re: Naukuchiatal: Far from the crowd Jim Corbett and the Corbett museum at Kaladunghi
One recurring theme in our travels to Uttaranchal has been Jim Corbett’s estate at Kaladunghi (now a museum dedicated to him). For many schoolboys growing up in the 50’s and 60’s (Allahabad, UP in my case), Jim Corbett was a name synonymous with the outdoors & adventure, with summer and winter vacations spent devouring his books and daydreaming – daydreams, where each of us was accompanying the intrepid Jim to Rudraprayag, Mukteshwar, Thak, Kaladunghi and the myriad other places in his beloved Kumaon, on his quest for the man-eating predators! Fortunately for both of us, my wife turned out to be as keen an admirer of Jim Corbett as I was.
And so it became natural that in the course of our continuing love-affair with Uttaranchal, we should stop at Kaladunghi and pay homage to this extraordinary human being and naturalist. He was a nature conservationist long before the term became a fashionable topic for coffee-table discussion, and long before pug-mark characteristics became an invaluable tool for tiger census - notwithstanding the current obsession with radio-button tracking!
The joy of touring
Our travel route has been simple and straight forward. In the earlier days (’97 to 2008) we would drive down from Mumbai to Lucknow (via NH3 to Shivpuri, and then the NH25 to Lucknow via Kanpur). The drive to Lucknow (app. 1400 kms as per the odo) we did with two nights on the road. The first usually at Mhow, Indore, or Dewas and the second at Jhansi or Orai. After spending a few days in Lucknow, under my mother-in-law’s TLC (she is a fabulous cook, though with advancing age, she is no longer as spry as she would have us believe - I treasure her) we would head for Naukuchiatal.
Nowadays - since about 2008/2009 - we keep our Bucephalus (our Scorpio GLX 2.6 L, non-CRD, T/diesel) often parked in Lucknow, while using the Hyundai Getz for our Mumbai chores. This is simply to doff my hat to my age - that nemesis we all dread. Thus the journey from Mumbai to Lucknow is nowadays usually done by train and from Lucknow to Uttaranchal, as always, by road. We also do the odd drive from Lucknow to Kolkata and back – whenever the pull of fresh mustard Hilsa gets too strong to resist.
For Naukuchiatal we usually start with the NH24 from Lucknow to Bareilly (via Sitapur and Shahjahanpur).
From Bareilly to Haldwani we prefer the NH87 (via Baheri, Kiccha, Udham Singh Nagar and Lal Kuan) though there are two other routes from Bareilly, one via Rampur and Rudrapur and the other taking the old Pilibhit road (NH74) via Sitarganj.
From Haldwani the climb into the Uttaranchal hills starts and for me this is where I enter Magonia! Even though the distance from Haldwani/Kathgodam to Naukuchiatal is less than 30km, it takes you into another world. As we start climbing, everyone seems to come awake. Our canine family, till now snoozing happily in the back, shake themselves and shove their heads out of the lowered windows on either side, their ears flapping in the suddenly cool breeze, their eyes half-closed in ecstasy! This continues for a while, till the rapidly falling temperature tells them to pull their heads back into the warmth of the car!
A little ahead of Ranibagh we take the Bhimtal-Bhowali road (right turn).
At Bhimtal we follow the road around the periphery of the lake and then take the right turn (the left continues on to Bhowali) on to the Naukuchiatal road. From here it is only a matter of 10 minutes or less till we arrive at journey’s end and pull up on the fore court of the KMVN TRH at Naukuchiatal, to be greeted by a smiling Tewariji.
Paradise revisited! |