Nainital is an old hill station, famous for its beautiful lake set amidst picturesque surroundings. ’’Tal’’ means the lake. My first visit was as a child. Most probably it was in the summer holidays. Two families had gone together.
My first memory of Nainital is the hotel room overlooking the Naini lake. The sight is still fresh in memory. Boats with multicoloured sails were floating in the breeze of the lovely lake with greenish water. There were a number of smaller row boats and the smiles on the faces of the people and children indicated they were really enjoying the experience. After that the memory is of our climbing in to the boats and the water rushing by with some splashes of water falling on our faces and giving us exhilaration. We watched the other boats and sailboats and the foam at the back. We marvelled at the efforts of some of the older members of the families trying their hands at the oars.
After some time we noticed children on ponies and people on horseback going on the road around the lake.There were ducks and geese too-clicking and clacking. There are brief and faint memories of the beautiful British buildings of the club house near the end of the lake on the other side and the small nice market. The climb up the hill to a place called Tiffin Top and China peak are some other memories. From here we could see the snow covered peaks perhaps of Tibet or China, from the telescopes. Subsequent visit was for plant collections.
This time we walked on the small paths through hills and valleys, through grassy slopes and mossy dark woods and collected various plants and flowers. There was a visit to Bhimtal near to Nainital. There are small lakes here. It too has become a tourist spot and constructions have come up along with small factories for development of the hill region. The next visit was better as we toured out of Nainital and visited Kausani from where we got a beautiful view of the sunrise over the Chaukhamba and the Annapurna peaks of the snow capped, magnificent Himalayas. We passed through Almora and then visited Ranikhet. Ranikhet has a wild forest which has some links with the famous Jim Corbett, author of ’’The Maneaters of Kumaon’’. I had gone in to the forest at Ranikhet right up to Charbattia forest station and had an almost close encounter with a real tiger. There were huge butterflies in this forest once upon a time. They can only be seen as pinned up dead specimens now. Unless the environment is conserved many beautiful animals, birds, insects, plants and natural sights would vanish forever. We would only have accounts of memories like this and maybe some videos. Nainital has several good hotels and residential schools. One famous school is Sherwood college. The Indian movies Superstar Amitabh Bachchan was a student here. Some movies have used Nainital for their locales. One movie I saw being filmed here was ’’Hukumat’’. Nainital’s big candles are very artistic and can be bought as souvenirs from the stalls near the lake. Nainital and its nearby places have given me really good memories.
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