Kumaon trip, December 2017

(sunset at Munsiyari. Taken by Siddhartha Das, 2012, and posted on flickr, here)

The Kumaon hills, partly owing to their still undestroyed beauty, partly because of the honesty and simplicity of the locals, and partly owing to the Jim Corbett connection, have always been a favourite holiday destination of mine, ever since I went that way for the first time on a shoestring budget back in 1987. I have been to Nainital four times, including this one. Even Pupu has many clear memories of the last visit in May 2007.

Classes were over for the year on Thursday the 21st December. My mother and I took a bus to Kolkata on Friday afternoon, and Pupu was waiting for us at the Esplanade bus terminus. Mother went off for a trip to Pune, while Pupu and I had a very nice dinner at Shilpi’s place. Late next morning we flew to Lucknow. I missed the tongas this time round – they have almost vanished – and strolled around the city in autorickshaws, trying to recognize the locations shown in Badshahi Aangti, visiting among other things the new B.R. Ambedkar Park, a monument to Ms. Mayavati’s ego on an ancient Egyptian scale, a chikan factory, and the park along the Gomti at evenfall, having had lunch at the famous Dastarkwan galli in between. The next day was spent (re-) visiting the Residency redolent with history (Pupu had missed the museum the last time, when it had been closed for repairs), the Bara- and Chhota Imambara, the Rumi Darwaza, the Clock Tower and so on. The city, famed for its numerous parks big and small, is clean and well-administered on the whole, whether due to or in spite of Yogi Adityanath I wouldn’t know, but the half-kilometre radius zone of Chaarbaag, around the railway station, is in a state of hyper-congested bedlam: the sooner the authorities do something to clear it up the better for all concerned. The only advantage of checking into a hotel there was that at night we could walk into the station with all our luggage without the aid of a vehicle, a guide or a porter. A quick, modest dinner at the railway canteen, and we were off in the Kathgodam Express by 10 p.m.

The early morning fog was so dense that the train had to crawl for the last hundred odd km. It was eerie to look out through the window and be able to see virtually nothing outside even after dawn had broken. So we were an hour late in arriving, and I was glad to be served free tea by a Good Samaritan at Kichchha station just before Haldwani. A car was waiting for us. At Udupiwala Restaurant, just outside Kathgodam, where we stopped for breakfast, they served complimentary laddoos because it was Christmas Day. The Kathgodam-Nainital trip by road was, as always, a dream. We stopped for three hours at Nainital, strolling around and boating in the lake in the bright, crisp, balmy sunshine, drinking coffee which was delightful because of the cold, lunching at the lakeside and visiting the St. Francis’ Church before driving off for Almora, where we arrived at around 4 p.m. I was staying in Almora after a gap of thirty years, and the town had certainly improved. Perhaps the lovely panoramic view from the huge terrace of my Hotel Himsagar helped to colour my judgment. We took a long walk along the main road till almost outside the town to work up a keen appetite, dined at a very nice roadside restaurant called Bhumika run by a friendly middle-aged Kumaoni lady and two elderly assistants, and retired early, good long hours of sleep under heavy quilts being a very important requirement of all our holidays in the mountains. The ceiling glowing dimly in the dark with fluorescent stars and moons was a perk we hadn’t got elsewhere before.

Next morning we went on a six-hour round trip to Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary. There was a three km. trek on the menu, and the views of the woods as well as the distant snowclad mountains from the so-called Zero Point – a 350 km range, from Nanda Devi and Kailash at one end through Trishul, Panchchula, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri at the other – were, in a word, divine. And I am more thankful than I can say that Pupu has come to love the vast vistas, the pine-scented air and the silence quite as much as I do. We could have sat there all day, but hunger drew us away. We lunched at the Binsar Eco Resort on the way back, and returned to Almora well in time for another long walk, this time visiting the little Ramakrishna Ashram built by the Swamis Shivananda and Turiyananda at the behest of Vivekananda himself (though I would have expected something much bigger and grander), and the District Magistrate’s office, housed on a hilltop in the middle of the town in buildings erected by the Chand Raja-s in the early 1800s, and apparently never refurbished save the occasional coat of paint since. I joked with Pupu that those who worked there, and had to climb up and down so many breathless steps at least five days a week, would never have to worry about obesity and heart disease! As always, the street dogs, plump, furry and perky, could have given the best pedigreed city bred domestic pets a run for their money.

