Weekend travel to Almora-Kausani-Baijnath-Jageshwar-Nainital

Weekend travel to Almora-Kausani-Baijnath-Jageshwar-Nainital (May ’09)

This trip happened all of a sudden after my trip from New York during first week of May. One of my close friend from Chennai visited me (didn’t know it would be the last time we would be spending time together as he passed away in another few months) and we planned for a short trip. He is supposed to arrive on Friday night and we had sometime before we pick him up in airport. So we went for a tamil movie released recently in Gurgaon and went him to pick up around 10 pm. As usual the flight delayed and he arrived at 11.00 PM and we reached our residence in Faridabad at 12.00 AM.

We planned to start around 4 am, so that we wouldn’t need to rush but my friend had other plans. I brought one of his favorite drink from US and after normal chat with my family I persuaded my family members to have a nap we went to balcony and started speaking while he started having his drink. It went on till 2 am and I was feeling tired and he has no plans of sleeping that night (would never forget that night in my life). I told him to take some rest and went on to sleep for an hour. At four I woke and got ready and we all five got ready around 5 am.

We started from home around 5.15 and as I am feeling fresh started riding fast on the not so crowded roads. Road after Bareilly was not so good and couldn’t drive much faster. But negotiated that stretch and quickly caught the uphill road to Kathgodam. The first views of Himalaya peak was too good and you can see that some 7 km before Almora. Reached Kausani around 4 PM and visited Anasakthi Ashram. View of Trishul peak from the Ashram was too good. Spent some time lazing around the ashram and started to move towards Bageshwar.

At Bageshwar you would be welcomed by a group of temples called ‘Baijnath Group of Temples’. Offered our prayers to Lord Shiva and spent some quality time there watching sunset. After that went to Almora and booked an hotel on the mall road itself and retired for the day.

Next day we woke up a bit early and decided to checkout Jageshwar. The drive to Jageshwar was quite beautiful with clean roads combined with early morning freshness. Like Bageshwar, here also one will find a group of temples each consists of idols of Lord Shiva and others. It is one of the beautiful architecture and to an extend maintained well. Offered prayers and took some photographs and returned to Almora to rejoin with sleeping friends.

Then all of us got ready and had breakfast in the hotel itself and started towards Nainital our next destination. The drive from Almora to Nainital was a relaxed one and enroute we spotted a sign board indicating an waterfall just couple of kms away from the main road. We decided to checkout the place and it turned out to be a quiet and beautiful place. The waterfall was located some 100ft below the road level and the path leading towards the waterfall was quiet steep.

There was no one around except the security personal and we spent couple of hours drenching ourselves on the small waterfall with the chillness we needed at that time. We left the place with some hesitation as no one like to leave the place so early. But then we had the return Delhi the same night so took photographs and left the place and started our journey towards Nainital.

Reached Nainital around 3 PM, by the time we reached Nainital everyone felt hungry and had lunch near bus stand. Then went for a boating at Naini Lake spent some good time and started our journey towards Delhi. Rest of the journey was uneventful as we all are exhausted and reached Delhi around mid night.