So What Does One Do In Nainital?

If you're Rajiv, you spend time meeting with lawyers - the high court grounds are a lot nicer than the ones in Delhi! If you're the average Indian here on holiday you dress up in your outfit with the most sequins, sparkles and gold and walk up and down admiring all the stuff for sale from embroidered "Kashmiri" shawls and cheap plastic toys from China, to lacquered, odd-looking "sculptures" made from local pine cones or really ugly furniture.

There are no sidewalks which makes a stroll along the lake an exercise in avoiding traffic and tolerating the incessant 500+ decibel honking.

If you tire of the metropolis you can head up into the hills (along with 15,000 other people) to a point where you're supposed to be able to see the snowcapped Himalayas on a clear day (which it wasn't when we went). There you can dress up in a gold-trimmed velvet outfit to have your picture taken (for some unknown reason this seems to be a popular pastime in Nainital, you can have it done by the lake too) or you can shoot at plastic bottles strung between trees down the hillside.

Another popular attraction is the Cave Gardens where for 15 rupees you can experience nature in a setting that's devoid of any concept of liability litigation (as long as you don't spit). Here in the Cave Gardens you climb down narrow paths into natural caves (more like crevasses that have been opened up in the mountains) with absolutely nothing in the way of security. Slippery rock steps, low hanging rocks in narrow passageways, pits going down another 100 feet completely open next to the path just waiting for a child to slip into... It's an amazing sight to see fully decked out Indian women wearing sparkly saris, glittering jewelry and sandals picking their way over the rocks, through the narrow tunnels!

Taking a boat ride is the biggest deal in Nainital and from morning to night the little lake is swarming with long, gondola-like boats and those swan-shaped paddle boats. Naturally we had to take a boat ride and after visiting the Cave Gardens I found the fact that lifejackets were "compulsory" here rather ironic. For 160 rupees we were rowed up and down the lake, with only the honking in the distance to serenade us.