Kumaon Trip - Day 1 - Naukuchiatal

Day 1: Saturday, 5 June, 2010

Location: Kathgodam, Bheemtal, Naukuchiatal

We reached Kathgodam railway station at 8 am, as against the scheduled arrival time of 5.15 am. Not that it bothered me, I was quite happy to get the extra sleep in the train after managing about 9 hours the previous 2 nights combined.

Deepak was there to receive us at the station in a Santro. I didn’t have a very high opinion of the Santro as the mountain car, but this trip is rapidly proving me wrong. Or maybe its Deepak’s driving that is making negotiating the slopes and curves seem effortless.

We took a halt at Bheemtal, which is about 20 kms from Kathgodam. Like many places in uttranachal, the origin of Bheemtal’s name also lies in the Mahabharata. Enraged that he could not find water anywhere, Bheem pounded his fist (or maybe a rock) on the land, immediately causing water to sprout from the location; and formed into a lake (tal). The lake offers a beautiful walk around it’s circumference. Many lakes do not have a road running around their edges, which takes away quite a bit of the fun from walking around the lake. The point of a walk around the lake is that you should be in sight of the lake during your walk. No fun if you only know that there’s a lake beyond the trees, the house, and the small hillock, but can’t actually see it. Well, in Bheemtal, we could and we did.

We reached Naukuchiatal before noon, and checked in at the Club Mahindra “Dancing Waters” resort. Although we insisted on a lake-facing room, our ground floor room didn’t quite offer a great view of the lake. Nor, I assume, is the view any better from the rooms which are in a direction OPPOSITE to the lake. Imagine, coming all the way here and finding that all you get to see from your room is a small garden and a road. There are many resorts around the area that offer a much more secenic view.

However, I can’t say for sure that they offer better amenities than Club Mahindra. Or rather, I am positive that the amenities offered at Club Mahindra are better than those offered by most of the others. The cleanliness, the décor, the activity centre, etc. are all immaculately maintained. And definitely a +1 for people who are planning a trip with kids.

My work, unfortunately, wasn’t done yet. I had an internal conference call for the afternoon, followed by one with the party on the other side. This second call was quite strange. The call was being led by my Partner from our side. The other party, for a change, seemed to be in a very agreeable mood; and had either “you are right”; “I agree with you” or “I noticed that myself” as a response to everything that my partner said. All this was very soothing to my ears. This, coupled with the cool climate, a view of the lake and the surrounding greenery made me doze off on the call for a while. I woke up to hear the party on the other side say “I think we are in agreement on all the points, and I will speak to my lawyers accordingly”. Evidently, I hadn’t missed much.

Like most other lakes, Naukuchiatal too doesn’t lend itself to a walk around its edge. We instead chose to rent out a paddle boat so that we could paddle inside it’s edges. As you must have guessed by now, Nau (Nine) Kuchia (corners) tal (lake) refers to a lake with nine corners. We tried counting them, but could only count till 5. Later, our dirver Deepak told us that it’s considered very inauspicious if you can count all the nine corners.

I never quite know what to do in these kind of situations. Not being superstitious or particularly god-fearing myself, the immediate impulse is to give a hollow laugh or an extremely sarcastic smile. However, the brain soon starts weighing it against the fact that Deepak is going to drive me through the Himalayas for the next 10 days. I decided not to commit a Himalayan blunder, asked a few polite questions on the topic that conveyed my seriousness on the topic, and promptly moved on to another one.

Naukuchiatal is an ideal place for doing nothing. It is not very high up the hills and also close to Nainital, and hence city comforts are not very far away from you reach. However, if you have come all the way to Kumaon, it does make sense to spend as much time as possible higher up in altitude and closer to the Himalayas. The places higher up are as good as any for doing nothing.

Verdict: Avoid, unless you don’t want to travel very high up the Himalayas.