Escape From The Plains

One fine evening, I was packing to leave for home the next day and my flatmate comes in my room and asks, “What are you doing tomorrow? “ I replied that I was going home for the weekend and he said that he had planned for a trip to Nainital and I pretty much wanted to go there as well. I said,” Let’s do it next weekend! “And the plan was on. By the time I came back, we were still not sure of the destination as he wanted to return the same day and Nainital wasn’t a place where you could go for a day, go sightseeing, have fun and return the same day so we decided to go to Lansdowne instead. It was closer, more relaxing and less crowded.

The Keys to happiness

It was early morning on Saturday, 24^th June 2017, we had officially left for Lansdowne at around 4 AM in the morning. I had never seen such emptier roads in Noida other than some other late night plans. Following the saying, what goes around comes around, we met with so much traffic passing through Ghaziabad, at 5 AM in the morning and we had to go slow for another 20-30 kms. After that, the roads till Meerut bypass and a small place, Khatauli were an absolute beauty. Riding in the cool breeze of the dawn and witnessing the sunrise from behind those fields, this is one thing you would want to witness again and again over time.

Night Fury !

But just as we crossed Khatauli, as per Google navigation, we had to leave this wonderful highway and follow the two lane road for god knows how long. Next up, all we kept searching for was the four lane highway, though we found nothing. And to make things worse, we had to encounter an under-construction flyover in Najibabad which was so congested, that we had to pass through narrow streets which were not even on Google Maps. Till Kotdwar, we passed through some villages, an ecological area, took a halt for Breakfast at around 8:30 AM and again left for the final ascent on the hills. Next 40-50 km were hills, and what roads ! Beautiful scenery and smooth tarmac !

Somewhere on the way

As we were approaching Lansdowne, we could feel the coolness in the air and the sun rays getting strong and after approximately an hour of beautiful curvy roads, we encountered a board saying welcome to Lansdowne. ! Beautiful feeling it was, since it was first of my long weekend rides. Lansdowne isn’t a big town but it has plenty of riders coming on weekends. At just the entrance of the town, there is a round-about where plenty of people were standing as if there was a fair. Turns out, it was like the town square of the station.

Our Rides

Going on the road conditions and the time taken to reach there, we decided to stay there for a night and leave next day early morning and we started looking for a hotel. But we were empty handed, all the hotels were full, we had working Monday for EID, not everyone else, everybody were celebrating the long weekend and we sat in the middle of nowhere deciding what to do next, whether to go back to Kotdwar for hotel (which was nearly 40-50kms) or go higher and try to look for hotels. I got some contact numbers of hotels which we saw on the way, all of them were full. While we were still deciding, a family were packing their stuff in the car, they were checking out of the hotel and we couldn’t believe our luck. We managed to get a room finally for around 1500 bucks.

Lost at Bhulla Tal

We, then, left our stuff at the hotel room and went out to discover LANSDOWNE, not much to see, except for the Bhulla Tal, Tip n Top, a temple and a church (what we came to know from locals). Visited each of them one by one, but the best moments of the trip was lying down on the ground on our way down back from Tip n Top. Hill side, by the road, cool breeze, tall trees. Everything looked mesmerising. We spent a good 45 minutes to an hour just lying there. Went back to the town, got bored, got to climbing the hill again and reached Tip n Top to get clearer view of the snow covered mountains in the evening and were fruitless again. So we just got back to our hotel room, got a good dinner and had plenty of rest.

Amongst the clouds

Lying under the tall Trees ! 

The next morning, we got up early (late in terms of riding) at around 7:30, left the hotel at around 8 and headed back for Noida. But the view was again mesmerising. Clouds had surrounded us from everywhere and we had breakfast from roadside maggi point. Well, what is a mountain trip without a Hot, sizzling, bowl of Maggi ! That was very relaxing but eventually we had to descend down from the hills to the plains. We were nearing Kotdwar and we could feel the heat wave as well. It was getting hotter with every km covered. By the time we were in Kotdwar and figuring out the way between the slow moving traffic, we experienced the true nature of the heat. We were drenched within a few minutes.

Beautiful Scenes. NF looks demonic !

So, we kept moving for as long as we could, but we had to stop for fuel, for us obviously, we were tired and pretty much dehydrated. We had our lunch and began our final part of the trip in the scorching heat. By the time we crossed Meerut, we were again dehydrated, the water we were carrying was hot enough to burn our tongue. We, again, stopped for a little water break merely 20kms from our home. That is how exhausted we were. Just as we entered Ghaziabad, we were speeding like maniacs to reach home as soon as possible. From the cool breeze to extreme heat, we saw it all and were very unfortunate to encounter such heat when the weather forecast was cloudy for the weekend. Our trip had finally concluded. I parked my bike at 4:00 PM, patted her for being a true companion and I went to sleep, just to wake up the next day.

BTW, Thanking Rajiv for the Clicks of nature, I was busy photographing my motorcycle.