Road trip to Nainital

We IT guys are always looking for a long weekend. And finally we got one, 2nd Oct being Tuesday and national holiday, we had already planned for a long weekend trip to Nainital. I took Monday off. Shalini and me were quite excited about this trip. even though she was a bit hesitant of me driving to Naintal. But I had already made my mind.

We had planned for an early saturday start, but we instead we had a good fight ;-) and the whole program was tossed upside down. Finally we managed to compromise. Its really an interesting chemistry between all the married couples, which allows them to fight and love at the same time.

Finally we started at 8:00 AM in the morning instead of 4:00 AM as was planned earlier. Its alwasy good to do ones homework before visitng any tourist place. We had gathered enough information about the route we had to take and the destinations we had to cover during this trip.

We hit the NH24 and took Hapur bypass. NHAI has really done commendable job of constucting such a quality highway. I was already driving at 100+ Km/hr. The Euphoria soon ended as we drove pass the Hapur bypass highway and entered Gajraula. We got struck in a huge traffic jam. Two heavy trucks had a headon collision and the whole traffic was brought to a standstill. The jam was more than a kilometer. It took us an hour to crawl through the jam and cross the affected area. Luckily we finally managed to cross that and we were then crossing river Ganges. Shalini did not miss this chance to held me responsible for this delay in traffic jam, courtesy our morning headon collisoin ;-)

We crossed Gajraulla at aournd 11:00 Am. We had already planned for our journey break at Meriton, a motel jsut after crossing Gajraulla. We found it better that what we had read about it. The place was really good and we food was fantastic. We brought couple of music CDs from here.

After a refreshing breakfast, we started the journey again. We approached Moradabad and we took a right turn for Moradabad bypass. From here onward the road till Nainital is really good. On Moradabad bypass one finds a funny thing of paying the toll tax twice within 500 mtrs distance. I was driving at the max possible speed. It was a pleasure. After crossing Moradabad Bypass, we took a left U turn toward Moradabad city. and after few kms we took a right for Kashipur. The road signs are very clear. We crossed Tanda ( again a bad area but not that long ), Bazpur and finally Kaladhungi. A place where Jim Corbett spent a good part of his life. After Bazpur one will find the green jungle area and clear road. From here Nainital is only 34 Km. After few km the hill area started. I was driving very carefully, as it was my first trip to a hill station. We drove comfortably to Nainital. In between we stopped at places to enjoy the natural beauty this mountains offers.