Colleen And Hugh Gantzer Had India's Heart

Colleen and Hugh Gantzer were the GOATs of travel writers.

IMAGE: Hugh and Colleen Gantzer at their cottage Ockbrook in Mussoorie. Photographs: Seema Pant for Rediff

Key Points

Hugh and Colleen Gantzer were India's oldest and best known travel writers.
They began their travels in 1974 after Commander Gantzer's early retirement from the Indian Navy.
The couple wrote more than a dozen travel books and thousands of articles.
They were awarded a Padma Shri in 2025.

Colleen and Hugh Gantzer were one of the nicest couples one could have ever met. India's oldest and finest travel writers, much before social media inhabiting travel influencers invaded our timelines, the Gantzers travelled through every state, Union Territory and beyond.

They travelled real and raw, once spending a night alone on an uninhabited island in Andaman and Nicobar. They simply asked the boatman to drop them off and pick them up the next day!

The couple travelled by trains, boats, ambassador car taxis, planes, even a Vespa scooter.

The Vespa two-wheeler took them on their first wondrous journey from Cochin to Kanyakumari in the 1970s.

Commander Gantzer driving, his wife Colleen and young son Peter riding pillion.

The couple never stopped after that.

IMAGE: The couple's study where they worked and wrote together.

After early retirement from the Indian Navy, Commander Gantzer took to travel. His dear Colleen, companion and partner on every journey.

They experienced India like few have, sharing their experience and vast repository of knowledge in dozens of travel books, nearly 3,000 of articles and a popular series on Doordarshan that they have left behind.

Their travel writing told the story of India the way it should -- its history, geography, culture, people, foods, architecture and shared histories that connect places and people.

They had so many stories -- and told them so well. No travel influencer could match the wealth they possessed, their curiosity and sense of inquiry.

After the Covid lockdown, the couple, then in their 80s and 90s, stopped travelling, preferring to stay home in their 180-year-old cottage in Mussoorie, while continuing to write for local newspapers.

IMAGE: The room full of framed awards and certificates.

IMAGE: Colleen Gantzer outside her home in February 2023.

After having known about them through their articles, I had long desired to meet them. On a trip to Dehradun in 2023, I managed to get their phone number and called.

Mrs Gantzer answered the landline in a pleasant and warm voice. The gracious couple agreed to a phone interview and spoke to me for nearly an hour -- the conversation sprinkled with stories of beautiful journeys they had made in India and abroad -- and their own fascinating personal history.

At the end of the conversation, they agreed to be photographed and invited me along with two colleagues for tea at their cottage, Mrs Gantzer giving detailed directions to their home in the hills.

Winding steps took us up the cottage and we were greeted by a charming Mrs Gantzer. Leaning on her stick, she led us through her dining room into the drawing room -- both replete with souvenirs collected from their travels.

One wall lined with plates from different countries, one section only had plates with pictures of dogs. The drawing room lined with black and white photos, so classic in style that you paused to see each frame.

Commander Gantzer joined us in a few minutes. In his 90s and walking with the aid of a stick, age had not diminished his wit and sparkling memory. A natural raconteur, he had us enthralled.

The charm still intact, he made his wife chuckle coyly when he talked about his decision to marry her the first time he saw her which incidentally was from a top floor window with her back towards him.

The couple were married for 64 years.

IMAGE: The alcove in the room containing memorabilia from his two decades spent in the Indian Navy. Among the medals and mementos was a black and white framed photograph of the second version of INS Khukri.

IMAGE: Vast collections of treasures by the couple. They brought back something from every journey.

An alcove in the room was devoted to memorabilia from his two decades spent in the Indian Navy. Among the medals and mementos was a black and white framed photograph of the second version of INS Khukri. He was posted on the first version of the ship, the only Indian vessel that was destroyed and sunk in a torpedo strike in the 1971 War.

Commander Gantzer had been posted out of the ship just a month before it sank with its commanding officer Captain M N Mulla choosing to go down with the ship in the highest traditions of a seaman.

"Had he not been posted out, he would not have been here talking to you," Mrs Gantzer had said.

Both Hugh and Colleen were Anglo-Indians. Hugh had Danish origins while his wife's ancestors were from Scotland. "There was a Gantzer Street in Calcutta," he said talking about his ancestors who arrived in Bengal several generations earlier. Hugh was born in Patna in 1931 where his father was chief of the Survey of Bihar and Orissa. Mr Gantzer senior had bought the Mussoorie cottage in 1940.

Colleen was born in 1934 in Godhra where her father was employed in the workshop of the Bombay Baroda & Central India Railway.

Our conversation took place over hot pakodas made by the house help under Mrs Gantzer's supervision and served with tea in old style cups and saucers. The generous couple showed us their writing room which was a writer's paradise, stacked with books and papers, the sunlight streaming from the window above.

"We believe every person has to pay back to society. So we write a regular column to bring out what we believe are the local problems," said Commander Gantzer who loved the hills and championed their preservation.

IMAGE: The couple always had Lovebirds. A section on the verandah was devoted for them.

He felt that Dehradun would be the ideal place to host The World Ecological Forum just like the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss issues like climate change, rampant cutting of trees, unplanned infrastructure, pollution that have come to affect us all.

We spent a lovely morning with a kind and generous couple who epitomised so much of a world that has disappeared. A world that was slow and solid -- and the grace they brought into those times.