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Magic by the Tethys Sea

In conversation Anuj Kumar speaks to seasoned travel writers Hugh and Colleen Gantzer

Two to travel Hugh and Colleen Gantzer in Mussoorie

When travel writing is fast becoming a public relations exercise, this writer couple still commands respect in the business. Meet Hugh and Colleen Gantzer, the seventh and second generation Anglo-Indians who continue to mesmerise us with their biting facts and amazing wit. When the two are not on the job, that is, travelling, they are to be found at their old house in Mussoorie.

Hugh, who used to work with the legal branch of the Indian Navy, says “You need to create magic with words in travel writing. Like when you say that where you are standing today in Mussoorie, once there flowed the Tethys Sea, people are bound to take notice. Or the fact that the British chose Mussoorie for they believed the Anopheles mosquito that causes malaria can’t survive beyond a height of 4000 feet.”

For those who like sensation, Hugh — who has also written a novel, “The Year Before Sunset”, with Colleen — has other stories to narrate. “Today it might be the honeymoon destination, but in colonial times Mussoorie was the place for clandestine relations. We also have Scandal Point,” he laughs. “Then there are sinister stories like a doctor who administered slow poison to a rich lady whom he was in love with. When the lady succumbed the doctor was conveniently away and the murder could not be solved. Rudyard Kipling mentioned it to Arthur Conan Doyle and it resulted in ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’.”

However, Hugh, whose mother was also involved in the Save Mussoorie campaign against limestone quarrying, is not happy with the tourist destination’s present state. “New constructions have been stopped but people are turning their residences into hotels and old hotels are adding rooms. We don’t have wells and lack proper sewerage facilities. In such a scenario, if a hotel which was earlier accommodating 50 now accommodates 100, it is bound to have its impact on water consumption and sewerage. The hills are littered with plastic waste. The monitoring committee on environment which was formed after the Supreme Court’s directive is supposed to meet every three months, but it has not met for the last couple of years.”

The Gantzers attribute their popularity partly to their surname. “When we started writing, many thought we were Germans writing about Indian tourist destinations. We still suffer from the complex that if a foreigner praises us we believe that we deserve it.”

On a serious note, Colleen adds, “We do accept invitations but this doesn’t stop us from criticising the place if it deserves criticism. At times we give the hotel the benefit of doubt to correct things within a month. We have an eye for detail. We can figure out if the room is freshly painted to welcome us. That we are two helps. While one sleeps, the other absorbs the scenery.”

Hugh says, “We both talk and we both write.” The duo advises travel writers not to go by mere hearsay. “We discovered a tiny little lovely island Digha in West Bengal when everybody called it a dead place.”

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