Travel Along With Me

We all slept well. When we woke we packed all of our things (we would be heading to Mussoorie this evening by another overnight train ride), ate breakfast and decided to take a guided tour around Nainital. Tilak had a long talk with the hotel owner last evening and the owner set up a tour for us. Our driver came to our room and explained the tour and the price. When that was done we stored our baggage at the hotel while we went on our tour. The driver was a young man (around 26 years old). He and his brother own a taxi/touring company. The car was small but we all fit. Our first stop was an overlook of the Himalayan mountain views. Very beautiful! When we parked we were immediately asked by some Indians there if we would like to dress in Gharwalian attire and have our pictures taken. I thought it would be fun. It was only 20 rupees a piece. The kids and I took part and had a lot of fun doing so! A couple of local Indians wanted to take our picture. The driver then took us to Khurpatal Lake overlook. It was another gorgeous view of lush green fields that were staggered to grow vegetables, large rocks, a beautiful pond, trees, etc. We hiked down a trail to a large rock where we stayed for some time to take it all in and take photographs. Our driver was very patient and we enjoyed any knowledge he shared with us about the land we were seeing. When we left there we went to see a small waterfall that is in the foothills of the mountains. It was a short, but pretty hike to the top. When we left there we went to the Eco-Cave Park in Sukhatal. The kids seemed to really enjoy this. There were eight separate caves to walk through. Some were large and one was so small that you had to lay on your tummy to crawl through (I skipped that one). When we left there our driver took us back to town so that we could have lunch. We continued to have a hard time finding restaurants that had food that the kids would eat. We did the best we could. We met the driver back at our hotel at 2:00. We left and headed to the Neem Karoli Baba Temple – this was a place that Tilak especially enjoyed. We toured through the temple and received holy Prasad (food offering) when we left. We then were taken to several other lakes (none of which we were thrilled about, but never-the-less it was pretty). Our driver then took us back to the hotel to get our luggage and take us to the train station (one hour drive away). We rode another sleeper class train to Dehra Dun. From there we will get a taxi to Mussoorie. We slept restlessly. We arrived in Dehra Dun at 5:00a.m.

Awoke at 4:00am – still getting used to the new time zone. Kali was already wide awake. She and I played some games and did some school work until about 5:30am. That is when the Islamic “call to prayer” song began and Tilak and Texil woke during the song. We straightened our room and decided we would attempt to take our first “bucket baths”. The bathroom we had did not have a shower or a bathtub. It had two large buckets and one small bucket with a handle on it. We had to fill the buckets with water (we did have a heater for the water) and use the smaller bucket with the handle to ladle the water over us. The floor in the bathroom was all tile and there was a drain in the middle of the floor where all of the water would drain.

After our baths we ordered room service for our breakfast. We had toast, boiled eggs and the BEST hot chocolate I have ever had. There were many Indian breakfast choices on the menu, but all had more spice than we cared for first thing in the morning.

We left the hotel and took a nice walk along the Naini Lake. We then decided to go on a paddle boat ride on the lake. The kids picked a boat that looked like a dragon. We took turns peddling and steering the boat. We saw that the lake had a lot of areas that bubbled up from the bottom of the lake. We would row over top of them but could not see in the water far enough to know what was down there. When we parked the paddle boat after an hour we learned from the workers that the bubbles were from filters that were placed in the lake.

We then ventured over to a place in town where you can get on a cable car to take you to the top of the mountain to see the Himalayan mountain range. After we bought our tickets at the gate we watched some construction workers building a brick building. They were clearly using recycled bricks and the scaffolding they were standing on was not made of steel but of tied together wood logs and boards. While sitting and watching the workers we were approached by two families who wanted to have their picture with Kali.

We rode the cable car up to the top of the mountain and it was a beautiful view of Nainital from the cable car. Once at the top (Snow View), there was a small walk to an overlook with a view of the Himilayan mountains, including Nanda Devi. There were binoculars there to look through to get a better view. There was also a small carnival there. Tilak and the kids rode on bumper cars and the kids scaled a rope with harnesses on them. It was called a monkey crawl. We saw some nearby children playing cricket and watched them for awhile. Several more Indian women asked for a picture of Kali. She was like a celebrity. We found a restaurant that served “pizza” but it was quite different than what we are used to. The pizza sauce had Indian spices in it and the cheese was white but was almost cream-like.

Once we rode the cable car back down we went to the hotel to get some money to go to the Nainital Zoo which was only a 15-20 minute walk from our hotel. During our walk there I took pictures of a stray puppy and a cow eating the garbage along the road. I saw many beautiful flowers. Also along the way, there were some kids cutting wood and they had us take a picture of them.

