'Mist' Opportunities

Hello again,

Blogging again so soon? Well we wanted to share a flavour of our recent short trip to Nainital, in India, with you. Before we tell you more about it, here’s a quick update.

Schools are still closed for the monsoon holidays but we’re finding work to do in the office including planning, data analysis, and drinking chiyah (sweet Nepali tea) with anyone who drops in to see us.

Back at home we have cut back the foliage a bit in the hope that the resident leeches will have fewer places to launch onto us from. The termites are being evicted after munching through some paper kites decorating our walls, and turning them to dust. We’re continuing to see beautiful wildlife in our garden including parakeets, hornbills and bee-eaters and wasps that feature in our album.

Nainital: A ‘mist’ opportunity?

After our surprise 6 day, 12 hours a day training and no weekend, everyone agreed that we deserved a break. Where to go in the monsoon though? This is the time when roads are most likely to be blocked and distant views are less than spectacular. The choice wasn’t too hard though, because we’d heard about a beautiful mountain lake in India, only 8 hours journey away.

We realized we’d made the right decision not spend our time in Nepal when we weren’t able to get a bus to the border due to a Banda (strike) on the day we left (which continued for several more days). So we hopped on a rickshaw, and off we went.

On the first day, we were laughing. Who says it's silly to come to see the Himalayas in the middle of the monsoon? Look at this beautiful weather:

And look at this lovely night time shot. We were really looking forward to our hill walk with snow peaked views the following day.

In the meantime we enjoyed the view from our hotel bedroom window from where we could watch the locals in their ‘branch offices’:

After a few hours walking we reached ‘Tiffin Top’ (does that ring a colonial bell to anyone?) After tiffin on Tiffin, the clouds cleared enough for us to get a bit of a view of the valley below.

Not Himalayan snowpeaks but even so, by the time we reach the promised panorama of Land’s End (sounds all very British), the cloud will surely have cleared and those snowy peaks will surely be peeking out:

Well there’s always tomorrow. We can’t go wrong with a trip on the cable car to ‘Snow View’. Huh! ‘There’s No View’ more like!

While the views were sorely ‘mist’, walking in the clouds did give an extra special feel to our walks. It sometimes felt as though we were walking through fairyland with the ancient moss covered trees, occasional ruins and even a fantasy castle (well okay just a pretentious looking school). Here’s Steve away with the fairies:

There was lots of interesting wildlife to see including this eagle which occasionally emerged from the fog (eagle-ly awaited).