MUSSOORIE: Away from the media glare and heated political debates of Delhi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi quietly headed to Mussoorie , taking the Nanda Devi Express to Dehradun on the night of December 31 to arrive in the Uttarakhand capital around 7.15am on the first day of 2016. According to sources, she then drove up to Mussoorie.The Congress president is learnt to be staying with her family friend Tika Brijendra Singh (brother of erstwhile Mahraja Sukhdeep Singh of Kapurthala) and his family at Wycliffe Cottage. Singh’s wife, who happens to be an Italian, is believed to a childhood friends of hers.Sources said that Sonia was enjoying a quiet time and that her security personnel had been asked to switch their phones off. Four cars follow her closely when she is driven around. Her love for photography, the sources added, was quite evident as one of the first things she is learnt to have done after complementing her hosts on the beautiful flowers kept on the dining table was to click a picture of the blossoms.While Sonia spent a considerable amount of time with her friends, the evening saw her head to Cloud End to witness the beautiful sunset. This time again, she took out her camera.On Saturday, dressed in a sari and overcoat, Sonia went for a picnic with her hosts to some mutual friend’s farmhouse at Kata Pathar. Later in the afternoon, she went for a long drive towards the Yamuna Bridge area which was later extended impromptu to Lakhamandal.Though her schedule has been kept under tight wraps, the Congress president will reportedly stay here till Monday. Sources said that she does not plan to meet political leaders, even those from her party, during her stay here.This is not the first time that she is visiting Mussoorie. In 1988, Sonia had visited the hill station and stayed with the same family. Rajiv Gandhi had then happily posed with local residents, many of whom still proudly display the pictures with the former Prime Minister in their shops.Interestingly, he was only carrying forward the family connection with the hill town. The Nehru family has always had a strong connect with Mussoorie. The relationship began with Nehru’s father Motilal Nehru, who frequently came to Mussoorie to help his wife, Swaroop Rani, who often kept unwell, get the fresh mountain air as suggested by the doctors.Historian Gopal Bhardwaj said, "In fact, when Pandit Nehru was a young boy, Christ Church, the oldest Church in Mussoorie, got into a controversy when the bishop offered a prayer, as requested Motilal Nehru, for the young Jawahar as the latter was unwell. It was seen as going against the British and the matter became so big that it went up to the viceroy.The young Nehru and his sister Vijay Lakshmi Pandit developed a lasting love for the town as they often visited it even as children. Vijay Lakshmi Pandit’s daughter studied at the famous Woodstock School. Inder Prakash, now in his 80s, then a young school boy, still remembers Nehru walking to their store, the famous A Prakash & Sons in the Sister’s Bazaar area of Landour as long back as 1937. “Since his sister also had a home very close to our home in Landour, the brother-sister duo often walked casually to the store. Blueberry jam was Nehru ji’s favourite,” said Prakash.