Courtesy photography: All 12 of us in the group
7 April 2023: A small announcement appeared in our Triumph Auto office women’s whatsapp group. “We are planning for a company-sponsored 3-day trip. Either Nainital or Jim Corbett. Please confirm if interested. We will plan accordingly.”
A few minutes later, confirmations from colleagues began trickling in. Everyone sounded so excited, full of plans about all those gorgeous dresses they would wear, reels they would create.
Nainital is a beautiful place indeed…Wild flowers, red, yellow, white, and blue, dancing in the breeze…Fresh mountain air, naughty clouds in a clear blue sky, soothing breeze blowing from the cool Naini Lake…tall, huge trees, green woods…all these memories from a previous trip crowded my mind as I considered going to Nainital again.
I hesitated. Office interactions are one thing, I thought, and holidaying with the same set of people quite another; especially when they are much younger and so temperamentally different.
I discussed my dilemma with my family. To go or not to go? They said, “Such opportunities don’t come every day. Go, have fun. It will be a good change for you, away from the daily grind.”
8 April 2023: With butterflies in my stomach, I whatsapped. “Confirmed.”
12 April 2023: A final plan along with a tentative itinerary of places to visit materialized on whatsapp. Twelve of us, all women, going to Nainital, in a Tempo Traveller, travel days 14 -16 April 2023. Four rooms booked for us in Cedar Woods Hotel. That meant, three per room on one double bed; enough to make me feel jittery all over again. But it was too late to back out. Well, God will have to take care now. That’s how I reassured myself.
13 April 2023: Time fixed for departure from office: 7:30 AM. Reach by 7 AM. This was the latest announcement in our group.
14 April 2023: By 8 AM, everyone had arrived, all twelve of us, and we were ready to go. See these pics below. We are all smiling, radiating with joy.
The more energetic ones danced in the bus aisle area (see pics below) while the bus kept running. We passed by big trees bound in concrete and horrible patches of river Yamuna filled with industrial foam. It felt great to know that all these were behind us, if only for a short while. At Majnu-Ka-Tila Gurdwara, Baisakhi celebration was going on in full swing with Sikh families thronging at the entrance. It felt great to go on a journey with divine blessings.
Around 11:30 AM, we stopped at Shiva Dhaba on the way for some brunch. The food was good, but I ate light. No overeating, I reminded myself.
At around 5 PM, we reached Nainital. The bus driver said we will have to take smaller vehicles to reach our hotel Cedar Woods, as buses are not allowed there. So we deboarded and after some haggling, we managed to get two cabs. By 6 PM, we were at our hotel and we had enough time to freshen up. It was getting dark and the roads were dimly lit, so we decided we will venture out the next day.
I lay in bed and had a great time catching up with Manto’s short stories. My room mate Uma caught up with her sleep, and the others danced away the evening in another room with loud music playing on their mobile phones.
As the evening progressed, Ronita, our tour organizer, asked us to join them. We found the girls dancing to loud music like they’d gone crazy. The room reeked of alcohol. So it was obvious where their energy, raucous laughter, and bawdy jokes were coming from.
Ronita had kept some of the cranberry-flavored rum bottles into Uma’s bag while shifting luggage from the bus to the cabs. Uma handed them over now and felt greatly relieved.
We didn’t want to sound like old, disapproving aunts, so we smiled and lingered for a few seconds, grabbed a few snacks, and tactfully walked out.
Our buffet dinner was served at 9:30 PM and we were really famished by then.
15 April 2023: A few girls had hangovers in the morning from the previous night and expressed doubts about being able to see all the places on our list. But they were okay after some time. Soon after breakfast, we walked to the Mall. From there, we boarded two vehicles and began our sightseeing journey in Nainital. See these pics below. We had light snacks during the day and dinner at Nanak Restaurant on the Mall. Our trek from there to our hotel turned into a steep climb on a dimly-lighted road a few minutes later. Shefali had fever. But we managed to reach our hotel safely with each other’s help.
16 April 2023: After a leisurely breakfast, we got ready to leave. Our cabs arrived at around 10:30. A few girls had initially planned to do some adventure activities, such as paragliding, on the way. But once the bus started moving on the downward journey, they felt sick. So we just kept moving ahead without stopping anywhere.
Uma didn’t feel good either, as her father, an asthma patient, was not well. Her brother informed her later that their father was now admitted in a hospital in Lucknow and his condition was unstable. He wanted to meet everyone. She burst into tears. The music playing inside the bus was too loud and she couldn’t understand what her family members were telling her on the phone. So she asked the girls to turn down the volume of the music system. They turned it off for a while, but soon afterwards the music resumed. Insensitivity of today’s youth, we thought. No point in telling them what to do.
“I will never travel again with these girls; this was the first and the last time,” Uma mumbled under her breath. She was still dewy-eyed when she dropped off at Kashmere Gate to travel to Lucknow with her brother. “I can’t be at peace until I see my father,” she said.
About an hour prior to reaching my stop, I went to the back of the bus to keep my things in my suitcase. Shefali and Dharna remarked, “We thought you got up to dance.”
I laughed and said, “Alright, let us dance now. Our journey is going to end and I don’t want to miss out on anything.”
See some more pics below.
18 April 2023: I re-joined the office today. Work was as usual, but something had changed; the smiles with which we greeted each other exuded intimacy and better understanding.
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