Slush

The normal route from Mukteshwar towards Almora involved going all the way back to Nainital. There’s also a much shorter kuchcha road through a place called Sitla, and it was the latter which we chose to do.

The kuchcha road was more kuchcha and less road. And the pouring rains of the past few weeks hadn’t really helped either. The whole route from Mukteshwar to Sitla was one large slush track. Never having ridden in continuous slush like this before, I dropped the bike a couple of times before I got the hang of holding it up.

I’m on the road again - Courtesy Prashi

The slush kept getting worse, and at some places was more than a foot deep. When we reached Sitla, we and our bikes were covered with mud. From Sitla, the road was much better. Still Kuchcha, but no slush. Further, PWD was working on making it a pucca road. By the time we reached Kwarab Bridge, we were on a regular two lane road.

Covered in mud - Courtesy Prashi

We stopped for lunch at Almora, an extremely beautiful town lying right on a hillside overlooking a valley. Because of fog, rain, and most importantly, because we were just too plumb tired, we never got a photograph of the place. Oh well, there’s always next time.

Binsar is a wildlife sanctuary. After Almora, the road winds through a thick forest. The entrance to the sanctuary is on the the highway from Almora to Baageshwar, and we ride about 11km through thick woods up to the KMVN tourist guest house.

On the way up, we ran into a stranded Mahindra MM540 which had two wheels in a ditch and no traction on the other two. We tried our best to drive it out of the ditch, but only succeeded in getting it stuck further, and precariously close to a steep drop into a stream. We finally gave up and dropped the driver on the main road, so he could get another jeep to haul him out of his spot. So leaving him high and dry, we belted away.

A little further up, we came across a dead buffalo, which had had its throat ripped out. Leopard attack, a local said. The roads inside the reserve were wet because of the rain, and moreover, were covered with moss. Traction was a serious problem, and all of us had a tough time staying upright.

We walked up from the KMVN to the Forest Rest House in the Binsar reserve, behind which is the sunset point. We got quite a few spectacular sunset shots from there.

The only other guest at the KMVN was a professor of quantum physics from a college in Delhi. Having little other company to talk to, he butted into one of our conversations about corruption, went forward into quantum physics, and finally, about an hour and an half later, reached the topic he was itching to get to all evening… Spirituality.

Prashi lost his patience with Prof. Spirituality and headed off to sleep early, while Sandy and I, more out of politeness than anything else, listened to his monologue for a while longer before excusing ourselves.

Prashanth does a Patel pose