Nainital

Nainital is a town and headquarters of Nainital district of Kumaon division, Uttarakhand, India. It is the judicial capital of Uttarakhand, the High Court of the state being located there. It also houses the Governor of Uttarakhand, who resides in the Raj Bhavan. Nainital was the summer capital of the United Provinces.

All images on this page are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. Original authors are credited where applicable, and any modifications are indicated.

I had been there many times with my parents when I was young. This time, I went there with my own family during the winters and luckily, it hadn’t changed much.

We stayed at Hotel Chevron Fairhavens, which was a collection of nice wooden cottages. Like most Indian hotels, it was not centrally heated (They give radiator heaters) and I suffered terribly at night.

We spent our evening boating at the eponymous lake.

Once it starts getting dark, the best place to be is on the Mall Road (Every Indian hill-station has a Mall Road).

I remember resenting my parents for taking me to “Mouchak Restaurant” when I was young, and making me eat homely Bengali food, during a vacation no less. At least I was lucky they didn’t make me stay there.

Next way, we took the ropeway up to Snow View Point, which was extremely underwhelming, with guides pestering us all the time.

At least there were sweet dogs up there. There’s also a defunct amusement park.

It also gives you a panoramic view of the lake.

The best views of the town itself come from the way up to G.B. Pant High Altitude Zoo.

And after 2 days, we bid adieu to this beautiful hill station and went back to the polluted plains.