I’m not sure what Naini’s claim to fame is, but I really like her lake. This lake reminds me of a very large Speck Pond on the backside of Old Speck in Newry, Maine except this lake has had human lakeside cottages for several thousand years. Just like Speck Pond the surrounding hills come down low at the lake outlet to produce a disappearing horizon beyond, as you can see in the image above. Nainital is the name of the lake and the town. It is quite the vacation spot, and during the British Raj it was one of the hill station towns used to escape the heat on the Gangetic Plain. When we left Delhi the temperature was 91 degrees Fahrenheit, and here in Nainital it was around 40 degrees this morning. It is only the first week of March and Nainital is at an elevation of 6200 feet!!
Both of the images above were taken from our hotel room window. The dark one is the night view! This building was once the summer residence of the Raja of Awagarh and has many fierce hunting trophies hanging on the walls. Our Fulbright friend who is working here on her research said that there is a leopard which has been seen in the vicinity recently.
This morning Pam and I hiked up the mountain which forms the eastern side of the lake. First we stopped to see the Buddhist Gompa, a religious shrine, and then to the top of the ridge. We could see the Himalayas from the ridge, including the tallest mountain in India named Nanda Devi, with an elevation of 7816 meters (25,400 feet) !!
Cell phones can be a curse and a convenience. While we were hiking up the mountain we got a call from the Fulbright office in New Delhi. They had set up an appointment for us to meet the Vice-Chancellor of Kumaon University here in Nainital.
We met with him at 3:30 in his office and agreed to give two lectures for some of his students tomorrow. Even though we are officially done with the Fulbrights we volunteered to call on any universities up in Uttaranchal. We had such a great time on the official Fulbright Outreach trip to Madhya Pradesh universities that we volunteered to do the same while touring around the mountains. You sure meet interesting people.
