Time for more hill stations. This time it was another road trip to Nainital in Uttarakhand with Mollie, Eric, and Alex all from Hyderabad. We left work on Friday early and set off on our 8 hour car ride with Manbir. We were in for quite the ride - our radio didn't work and had to be fixed in Delhi and then we faced some of the worst roads I've come across in all of India - I felt like we were driving on another planet at times.
Eventually we made it and checked into the Belvedere Palace late at night. Despite some mixed reviews from the crowd, it was actually a nice place and had a good view overlooking the Nainital Lake. We woke up and took a cable car to the Snow Point to see the mountains and look for a short hike. Unsuccessful, we came back and decided to drive to Land's End. We haggled for some horses to take us to three view points and about five minutes into it all, the heavy monsoonal rain decided it was time to get wet. We took refuge in a cafe with some chai and made our way from place to place, seeing some of the most beautiful white clouds ever.
We had dinner and drinks at the Naini Retreat, a great hotel with good food and hookah. The next day we did some more sightseeing to other lake towns (Saattal and Bhutal) before again starting on the 8 hour drive back to Delhi. Apparently the main highway was closed so we had to take a serious detour around 80km on rural roads alongside raw sewage and through some pretty shady areas.
Nonetheless, Nainital was literally a breath of fresh air - away from the crowds and summer tourists, we got to see some great scenary, meet some cool people, and eat some good food. The lakes in Uttarakhand are gorgeous and apparently used to be much bigger before a series of landslides which quicky shrank their size. The road trips from Delhi are a lot of fun, and always present an interesting adventure...not to mention the car games.
Blog Photos - Here's a link to my photos of Nainital in Google Photos (also links from below).
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment