Uttar Mahayatra

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 ...

A rest day: What was Gavaskar’s occupation on a rest day in a 5-day test match? No doubt he would lounge on a chesterfield, sip a Virgin Mary, and gaze across the far pavilions. He would certainly not take out his willow and go prancing down the pitch. But not me. Rest day at Kausani meant we had to GO somewhere, even if nearby. Sort of net practice, I guess. The morning started without much of a brouhaha. We yawned and stretched at 6.00 am, rest day notwithstanding. It was gratifying to see the sun, our steady companion for the last two weeks, put on quite a decent show in front of our windows. Morning tea was promptly prepared, the yellow cup pic meticulously clicked, and the energising fluid appreciatively sipped while sitting outside our room, the sun in our faces. This time we had a ground floor room, and the path in front was lined with roses the size of soup plates. So, even at sunrise, Panna was over the moon. But, as I said, I had already ...

Bird’s eye view: My biographer would be giving a party today, if not standing a beer at a bar, since his protégés crossed 100 kms again today. 110 kms, to be exact. But we took 6.5 hours doing it. Two stops even before leaving Ranikhet. That’s slightly unusual, because our normal trend is to hightail it out of town once we have paid the bill, like the visiting gunslinger who has accidentally shot three people in the pub while debating the superiority of Remington over Colt. But more of that later. We also took a slightly longer route. For those of you born with Google map on their palms instead of lifelines (like me), there are two major ways to go from Ranikhet to Kausani. One retraces steps to Majkhali, veers off north-east to meet the Someshwar-Almora road then turns north and goes past Someshwar to Kausani. The other longer, infrequently used, and more scenic route goes north from Ranikhet to Paithani, turns east and runs past Dwarahat, and at Someshwar, turns north a...