Monday, February 27, 2006

Bhimtal

Bhimtal is one of the 4-5 "Tal"s dotting the map in Uttaranchal, the most prominent of them being Nainital. I remember one of my friends mentioning about the forest camp she went to every alternate year near Bhimtal, and how exciting it was.
We reached Bhimtal in the afternoon around two pm. The journey from Corbett was mostly characterised by typical farms and then hills on either side, nothing to be unusually excited about. Our resort at Bhimtal was nothing to be excited about either, quite a mish-mash of all kinds of decor, the ambience was uninteresting at best. There were two huge real trees in the lobby though, something that is not a common sight in hotel lobbies and made it unique.
After freshening up, we decided to see where the road in front of the hotel led and trodded along it for a long way. Walking past the houses with berry shrubs, beautiful white flower-laden trees, and simple architecture to provide fodder to our discussion, both of us talked to each other about each and every thing as usual.
As the sun set behind the hills magnificiently, I gulped in as much of the fresh mountain air greedily, a luxury for our kind, used to inhaling dust and smoke as the bigger portion of the air in metros. There were the various evergreen conifers up on the cliff and way down into the valley, stretching all the way up the adjacent mountain and beyond... usual sights of the mountains, ever so refreshing and unique everywhere.
Staying indoor throughout the night, we rose up early and had a hearty breakfast. Then we headed to the lakeside. Bhimtal was quite splendid in its view, and there were surprisingly low number of tourists. We attributed this to the fact that most tourists make a beeline for the more popular Nainital, and the ones who do stay in the resorts here, have little drive left in them after a saturday night of heavy partying, drinking and sex, to come visit the lake at ten in the morning!
We decided against going on a boatride into the lake as we would have been the only boat in it (shy guys we are...) and we may not have had the liberty of behaving as we wanted with the boatman with us for company.
So we walked along the lake, we did the whole circumference in about an hour and a half, resting for a while midway, sitting beside the clean water under some trees watching the typical lake in mountain valley setting in full glory.
Peaceful and quiet, we were glad that we were here rather than in Nainital or some other commercial hill station.
Lazing around a while longer, we headed back to the resort and a couple of hours later, it was time to head back to Delhi, bidding a silent goodbye to the place, which along with Corbett, made our lil escape truly worth remembering.

1 comment:

RDD said...

Quiet places allow a lot of time for introspection. And also let the troubled waters actually subside. Am happy to know, that with ur little holiday, u experienced more than just nature.

R