Arrivals at Indian bus stations are always chaotic and Nainital is no exception – however the level of the chaos was down a notch here. Lugging our heavy back packs we soon saw the lake spread out before us – it looked majestic in the morning sunlight with the tree covered hills surrounding it reflected on its surface. The town clambered up on all sides.

As it was still quite early we decided to find a cafe where we could get breakfast and orientate ourselves. We soon came across ‘Lakeview Cafe’ which gave us what its name says. It seemed to be the place for fashionable Indians to hang out and we noted that it sold an extensive alcohol menu – unusual for India. We had a delicious breakfast of cheese on toast with scrambled egg and fried potatoes plus proper cappucinos. Energised by the coffee rush we decided to walk to our homestay which didn’t seem to be too far away according to google maps. That turned out to be a bit of a mistake as it was on what seemed to be a vertical hill. The air was much cooler and fresher here – like an English summer day in fact – but I was still soaked in sweat by the time we reached our room.

The family we were staying with were very welcoming and immediately offered us cups of chai. We settled down to relax and watch the troupe of langur monkeys that also called this area their home get up to mischief. They later stole my pack of coconut biscuits while Tim was taking a photo of them. The monkey union obviously sees this as justified payment for posing for the camera.

We had booked up the homestay for five nights but ended up staying seven. We needed time to recover from our various illnesses and I think that the stress of finishing work, seeing our young people off to university and starting our trip had finally started to catch up with us. Our minds and bodies had begun to allow us to relax and begin to think about the last twenty five years. When I asked Tim to describe the time since we got married, settled in Hastings/ Bexhill and had kids, he said it reminds him of ‘2001 a Space Odyssey.’ It is like time has blurred and merged psychedelically. I am not sure if we will ever properly process it, but maybe this year we can make a start.

We didn’t do a lot in Nainital. We went on a few walks round the lake and up to ‘Snowview’ which can also be accessed via a ropeway/ cable car. I was initially very reluctant to risk this, but Tim finally persuaded me. The price included free entry to a Dinosaur Park – ‘Experience Live Dinosaur here.’ The guy that played the dinosaur deserves an Oscar in my opinion. The cable car and ‘Snowview’ gave us fantastic views of the town and lake and of the distant mountains.

We only met two other non Indian tourists in town – two girls in their twenties who were travelling around on motorbikes. In fact we haven’t come across many non Indian tourists anywhere we have been so far except for Rishikesh, where there were a lot of people attending yoga teacher training courses.

The family we were staying with were very hospitable and provided simple but delicious food if we wanted it. The woman who ran the homestay told me that her husband is in the army and has been out in Sudan supporting with the peacekeeping mission there. Nainital has a big army presence as have other areas around here. She decided to come back and live in Nainital with her parents after she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer as moving around with the army is very stressful. Thankfully she got the all clear three years ago.

Although the air was cleaner and fresher in Nainital the air pollution map for India is horrifying, underlining all the work they are doing to reduce traffic and the use of petrol powered auto rickshaws. Most of the areas we have been in so far are ‘unhealthy’ or ‘very unhealthy’ with a few places such as Nainital with a ‘moderate’ rating. Environmental issues do seem to be much higher on the agenda now than they were when we visited previously. There are no plastic bags used at all and filtered water/ access to kettles to boil water is readily available, which means that we have not had to buy any bottle water ( we also brought our own filter bottles with us this time).

We were sad to say goodbye to our homestay family but felt ready to move on to our next adventure in Almora, which was a fairly short four hour hop away in a shared jeep.