A desire to consult the wealthy library (out-of-bounds to lesser academic mortals) at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study – for my forthcoming book on the Hindustan-Tibet Road – had me requesting access and accommodation on the premises through a friend. Suffice it to say, the kind soul made it happen. Thus, I made the acquaintance of the house that Theo built.
Literally a hop, skip and jump away, to the east of the iconic IIAS building, a gleaming 
white two-storey structure, its roof painted a soothing green, made me momentarily hold my breath as I took in its unexpected loveliness. Alighting in the porch, I was struck by the lush pine surround and the view of the snowy Western Himalayas in the distance. The scene only got better as I trudged to my room on the upper level along a well-worn staircase of burnished wood, its sheen dulled by age and use.
A broad, window-lined corridor separated my room from a large terrace on one side; looked down at sprawling lawns lined by flowerbeds awash in nature’s hues, on the other. I couldn’t have asked for more. Except how does one concentrate on the work at hand in such distracting environs?
The original house was built in the year 1844 by Captain John Theophilus Boileau, one of 
the two (reportedly, largely) eccentric brothers after whom the Boileaugunge area near Summer Hill is named. As a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, he was charged with setting up an observatory in Shimla, from which the house derives its name. Nothing remains of it now, with records and instruments having been removed to Agra, and subsequently lost in the Mutiny.Theo is also credited with building Shimla’s most enduring image thus far, the Christ Church.
A typical day at Observatory House would begin with a hot cuppa on the terrace while keeping a keen eye on simian activity, of which there was plenty around me, even as my gaze greedily returned to the magnificent sight of an oblique sun teasing inscrutable mountain faces.
Post breakfast, I would take up position in the library, foraging and ferreting, reading and writing, oftentimes, finding myself lost in history. A brief lunch was followed by some more gopher-like activity before wrapping up in the late evening; catching the sun going down in a blaze of colour while on a much-required day-end constitutional.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
