Among the zoo's inhabitants were monkeys, a Himalayan black bear, leopards, a Siberian tiger, a palm civet cat, wolves, silver pheasants, a rose-ringed prakeet, a hill fox , ghorals, barking beer, and a sambhar. The zoo is normally closed to visitors on Monday, but Atul made special arrangements for it to be opened especially for us, and had the head zoo-keeper lead the tour.
The zoo, which is actually called the Govind Ballabh Pant High Altitude Zoo, stands at an altitude of 2100 meters in a sprawling open area in the hills. The zoo walkway spirals upwards until you reach an amazing lookout point that is almost directly across from SEM (see following "foggy"close-up).
After another fabulous meal, we had the cars drop us off at the other (Mallital) side of the lake. The ladies then went shopping and the rest of us (Louie, Noel, Nicholas, Wayne and I) went for a boat ride, hiring two boats. For some reason, Louie who insisted on rowing himself (at least for a few minutes), chose 9-year old Nicholas for one or his boat-mates rather than me. If I was a sensitive guy ..... Anyway, Noel and I chose to take the easy option and let the boatman do the rowing, while we took in the many sights and sounds. We were also freed up to taking a few photos of Louie rowing before he threw in the towel. [This is our boatman, not Louie.]
On approaching the other end of the lake, we had the boatmen pull in near the SEM Boathouse. The dock was no longer there, but there is a landing area adjacent to the boathouse. We walked around the building and verified, through cracks in the door, that the rowing sculls were still here (contrary to what we had been told by others). However, we are not sure where the two "spotting" launches were. We also verified through the boatmen that SEM still raced the sculls in the lake once a year.
Although we had hired the boats for a round-trip, we decided to disembark at this end of the lake, since I remembered (35 years later) that there was a Post Office at this end, and I needed to get some stamps. We also wanted to take an obligatory rickshaw ride back along the Mall road to the Mallital side of town. I was assigned my own rickshaw. Again, if I was sensitive guy ......
The rickshaw stand at the other end was =near the strip of shops that included Modern Book Depot (now called Modern Book & General Store). We popped in to give the owner, Vimal Kumar, Rui's E-mail address (as promised on a previous visit) and to get some post-cards of Nainital.
We also stopped in at the electronics store next door (major source of LPs in our day) and had a lengthy conversation with "Pummy" Singh (George Figueiredo class-mate) about the current state of SEM and related Alumni initiatives.
We then stopped in at Sakley's (the pastry/cake) shop for a coffee. I believe that this is where our birthday cakes used to come from, courtesy of our parents and Mr. Frietas.
We then met up with the ladies and the cars and headed back to the hotel, for one last meal in Nainital. We settled up our bills that night and starting packing since we planned to leave at around 6:00am in order to avoid traffic down the mountain as well as the heat in Delhi.
In hindsight, there are a still a number of things in Nainital and SEM that I missed seeing perhaps due to all the meals and group activities that we had to fit in, but maybe next (?) time.
1 comment:
If you were a sensitive guy and insisted on some company on the richshaw ride, you might be hauled up before the International Court on Human Rights! Don't think the poor Rikshaw-walla would have made it without breaking his back!
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