The very first Nomad trip
After a whole day of fire-fighting, I think it is apt that I take some time off and write down memoirs of my recent bike ride to Nainital. Read it slowly... like you have coffee on a rainy day, one sip at a time.
It was one crazy moment when the three of us decided that next weekend is when we will take up this ambitious (rather, utterly idiotic) plan of biking down to Nainital. We leave the Noida office on 20th July 2002 after our graveyard shift, which gets over by 6:00am.
The road till Hapud (51 km) is quite decent, 2-lane highway. From Hapud to Moradabad is rather bad, since it is just one-lane and the trucks take your happiness away. Moradabad has a fresh bypass now, which is unbelievably good,so good that u feel like u are in firang-land. 7-8 km of straight road, with no traffic at all. We ride at our respective bikes' top speed.
We stop at a dhaba after Moradabad, eat Aloo paratha and rest a while. It is about 10:00am and quite cloudy. We take to road in a while and reach a place called Vrijghat. I get a skip in my heartbeat when I find out that the bridge I am crossing is on the river Ganga. This is the first time I am seeing the Ganga and although I am not known to be very pious, the sight fills me with an emotion not easily described. The Ganga is huge. It's like a sea. One side you have a row of small boats, the ghats and temples, on the other side you have only water. I feel humble towards the fact that ages of humanity have dipped the ashes of their departed ones, generations after generations.
We reach Rampur by 12:00 noon. Rampur is a nice place, with the past glory of Navab Rampur still in the air. From Rampur, you take left for Nainital and the road goes through Bilaspur and Rudrapur, to Haldwani. From Rampur onwards, the road is simply awesome. You have forests, green fields and hills on both sides. There is hardly any civilization.
Rudrapur is a cute town, with hep-looking people, boarding schools and girls in skirts. Haldwani is crowded. We make our way through the traffic, the cattle and the hawkers. The next stop is Kathgodam, a sweet town with a sweet-sounding name. This is the base of the Kumaon hills. The road from here on is narrow, winding and beyond words in its beauty. To top it, there is a slight drizzle... Ah! I can feel the drops on my face even now. Ever had hot tandoor bhuttas in the rain? That too in the hills, with deep green valleys on one side of the road? You are missing something, my friend, you are.
Anyway, we reach Bhavali by 3:00pm. Bhavali is 16 km from Nainital. Imran has a pretty house in the hills of Bhavali. We rest our 'tashreefs' for a while in Bhavali and then start a site-seeing tour. We go 8 km downhill to reach Saat Tal, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It has 7 tiny lakes located in the middle of the valley. The setting is too good to be real. We have our so-called lunch there. Being ravenous due to the ride, we gulp down kadhi-chavaals, raajmas, rotis, daals and heaven knows what. A lot of the Saat Tal area belongs to the Methodist Church. They have built around 30 tiny cottages in the forest. We could locate about 15 of them. Others are deeper in the woods. Lucky people!! From Saat Tal, we climb back to Bhavali and proceed to Nainital. On the way, some 6 km before Nainital, we find a century-old graveyard. We find marble graves (with carvings in the marble stone) as old as 1853... creepy, but worth it.
We reach Nainital, cross the mall on one side of the Tal and park our bikes near a football stadium. It is dusk by now and is quite chilly near the lake. We visit the Naina Devi temple, stroll through the mall, have dinner, do little bit of shopping and take stoke of the Delhi babes roaming around on the streets.
We start our return journey to Bhavali in pitch darkness at 10:30pm. On the way back, Imran stops near the graveyard and expresses his desire to hang around for a while. However Lalit takes strong objection to this and thus we proceed to Bhavali. Once we reached the house, we were so tired that the moment we hit the sack, the next thing we knew was that it was 8:30am the next day. We have chai at a small "tapri", on a pretty location overlooking the valley. Then we proceed to Saat Tal again, swim in the beautiful, clear waters, hire a paddleboat and have a gala time. We had B'fast at Saat Tal and returned to Bhavali by 12:00 noon. We start our return journey by 1:00pm. We take the route through Bhimtal. Bhimtal is huge, 1.5 km wide, with an island in the centre. It is as commercialized as Nainital. So we don't stop. The downhill journey is quite wonderful though.
The rest of the journey is rather uneventful, apart from short stops at different dhaba’s here and there, a long halt at Rampur at Imran's ancient house, a stroll in the Knief market and a special halt at a place called Gajraula for I felt like having some ice cream. There was a sandstorm raging and the entire area looked yellow with dust. It gets late due to all this, and we are 100 km away from Noida when it starts to get dark. Two hours thereafter we ride in the dark (which, in retrospect, was utter madness). We could have avoided night riding. Poor time management. Anyway, we reach Noida by 10:00pm, safe and sound, yet totally exhausted and full of dust. I still carry some dust and some fresh mountain air in my head.