Setting off at eight next morning, which meant waking up at 6:30, a truly ungodly hour for us in that kind of cold, we made a nearly eight-hour drive to Munsiyari, stopping at a riverside restaurant at Tejam for lunch on the way. Most of the road is in good to excellent condition, thank God: in the hills even more than in the plains, it makes all the difference in the world. At Munsiyari, we checked into a hotel called Milam Inn. The bellboy-cum-waiter simply pulled aside the curtain of the picture window in our room, turned around to raise a questioning eyebrow, and smiled contentedly to see our jaws drop. I am not given to superlatives, but the sight that met our eyes, the full Panchchula range bathed in brilliant sunshine, so close that it seemed you could reach out and touch them, took our breath away. I have seen many a Himalayan vista, but I can assure you that you won’t get a closer, grander view of the Himadri range unless you trek to a base camp at the foot of one of the great peaks. There was nothing to be done but stay rooted to one spot in the garden, shivering but deliriously happy, for more than an hour as the sun gradually set behind us, drenching the lofty peaks in front of us in a multitude of glorious colours, slowly changing from blazing gold to a softer hue, then purple, then crimson, and eventually fading away until they were only a faint outline in the moonlight more imagined than actually seen, and we were chilled to the bone as we headed back to our room for a very welcome cup of coffee and heavier stuff. Later at night someone lit a double line of controlled fire in the hills for our entertainment: the glow against the black backdrop of night was mesmerizing. That was the only night we used a heater before going to bed.

Next morning, the tap water was hot enough for us to brave a bath. Then we went out for a short but tough trek up a hill to visit a talao called Maheswari Kund. Afterwards our driver Vimal-ji took us down to the little town where we visited the Nanda Devi temple, a fine spot for a picnic on a hilltop, then a little tribal museum housing Kumaoni relics and lore before lunch. Walking around in search of the bazaar we had left behind, we managed to lose our way, and had to phone for the car to come and pick us up. The rest of the evening was spent reading out a story from Man Eaters of Kumaon to Pupu and watching a movie on the laptop. Early dinner (they feed you good stuff everywhere in those parts) and early to bed thereafter.

Friday the 29th was Pupu’s birthday. I had kept the best hotel for the last. We drove four hours down to Chaukori, where we checked into a place called Ojaswi Resort – and it is one of the best places I have ever stayed in. Fine view again, lovely walkabout in the tea garden before lunch on the sun-warmed terrace, where I dozed off for a while afterwards until the sun went behind the trees and the wind began to bite, whereupon we rolled up in our quilts for a late-afternoon snooze: for me, the very height of luxury. Another movie in the evening. I never watch TV when I am travelling and Pupu has her laptop with her. This time I watched four lighthearted movies in succession: Elf, Shrek, Zootopia and Ant Man. Talk about regression to childhood! Or detox, if you prefer Pupu’s vocabulary, and I can’t say I disagree.

On Saturday we checked out at 9 and drove down to Bhowali, where we stopped to pick up bottles of rhododendron (buransh) juice at a roadside shop, then lunch on the way, and at 4 p.m. Vimal dropped us off at Lalkuan railway station before bidding us goodbye. The once a week Lalkuan-Howrah Express left with us at 7:20 p.m., and next evening, the 31st, we arrived at Durgapur a little after 8:30, only four hours late (this is something that Indian Railways calls a ‘superfast’ train, meaning its average running speed is about 50 kmph – and I hear someone is dreaming of a ‘bullet’ train somewhere in this country. Good luck to him). Dinner at Kohinoor right in front of our house with rumaali roti and Chicken Patiala, and it was time for bed on the last night of the year.

My only real grouch this time round was that there were far too many Bengalis around (at Munsiyari and on the return train, they were almost all Bengalis). It shames me to say this, being a Bengali myself, and because Bengalis are the most enthusiastic tourists in India, but when will they learn that there is (or should be) something called public manners? – Four very important aspects of which are that you shouldn’t scream at one another in the name of chatting at all hours nor let your children do it, you shouldn’t discuss the most private and personal things, such as your bowel movements, for all and sundry to hear even if they desperately don’t want to, you shouldn’t order about hotel staff as though they are slaves, and you shouldn’t bargain at shops so strenuously and shamelessly that the locals have to work hard not to show how much they have begun to despise you. I appeal to all my readers who truly love to travel: don’t you think India would be a much nicer place to travel around if we all learnt to behave ourselves a little better? 

[Our photos can be seen here]