Away Goes I

I am away for the next couple of weeks — Going with a couple of friends (we had visited Bandhavgarh, Kanha, and Pachmarhi last year) for a road trip through some parts of the state of Uttaranchal and a bit of Uttar Pradesh.

The trip is divided into three parts. The first part is largely unplanned (or loosely planned). We are flying to Delhi tonight and then driving through the night to reach Bhimtal, close to Nainital. Along with Naukuchiataal and Sattal, this forms Uttaranchal's famous lake district. That is about the only detail planned for this part of the trip. We have booked no hotels as the idea is that we mooch around a place for a day or two if we like it, else we push off to another place. So what we have is a list of places — some which we might visit, some which we might not, and some which we might just breeze through: Nainital (Bhimtal, Naukuchiataal, Sattal), Mukteshwar, Almora/Binsar, and Kausani. 

What we do know is that we are spending 3 days in the Jim Corbett National Park after we are done with the places mentioned above. We are planning to stay in the forest guesthouses right inside the forest. This is the part of the trip we all are eagerly awaiting. Corbett has tigers (which are rarely sighted), plus crocodiles (both the mugger and the gharial), monitor lizards, wild elephants, leopards, boars, bucks, sambhar, eagles, owls, nightjars etc. If we don't become food for one of the big cats, or the crocs, or annoy the elephants we then head to the 3rd part of the trip.

From Corbett we drive overnight to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort and possibly Fatehpur Sikri. We then come back to Delhi and explore a bit of old Delhi for a day before flying back to Mumbai.

So if everything goes as envisioned, planned or otherwise we would have visited some scenic spots, had a few days of wildlife safaris, and a history lesson.

Hopefully the trip will be as nice as it seems to us at the moment. I am just glad to get away from a computer for a few days.

Meanwhile, stick around and be good. Explore the archives, the blog-roll, and there are good many links posted to my delicious account. Comeback soon, I might feel too lazy to post about this trip, but there definitely will be loads of photographs.