Waking up (6.00 am): When I was small, one of the biggest luxuries in life was sleeping in on a holiday, and getting up around 8.00 am, when mother pushed me out of bed. A time has come now, I get up at 6.00 am, whether there is an alarm set or not. I don’t know whether to be proud of my mind’s discipline or to be resigned to an aging mind that cannot sleep. Either way, it was not much use today. Although there had been some growlings (thunder, not tummy) last night, the rain Gods finally decided to rain all around, like in Almora, Ranikhet, Mukteswar, Binsar, and held off on Kausani. Why? Pure cussedness, that’s why. So we were not greeted by a clear sky in the morning, and no Himalayan peaks. A few more Bengali families had checked in, in the rooms beside us and above us.We swapped travel tales of our respective trips and our self-drive trip drew the expected surprise and admiration. Incidentally, we have just completed 20 days on our current trip and have 20 more days to go. ...