Chander Book Depot

Five minutes and a good shelf: that is the honest pitch for the older, quieter bookshop in Kulri, opposite the State Bank of India. Established in 1947, it is by local reckoning the town's oldest surviving book trade, and it still works the way such places did: newspapers and stationery at the front, books behind. What makes it worth the stop is the shelf of Mussoorie and Landour writers and hill-station history, kept without any of the fuss surrounding its famous neighbour a little way down the road.

The 1947 newsagent-bookshop locals actually use, with a solid shelf of Mussoorie writers