Destination Nainital

And by close association Tallital and Mallital also.

Unfortunately approximately 50,000 other people had beat us to it.

I had heard from someone who had just been there that the place was packed. School's out and families are on holiday. She wasn't wrong! After almost 2 hours navigating hairpin turns on a road that was about one and one-half lanes wide trying to avoid oncoming trucks, buses, cars and the random cow on the side of the road we made it to Nainital ready to collapse - and we weren't even driving (although it's more nerve-wracking being a passenger in a car driven by a flatlander who's never driven in mountains before - if I could shift gears with my left hand I would have taken the wheel).

We paid our 100 rupees to get onto the main drag of Nainital - the Mall. The town is squeezed along the steep slopes of the lake and there just isn't enough room for people + cars + bicycle rickshaws and as a result everyone is honking all the time. In a country where honking is a national pastime, it reaches shrill new levels here.

We checked into the Lakeside Inn (no stars, not even a comma) and ventured out to find some food. We ended up getting Chinese takeout from a place down the road - we are actually not that far from China here but that didn't make the food any better...

I fell asleep after the honking and the air hockey noise from the arcade downstairs stopped and woke up to chanting from the temple across the lake (and more honking).