In Nainital

After spending most of Thursday sleeping, our tourist activities began on Friday. Nainital holds a special place in our family history. Yes, mom and dad went to Nainital for their honeymoon. So, there were special stories attached to a lot of places, restaurants and the lake itself. Since our hotel overlooked the jheel or lake, our first choice had to be boating.

The first boat we hired was boat no. 52 and the boatman's name was Trilok. It was called the Sony Deluxe. It had cute red colour cushions with yellow flowers.

Dad knows how to row a boat and he was very keen at trying his hands at it again after a long time. A minute into the lake, dad took over the oars. He was then reminded of the Rajesh Khanna song from Kati Patang, "Jis gali mein tera ghar na ho saajna" which had been picturised on this lake. He called up mom to sing the song to her who was unfortunately (or fortunately) sleeping at that time.

As he rowed, I had plenty of time to absorb the view. On one side of the lake is the mall road. It has the shops and hotels that are a necessary feature of all mall roads in popular hill stations. On the opposite side is a hill full of trees that has very little construction. Its rocks are unfit to support buildings. It has a road running by the side of the lake and is dotted with temples. The third side has the Naini temple and the fourth had more hotels including mine. The lake according to Trilok Bhaiyya was 100 meters deep (another boatman later pronounced it to be 100 to 120 feet deep which is the correct depth) .

Trilok bhaiyya was the source of much information on places to visit, road directions, High Court legislations, suicide attempts by people, boat accidents, vegetation, boat construction and operation, etc. Nice fella he was.

Now for the fun part. I decided to learn how to row the boat myself. After swapping places with dad, which involved a lot of walking in the middle of the boat with the boat wobbling, I sat down and took up the oars. Boats used in Nainital are scientifically designed and are supposedly easier to row than the rowing boats found in other places. Positioning my feet against the bar, I gripped the oars and tried to row. As is to be expected, I started rowing in the opposite direction. I was then explained the principle behind it and Trilok bhaiyya held the oars with me demonstrating the movements. Valuable lesson: one hand goes a lil ahead of the other else you end up banging the two together. After some time and a lot of encouragement from dad and Trilok ji, I managed to row decently and on my own. The co-ordination wasn't very good even till the last day which meant that the boat never went straight and I kept moving towards the side of the lake.

It was a great experience to row the boat on my own. I rowed for approx three hours in total during the entire trip! Mornings, evenings, against the breeze, with the breeze, when the sun was shining, when it was cloudy...all kinds of different settings. Since the tourist season hadn't begun yet, there were few people around. I drew curious stares from them as no one else was rowing on their own! A child in a boat which was behind me saw me rowing and shouted, "Woh dekho aurat chala rahi hai boat!" I was not amused at being called "aurat" and was assured by my dad that she had only seen me from back. Later I heard her calling me Didi and was pacified by that.

More happenings in Nainital will be put up next..whether you like it or not!