The roads up the hill to Nainital were really good - much better than anything in the hills of Nepal - but they did make Jenny bus sick.
Nainital is a "hill station" from the days of the British. The town nestles around the lake at about 2000m, so it is much cooler than the hot plains of India. So cool, in fact, that every day it rained or was so cloudy that much of the lake was obscured in the mist and we rarely saw the tops of the hills. At night we got to use a blanket for the first time since Langtang.
This is a good place to escape and relax. It is NOTHING like the plains of India. The hassle factor is much less, there is less rubbish, very few beggars, lots of fixed price shops and cafes with iced coffee and delicious butterscotch cake. We went for walks in the hills/mist, boating on the lake, the zoo, a half-day sightseeing trip to other lakes in the area (more mist to be seen).
The zoo was really good - very neat, clean and maintained. It had leopards, siberian tiger, himalayan bear, snow leopard, deery sort of things (Phil's technical biology naming), pheasants, wolves and other high-altitude animals. This was great value at 25INR each.
The night bus back down the hill almost a week later was Phil's turn to be sick (for real into the plastic bag this time!). The bus was great - leg room for Phil, reclining seats - but the driver was hairy, too much go flat out, swerve around things, jamb on the brakes at the last moment if really necessary. The last 80km into Delhi had roadwork and there had been a head-on collision near the bridge over the Ganges. So the last 80km took over 4 hours. The lesson is, don't catch buses in India. We should have caught the local bus to Haldwani then got the train to Delhi, but we couldn't find any available seats for online booking.
