Travel Diary–Nainital (2008)

If you are traveling from Delhi to Nainital, probably the best and the most comfortable way to travel is to take the overnight Ranikhet Express from Old Delhi Railway Station to reach Kathgodam, the nearest railway station to Nainital, which is what we did. However, we got down at the Haldwani station which is about 6 kilometers before Kathgodam. This kind of saves about 25 - 30 minutes as the halt at Haldwani is usually a long one.

One can easily get a taxi from Haldwani station itself. You can negotiate anything between 300 - 400/- to have the taxi drop you at the Nainital Mall road. An extra tip of 20 - 50/- shall ensure that the Taxi stays with you till you look for a place to stay, that is if you have not made prior reservations.

There are plenty of decent hotel right on the Mall road facing the Naini lake and after having looked into nearly half a dozen places, we finally settled into one which was towards the lower end of the lake. Interestingly the two ends of the lake are referred to by different names, while the end of the lake where Naina Devi Temple is situated is referred as 'Mallital', the other opposite end is known as 'Tallital'.

Boating in the Lake

As soon as we had our morning tea, we stepped out into the bright sun. For a day in the last week of December, the sunshine was abundant and it was all bright and sunny for most part of the day. We heralded the day with a nice long ride in the boat and nearly spanned the entire lake. The boat rides are cheap and one only needs to shell about 150/- for an hour for a paddle boat. This includes the rent of the life jackets that are provided. However, I am not sure about the quality of the material used therein and won't vouch for their life saving capabilities either. 

After we had our fill of the lake we sat down for some breakfast. There are plenty of places to sit and have a meal by the lake and the view is not too bad either.

Himalaya Darshan

Our next destination was the Himalaya Darshan. There is a ropeway trolley available to the point and the tickets are available for a round trip at about 120/- a head. The ropeway does tend to give you a bird's eye view of the entire lake and is something that one would enjoy. However we were a tad disappointed by the view that was on offer at the final Himalaya Darshan point. For one, it had become cloudy suddenly and the light had fallen considerably, secondly, the view itself was not something to write home about. There is however a small amusement park kind of a thing right at the view point. If you have little children along with you, this might be a better place to spend a few minutes than the point itself.

We decided to stroll the market place and the Mall road for rest of the day or whatever was left of it. Candles of all shapes, sizes and fragrances is one thing that the markets are full of. Some of these are pretty good and make excellent souvenirs and gifts for friends back home.

Day 2 Local Sight Seeing

We walked down to Nanda Devi Temple next day morning. This temple was destroyed during the Landslip of 1880, and was later rebuilt. It is located on the lake's northern shore. The temple is not very big otherwise but it made a useful pretext to be out early morning to catch the glorious morning view of the lake.

Later in the day , we caught hold of a local taxi and took a guided tour of all the possible places to visit. This is one of the safest approach if you want to cover maximum places in minimum time. Chances are that you might end up paying a little extra but it is worth what you can save in time, if you are on a short weekend trip.

Cave Gardens & Golu Dev Temple

Cave Gardens is an interesting place to visit and worth its ticket money. This is a set of caves that have been unearthed and opened for public. The other views on offer namely Khurpa Lake view, Mango View, Lover's Point, Bara Patthar to name a few are just mediocre points with little or no variation and would not interest someone who is a regular mountaineer or frequents Indian hill stations. We added another temple to our plan. This one was called Golu Dev temple, who happens to be a local deity. An interesting aspect of this temple was the number of bells of all possible sizes that were hung in the courtyard. The local lore counts them to be over a million and we could at least see about 50,000 in place.
  

SatTal & BhimTal

We carried on our journey to the nearby lakes and again enjoyed boating at a place called SatTal Literally meaning seven lakes. It is a group of small lakes nested together, about 23 kms from Nainital at an altitude of 1370 meters. There are no decent places to eat around and one can only see local dhabas in the vicinty so one is advised to not leave Nainital without adequate food. 

Bhimtal was the next and the final stop on our way to KathGodam from where we had to catch the same train back to Delhi.

Bhimtal is about 22 kms from Nainital, and is nested in a beautiful pristine valley. This lake is the largest around Nainital. We did not spend much time here and kept going to be in time for our train.

Catch all the pictures HERE.