This lake is a huge one, much bigger than what we get in Ooty or Kodai, down south. According to the boatman, it is about 4.5 sqkm in area. I have not verified it though.
The boat ride was very pleasant. Little Smriti enjoyed it quite a lot. We got to know from the boatman the possible places we can visit during the course of the day.
The crux of the town is one road called Mall road. This road seems to be pretty famous there, much like our MG road down south. Every other town seems to have a road with that name. Mall road is about 1.5 km in length, and it extends across the length of the lake. Our hotel was to one end of the road, and to the other end, there is a temple called Naini temple. Nainital apparently got its name from this temple. This is the main commercial area of Nainital. They have many shops selling woolen items. They have many hotels and restaurants along the entire stretch. An interesting thing is that the entrance to this road from our hotel side has a check post, and the cars are charged Rs. 50 as an entrance ticket per trip on this road. This is pretty steep. But the best part of this road is the "rikshaw"s. Rikshaw can be thought of as a 3 wheeled cycle, which will be pedaled by a person. It has an enclosure which can seat 2 people. Seating 3 is quite an intimate affair. To pedal the length of the road, they charge Rs.10.
We wanted to go to the rope way which will take us to a place on the hills where we get a panoramic view of the town. Interestingly, this hill top houses another of KMVN's guest house called Snow View, which was full when we tried to book. We took a rikshaw and reached the place where the rope way starts. Then we fell for a pestering travel agent who suggested that we take a 2 hour horse ride, which will take us to many view points that can provide better views than the rope way. Well, the mention of "horse" excited my daughter, so, we had two people to contend with. Finally, we gave in.
This 2 hour ride was an interesting one. We 3 were on separate horses, and there were 2 people manning the 3 of us. One of them was controlling the horse that I was riding, and the one that my daughter was riding. There was another person manning the horse that my wife was riding. This ride took us to view points like "suicide point" and "lovers' point". I wonder why these two points are always tied to each other. I remember seeing something like this at Kodaikkanal too. Maybe, this is one way to make love immortal :-).
After some time, the person manning my horse asked me to take the reins of my horse. This was pretty tricky and scary. This horse always had the propensity go to the edge of the road, and the deep valley was quite scary to see from there. Apparently, I was supposed to "steer" the horse in the opposite direction. But, it is not like my car's direct steering I am so used to. This horse seemed to have a mind of its own. However well I tried to apply the "opposite lock", the horse, with all its power, used to resist. Talk about "horse power"! It took me about 3-4 minutes to realise that the horse walks that way. Then, I aligned myself to its "living-on-the-edge" behaviour. Another scary part is the steep downward climb, after visiting one of those view points. I could not rein in my horse at that point, and there was one person manning my horse and my daughter's. I think he did a good job of controlling both the horses.
With horses out of our way, we had lunch at a restaurant called Shiva restaurant. The lunch was great. We then took the local transport and went to the zoo. This is an interesting zoo, in the sense that apart from seeing the animals, we also get to see the panoramic view of the town. The zoo is at the top of a hill. And, you need to climb those steep paths to see each captive animal or bird. We do get to see some rare animals like barking deer, etc, which are specific to the region. There was a white peacock too.
We finally took the rope way and reached the top of the hill. This rope way connects the Mall road, which is just above the lake to the top of the hill. They have some small rides there on the top. My daughter was content with jumping on a trampoline like ride. The place was too noisy for me. We returned to Mall road, had our dinner, and retired to the hotel.
We should have stayed another day here, and we could have visited some other lakes in and around Nainital.
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