver would slow down and turn off the highway onto a mud patch where other taxis were parked. ‘Cheetal,’ he would announce, and everyone would get off.
The famous ‘halfway-point’ was then a slightly more upmarket dhaba compared to the others on the stretch, with better toilet facilities. Their food was pretty good too, with a limited menu of omelettes, stuffed parathas and such like. After the stop you would head north, and in a while the low hills would start to gather around the horizon like semi-benevolent thugs. You would bump through the small settlement of Roorkee, maybe stopping just outside it for another warming tea and a convenience break.
At some point, you would find yourself winding up through a forest of sal, pine and eucalyptus. The tunnel would greet you, followed by the slope down to the outskirts of ‘Doon’.
Within minutes of entering Dehradun, you would be at the Ghanta Ghar, the taxi working its way through cycles, autos and tangas. Just as quickly, the centre of town would eject you Musoorie-wards and you would be speeding up the gradient of Rajpur Road.
The shops and car garages would quickly disappear, replaced by a procession of signboarded entrances for venerable Raj institutions, followed by the low walls and unassuming wrought iron gates of bungalows set a bit back from the road. Now, as the multi-seater vehicle zooms you from Barapullah onto the Meerut autobahn and from there past an endless succession of flyover constructions into further ugliness, you miss those bumpy old times.
After many avatars, Cheetal is now a crowded multicuisine hangar with cars queuing outside for a parking slot in the freezing cold. The food itself is still good. But for a while there has been a distinct sense that waiters mentally put you on a conveyor belt as soon as you sit down. As your tea glass is whisked away, the last gulp you were saving still hostage inside, you too feel the urge to get out as soon as possible. As you climb into the mountains, you automatically start looking for the parade of forest. Instead, you see barren hillsides being churned by diggers and bulldozers. ‘With this new highway Dehradun to Delhi will be only three hours by road.’ The driver tells you proudly. After a while you realise that the stilts for the new highway are being rammed into old the riverbed itself. ‘Woh toh kuchh nahi,’ the driver reassures you, ‘Waise bhi nadi toh mar hi gayi thhi.’ (It doesn’t matter, the river was dead anyway.)
Dehradun announces itself with a procession of showrooms: Mercedes, Maruti, Skoda, Harley-Davidson, Hyundai. With all the new highways and the same length of mid-way stop, you’ve reached the edge of the town in four-and-a-half hours — about 90 minutes quicker than 30 years ago. You only understand the full con when it takes you almost an hour to get through the sprawl and snarl of Dehradun and out on the other side where the shopping malls finally thin out past Jhakhan. All that the orgy of new asphalt has bought you is a journey that’s shorter by about one hour.