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.