It was one crazy moment when the three of us decided that next weekend is when we will take up this ambitious (rather, utterly idiotic) plan of biking down to Nainital. We leave the Noida office on 20th July 2002 after our graveyard shift, which gets over by 6:00am.
The road till Hapud (51 km) is quite decent, 2-lane highway. From Hapud to Moradabad is rather bad, since it is just one-lane and the trucks take your happiness away. Moradabad has a fresh bypass now, which is unbelievably good,so good that u feel like u are in firang-land. 7-8 km of straight road, with no traffic at all. We ride at our respective bikes' top speed.
We stop at a dhaba after Moradabad, eat Aloo paratha and rest a while. It is about 10:00am and quite cloudy. We take to road in a while and reach a place called Vrijghat. I get a skip in my heartbeat when I find out that the bridge I am crossing is on the river Ganga. This is the first time I am seeing the Ganga and although I am not known to be very pious, the sight fills me with an emotion not easily described. The Ganga is huge. It's like a sea. One side you have a row of small boats, the ghats and temples, on the other side you have only water. I feel humble towards the fact that ages of humanity have dipped the ashes of their departed ones, generations after generations.
We reach Rampur by 12:00 noon. Rampur is a nice place, with the past glory of Navab Rampur still in the air. From Rampur, you take left for Nainital and the road goes through Bilaspur and Rudrapur, to Haldwani. From Rampur onwards, the road is simply awesome. You have forests, green fields and hills on both sides. There is hardly any civilization.
Rudrapur is a cute town, with hep-looking people, boarding schools and girls in skirts. Haldwani is crowded. We make our way through the traffic, the cattle and the hawkers. The next stop is Kathgodam, a sweet town with a sweet-sounding name. This is the base of the Kumaon hills. The road from here on is narrow, winding and beyond words in its beauty. To top it, there is a slight drizzle... Ah! I can feel the drops on my face even now. Ever had hot tandoor bhuttas in the rain? That too in the hills, with deep green valleys on one side of the road? You are missing something, my friend, you are.
Anyway, we reach Bhavali by 3:00pm. Bhavali is 16 km from Nainital. Imran has a pretty house in the hills of Bhavali. We rest our 'tashreefs' for a while in Bhavali and then start a site-seeing tour. We go 8 km downhill to reach Saat Tal, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It has 7 tiny lakes located in the middle of the valley. The setting is too good to be real. We have our so-called lunch there. Being ravenous due to the ride, we gulp down kadhi-chavaals, raajmas, rotis, daals and heaven knows what. A lot of the Saat Tal area belongs to the Methodist Church. They have built around 30 tiny cottages in the forest. We could locate about 15 of them. Others are deeper in the woods. Lucky people!! From Saat Tal, we climb back to Bhavali and proceed to Nainital. On the way, some 6 km before Nainital, we find a century-old graveyard. We find marble graves (with carvings in the marble stone) as old as 1853... creepy, but worth it.
We reach Nainital, cross the mall on one side of the Tal and park our bikes near a football stadium. It is dusk by now and is quite chilly near the lake. We visit the Naina Devi temple, stroll through the mall, have dinner, do little bit of shopping and take stoke of the Delhi babes roaming around on the streets.
We start our return journey to Bhavali in pitch darkness at 10:30pm. On the way back, Imran stops near the graveyard and expresses his desire to hang around for a while. However Lalit takes strong objection to this and thus we proceed to Bhavali. Once we reached the house, we were so tired that the moment we hit the sack, the next thing we knew was that it was 8:30am the next day. We have chai at a small "tapri", on a pretty location overlooking the valley. Then we proceed to Saat Tal again, swim in the beautiful, clear waters, hire a paddleboat and have a gala time. We had B'fast at Saat Tal and returned to Bhavali by 12:00 noon. We start our return journey by 1:00pm. We take the route through Bhimtal. Bhimtal is huge, 1.5 km wide, with an island in the centre. It is as commercialized as Nainital. So we don't stop. The downhill journey is quite wonderful though.
The rest of the journey is rather uneventful, apart from short stops at different dhaba’s here and there, a long halt at Rampur at Imran's ancient house, a stroll in the Knief market and a special halt at a place called Gajraula for I felt like having some ice cream. There was a sandstorm raging and the entire area looked yellow with dust. It gets late due to all this, and we are 100 km away from Noida when it starts to get dark. Two hours thereafter we ride in the dark (which, in retrospect, was utter madness). We could have avoided night riding. Poor time management. Anyway, we reach Noida by 10:00pm, safe and sound, yet totally exhausted and full of dust. I still carry some dust and some fresh mountain air in my head.
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