There were several other people at the zoo entrance when we got there. Many talked with us and were very friendly. The road leading to the zoo was steep and several breaks were needed to climb it. We were pleasantly surprised at how well-kept the zoo was. The grounds were clean and the animals looked healthy. We saw: a tiger, a bear, pheasants, wolves, barking deer, a snow leopard and lots more. We all enjoyed the trip! The only thing that disappointed me was the public bathroom. Though I must say that there were very few bathrooms in India that I went in to that were even halfway pleasant.

On our walk back to the hotel I found several more pictures to take of flowers, people, and scenery.

When we got back in town we had a late supper in our room and then went back into town to get Texil a sweater in one of the shops. It was getting cold there and he needed something warmer. Kali went to bed when we got back to the hotel. Tilak left to find a place that had e-mail access availability to make future hotel reservations that we would need and Texil and I worked on some of his school work. We all went to sleep when Tilak returned to the room. We were huddled up on the one bed together with all the blankets that we had and the gentlemen that worked at the hotel brought us a space heater. The room was so drafty though we still struggled to be warm, but we slept well regardless.

We arrived in Kathgodan at 6:30am. The kids were refreshed but Tilak and I were not. We were immediately surrounded by men who wanted to be our taxi driver. We politely refused their services though they continued to persist. Luckily Tilak had worked it out for a taxi to meet us there and take us to our destination which was the town of Nainital. We found our driver holding a sign with our name on it outside of the train platform. The taxi driver (his name was Lalit) took us to his car and we loaded our things. On our way out of the train station our driver was stopped and given a ticket. It ends up that he was filling in for our original taxi driver and he did not have an official taxi license. He tried to pay of the person giving him the ticket. When that did not work he got out of his car and was yelling at the man that gave the ticket. After a few moments of them yelling and horns honking behind us for us to move, our driver got back in the car, through the ticket on his dash board and took off. The roads were very windy and mountainous. Texil began to get very car sick after a short time. Kali and I began to get car sick not long after Texil. Our driver was very kind and would pull over when we felt too nauseated and would rub Texil’s back and give us as much time as we needed to begin feeling better. I think we pulled over 3-4 times during the one hour trip to Nainital. When we arrived at our hotel (Hotel Lake View) we were greeted by some of the staff members. They carried all of our luggage up the road and many stairs to our room. Once we were settled into our room we met the hotel owner and a couple of the workers. They were very friendly and helpful and wanted to make sure we had everything that we needed to be comfortable. It was close to 8:00am by then and we ordered some room service for breakfast. The morning was a cold one and our room equally cold. We were delighted to learn that they served hot chocolate (which was the best I have ever had), toast and eggs. We were exhausted from the train ride and so after breakfast we all snuggled in the one bed in our room and took a nap. This nap was the first sleep that Tilak had since our arrival in India.

When we woke from our nap we decided to go and explore the town a bit. We walked down the paved sidewalks around a large volcanic lake that the town was circled around. We went into some of the shops and watched kids play the game cricket on a large flat cement ground. We learned from the Lonely Planet book that the large flat was made as a memoriam after a mud slide in the 1800’s that killed 150 people. We noticed that there were fewer homeless and beggars in this city.

We ate lunch at The Embassy restaurant in town. The kids ordered what was called “chicken cutlets and chips” thinking that it would be what they are used to in America (chicken tenders and fries). When the waiter brought our food to us it was NOT chicken tenders and fries. It was some kind of fried vegetable patties. It was a lot of food and neither of the kids liked it – they gagged when they tried to eat it. We were so wasteful and I felt extremely bad about it since there were so many people in India who would love to have the food. The kids ended up eating some of Tilak and my food (rice mainly) and had a Zone bar later that night. We had brought 2 boxes of Zone bars, 2 bags of goldfish and a container of nuts from home. We figured it would be nice snack food when we wanted it. It ended up being meals a lot of the time this first week and was gone in no time.

When we left the restaurant we took our first bicycle rickshaw around town. We all got into one. It usually only holds 2 adults comfortably. We put the kids on our lap. The driver had to have been cussing in his head the whole time he was cycling us. Tilak tipped him well when we finished our ride as an appreciation for his extra load. We all really enjoyed it.

We went back to our room after a little more exploring of the town and did some of the kids’ school work with them. The kids fell asleep at 7:00pm that night. Tilak and I enjoyed some reading and discussing what we would do the next day. We overheard one of the hotel staff talking to a female guest outside our door that night. She was telling the staff that she had run out of money and did not know how she was going to pay for her stay at the hotel. The employee mentioned to her that there was another American family at the hotel (Us!!) and that maybe she could talk to us about helping her out. Luckily she did not come knocking on the door because we would have had to say “No” to her. We had budgeted our trip and could not pay for someone else’s as well.

There was a wedding celebration going on in the town that evening with the music really loud. The kids woke up about the time that I was getting tired. Tilak stayed up and played some games we had brought from home with them and I went to bed for the evening.