On The Way to Nainital — Travel Diary Page #4

5 min readJun 8, 2022

Place: Somewhere in the streets of Nainital

Time: 7:45 pm

State: Thinking where to go from Nainital

He who arrives soon and leaves late

Didn’t I observe how the bus I took to Nainital was not so well maintained in Page #3 of this travel diary? But I got to admit, it did put me into a deep sleep.

When I woke up sometime the next day and looked out of the window, I saw tall green trees rolling past. But that was not what shook me off the sleep.

It was already so bright outside that I thought the time was 7 or 8 but it was only 5:18 am! This was the first of such incidents where I got the time wrong.

To give another example from a future page, I wanted to go boating and leisurely walked to the boating point, only to realize they had stopped for the day. The time was 7:15 pm but I thought it was 5 or 6. Look how bright it looked at 7:15!

From Bus to a Van

The bus had suddenly come to a halt and we were asked to move into another van. Since Nainital is further up the hill and the path gets too narrow from here for an interstate bus, a pickup van would be taking us up to Nainital. At this point, we were around 40kms from Nainital and this was our first change of transport!

Moving into a van for the remainder of the journey made it easier to look around and capture some good clips as well. The pickup van also kept picking up more people, so we had several short stops on our way.

The Serene Shape Shifter

The views from my side of the window kept shifting from raised land thick with trees to steep valleys which made my head spin when I tried to follow them all the way down!

While I could easily capture what was on my side, I hesitated for a while to turn the camera to the other. But after a while, I noticed people around were staring and smiling at the camera, giving me the green light to turn 360˚if needed!

The road uphill was narrow, twisty and snake-like. But the serene views can make one forget all fears and keep them relaxed. The cool breeze that never left us since we started uphill also erased the memories of the previous day’s heat.

Sometimes the path would suddenly grow dark with the lush green trees all around that left no trace of sunlight to reach us. As if the mountain with its inhabitants was playing a game of shadows with us.

How would it be to take this same path by car, with the freedom to stop anywhere and anytime? Sounds good right? Not that day though and I will tell you soon why!

Curious Homes

Once in a while, I could see these houses and buildings showing up at all random and wild places, with their tin roofs reflecting the morning sun and visible smoke probably from the chimney.

It was at one such place when I was twisting my neck all ways to follow some houses located dangerously yet beautifully on a sloppy side of the mountain, that we had another stop!

Another stop and change of vehicle

This time, it was the police!

We were asked to take a turn to the left and park instead of moving on to Nainital. Didn’t I wonder how nice it would be to travel in a personal vehicle? Not so surprisingly, a lot of people thought the same and Nainital got too crowded, not just with visitors but also with their cars. To control traffic, the police stopped all personal vehicles from going further up.

Meanwhile, I had the time to walk around and observe without rush, the houses clipped to the sides of the mountain.

The driver tried(said he really did), to convince the police to let our van through. But we were all asked to take cabs to Nainital instead. While this meant paying extra, what puzzled me was that it would take 4 or 5 cars to take us all to Nainital. Five cars preferred to a single pickup van? There had to be a reason.

Since I was alone, I had to wait for a while to find a cab that needed the odd one to fill all its seats. Not so long after I got into the cab, we finally reached NAINITAL and ..

What a welcome it was!

As of writing this story, I have been in Nainital for 5 days and I am sure I will come back to this place again and again. But I don’t think I will ever experience what I did the first time I saw this place!

The cab stopped at the bus stop and on the opposite side of it was this spectacular view. It almost made my breath stop and my eyes popped out. WOW, I felt!

I was tired of the previous day’s wanderings and the first thing I planned on doing was to find a place to drop the bags and have a shower. But I forgot all that and involuntarily walked towards the lake, enchanted by everything around me — the lake that looked graceful and elegant, the mountains that took guard around it, the colorful and vibrant buildings and the people who looked in equal joy and wonder.