April 26th
The time for changing airports from international to domestic became an adventure without strolling and shopping opportunities. Joanna didn’t even have the time to get a proper lunch! But we managed to catch the plane eastward to Pantnagar, where we were met by Mukesh who’s an excellent driver and took us the 80 km to our final destination which we thought would take 2,5 hours. The ride was really like entering a movie with very varying scenery. After 30 minutes, we passed Lalkuan (in the video).
The road was still straight and stayed like that for another 45 minutes. We tried to figure out when to honk at other vehicles and it seemed to be a lot of different reasons. We drove road 109 until Bhimtal where Mr Monkey greeted us by the big lake to the right of the road. Then it became really winding and we started the climb towards just below 2000 metres.
Instead of the assumed one hour to go, it turned out to be two remaining hours of intense serpentine roads to take us the last 20 km linear distance. Well planned, Joanna had grabbed two of those on the domestic flight which managed to be kept unused despite all. But we are saving them for the return trip!
Almost at our end station, we saw a fire that Tony thinks was wild and Joanna thinks was controlled.
Finally out of the car, it became darker and darker and still remained a 300 metres’ steep walk up to Spacehouse to take us the last 100 height metres. This final effort presented a huge challenge, even though we got swift help with the big bags, Kishan and his friend took one each, on their heads and ran effortlessly up the mountain. Tony and Joanna, with our handluggage (10 kg each) huffed and puffed our way up. It took about 20 minutes. Finally up at the destination it was already Saturday evening and we were warmly welcomed by our co-inhabitants Ned, Emily and Nidhi and a really nice indian meal cooked by Lomit. We also immediately broke our promise to not eat salad or drink water from the tap. Once here it felt totally safe!