Is one of the states in northern India, also known as ‘Dev Bhumi’, since there are so many temples there, reminded me of Rome or probably Venice where there are way too many churches. I don’t really enjoy visiting religious places a lot, they seem the same to me, with no offense meant to any form of God 🙂 However, I found cities in Uttarakhand charming for the Kumaon culture and the beautiful landscape.
I started my journey from New Delhi via a private bus. The journey itself was quite interesting with musical horns, old cliched romantic hindi songs, stops at weird food plazas. I also realized that bus journeys on hilly areas don’t bode well with me, ended up getting nausea. I wanted to drive down myself but decided against it at last minute since I was not sure about my driving skills in hilly terrain of Uttarakhand; may be next time, I can drive down myself.
The first city I went to was Nainital, one of the popular hill stations in Uttarakhand. The guest house I had booked was nestled in the residential area of Nainital, away from commercialized places. It was a great decision, very peaceful. The below snap shows the view from the guest house. I got to do rigorous cardio as well while climbing up and down the guest house, no cabs could go the guest house directly. I was told that the specific hill where the guest house was located, had the steepest slopes around there, my glutes and hamstrings were nicely worked out.
The room was quite cosy as well with posters of Pink Flyod, lights etc.
I decided against indulging in the typical touristy activities on the first day, I instead climbed up about 2 Kms to the snow view point. What a beautiful trek/walk through the forest. The below photos show the view from the top and the view of Nainital while walking down in the evening. While coming down the mountain, it had become dark, I can’t deny that I got a little scared because there was not a soul to be seen anywhere, I did take out my favourite Pepper spray to be prepared for any surprises 🙂 The care-takers of the guest house were quite surprised that I managed to climb up on my own and reach back in one piece, all alone.
The food served at the guesthouse was the typical Indian food but it was home-cooked, yummy infact the owner of the guest house made me eat so much of food like a granny would. She was quite concerned how will I survive the chill, I guess she underestimated me that I won’t come prepared with a bottle of whiskey 🙂 Anyways now I have to work on reducing the weight she made me put on.
The staple food of these cities in Uttarakhand is Maggi, yes.. our college-time staple food, savior of the night-outs, 2-minute Maggi noodles, it was served almost everywhere; wonder, what must have been the situation when Maggi was banned across India and was not available.
The next day, I did the typical touristy activities in Nainital, visited the caves, various view points of the valley, did boating, shopped around. They were nice but not the highlights. I enjoyed interacting with people more.
The New year’s eve was rather interesting in Nainital’s Mall road/downtown. There was good lighting, big speakers every 200 meters, peppy songs were being played, people were dancing on the road. I love watching people have fun.
The celebratory mood was going great until an untoward incident happened there, a bunch of young tourists teased/molested a girl and then decided to flee the spot, since the road was jam-packed, they ended up pushing off a lot of people to flee, it was like a stampede. I too got pushed forward by one of them and was about to fall but what is actually sad is how Indian men just take liberty and molest women in public, we all saw the victim girl breaking down, cops gathering up, it was just disappointing. Seeing a lot of drunkard tourists around, I too decided to flee and climb back to my warm and cosy guest house. We had a nice time and new years eve with bonfire and some biryani.
I have to say that it started getting quite cold there, that night and with no room heater, I had to resort to shots of Red label to see myself through the night 🙂
On the first day of the New year, I decided to travel further up, north, to checkout Kumaon villages, culture and some temples. The landscape was nice, loved the drive, it was nice and sunny.
My driver: Mr. Bihari Lal (interesting name) made me visit this temple where people especially go to get their wishes fulfilled, I could not understand the name of the temple, it was complex Hindi but later on after researching, I got to know that it was the Chitai Golu temple. Apparently, it is a tradition that people visit these temples on the first day of the year and the queue there was never-ending with a waiting period of 3 hours minimum. I ended up taking the back route to visit the temple, I got caught by the local cop, trying to skip the long queue but a puppy face and a sorry note fixed that 🙂
I have visited a lot of temples but I have never seen so many bells in a temple. It was actually hilarious that people had put up letters to god, attached to the bells, mentioning about their wishes. Some had written, please clear this court case number, some had written, I want to marry my boyfriend etc. If your wishes do come true, then you have to go back to the temple and hang a bell there, interesting. Now, don’t ask what did I wish for 😛 I just managed to bribe the god for a few seconds, made my wish, winked at the god and ran for my life, somehow overly crowded places overwhelm me after sometime.
There are a lot of nice cities up north from Nainital for example: Almora, Mukhteshwar, Ranikhet, Jageshwar.
I tasted some local cuisine and Kumaon sweets as well during my journey, they were ok, not my favorite. Loved Kumaon people though, docile, mostly found sun-bathing, reading newspapers, smiling at you. Though, I have to say, Indians find it rather odd to see solo, female travellers, I felt like an alien most of the times but one has to learn to ignore.
I went to this really old temple in Jageshwar, it has around 150 small temples in it and had Mrityunjay temple as well. A cute, naughty monkey decided to attack my puja plate, which holds some food items to be offered to deity during prayers, I guess s/he was hungry 🙂
I walked around in villages there, it was quite relaxing, I would make the driver drive along and meet me at a later point, I loved the walk, it gave me perspective and had a humbling effect on me; what are we infront of nature.
The Kuman region has a lot of Pine and Deodar forests as well. I made the driver stop at multiple places to enjoy the view, have a cuppa tea or enjoy the fresh air.
Overall, it was a great experience. I plan to go back and explore some more cities in Uttarakhand.