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| Lovely cottony texture! |
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| A view of the city from the Naini lake |
It was quite cold there. Scenic mountain roads and pretty steep ones led to our resort “Shervani Hilltop.” The little houses built in the mountains looked so unique. It just amazed us as to how they would have taken all the construction material up. Shervani has a beautiful garden. The flowers are amazing, and we just loved admiring them. They have good heating in the rooms (which was really required in the cold), but one gets hot water only for a few hours in a day, as water is precious in the mountains. Fair enough! The food spread is quite lavish and tasty, and they had live singing too. The singer sang some lovely romantic ballads that added to the pleasure of dining. For those who have been to Nainital know that most activity is centered around the Naini lake and the Mall Road that runs adjacent to it. Mall Road is the predominant shopping area here. Nainital is well known for its candles, and we bought some too. Though, it is unclear why it is so because the wax does not originally come from Nainital. One good thing is the cleanliness drive. There is no visible litter, and they are strict about littering. The lake is also extremely clean. We had one of the best boat rides in the serene lake with an entertaining boatman, who told us stories of his children and how he had educated them all with his boatman’s salary. It is a pleasure to talk to locals and hear tidbits about the local history. Also, the language is so wonderful — good, lyrical Hindi. Don’t you agree that the language in the smaller towns is so clean and pure and a pleasure to hear as against the mixed, corrupt language of the cities.
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| a unique way of pottingcacti |
We enjoyed our walks on the Mall Road. We even once did the 4-km route from our resort to the Mall Road to and fro, which is pretty steep! It did get our hearts pumping, and we were shedding our woolens in a hurry :). No wonder, the people in the hills are so fit. And, the air is so fresh and unpolluted. My husband joked that we might fall sick because of such clean air and fresh produce :). We also did a walk till the Himalaya Darshan Point. On clearer days, one can see Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks from there, but on the day we went, we could not due to the fog, but we did enjoy the hike. Another nice place to visit is the Cave Garden. There are a multitude of caves here: Tiger cave, Panther cave, Ape cave, bat cave and so on. Let me tell you that the caves can be claustrophobic with steep climbs and sheer drops. But, it provides a huge rush. Sid and dad did 4 caves. I had the courage to only do 2 :). One could have great views of the Nainital city from here. Another curious thing I found here was that plastic bottles are slung from trees in some sort of pattern. Is it to show people not to litter or does it have some other significance? Some locals we asked had no clue. You can also do the cable car, but I personally don’t enjoy them much. One can also see various points on horseback if one is so inclined. Overall, it was a pleasurable stay among friendly, simple people. It was really relaxing and for people living closely a must do. A lot of people say that it is over-commercialized, but it seemed a sleepy, laid back town to me. No complains. We had a good time!
We braced ourselves for some bad roads, as we headed back to Delhi on Diwali!
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| The blurred Himalayas at a distance |
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| A view of the Naini lake from our hike |
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| Another view |
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| The resort perched on Hilltop |
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| Panther cave |
Rachna says 
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