After our 3 days at Corbett, it was time to head higher up the mountain ranges to the hill station of Binsar. We realized how many resorts Club M has all over the place, when we actually passed another of them at Naukuchiatal on the way to Binsar :).D used to be the badly car sick one in the family, but on this trip I started off the trend! The roads took some getting used to, but the view all along was lovely. It took us about 6 hours for a distance of about 240 kms.
And then we reached our room in the resort that had these beautiful climbing roses growing near the door! The whole resort had a profusion of the prettiest flowers I have ever seen, lots of close ups in my FB albums, but here are a couple of them.
The rest of Day 1 was at the resort as usual, and after a restful night we made a late start to go see Zero Point. This was the highest point of the mountain, from where we might (and that was a big might) be able to see the snow clad peaks of the Himalayas in the distance. This was situated inside the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary where there is also a rest house right at the peak that you can stay in. Without too much trouble, we reached close to the top where we had to park the cars and trek about 2 kms to reach Zero Point. Thankfully we knew about this and we were all in our shoes, else that would have been quite a terrain to walk on in anything else. The kids were pretty good with the walk, and we reached the top, only to find that the view was completely covered up with clouds!! I had been half expecting it, so we just sat in the peace of it all (we were the only ones there at that point), chatted along for some time, and then made our way back.
I had checked earlier about the sightseeing options and there were quite a few, but only on reaching there I realized that going somewhere 60 kms away from the resort was not quite the same as on roads that are on the plains. And also the locations such as the Paataal Bhubaneshwar temple which sounded interesting to me might not be as exciting for the kids, so it seemed unfair to subject them to the mountain roads. So we decided to make a quiet couple of days of it, only venturing upto Almora on Day 3 to check out their bazaar. The only interesting thing I saw was wool, which I picked up some of for my mom :). Anyway I was all shopped out from Delhi already ;).
One more day of uneventfulness and we were ready for the return journey. Just as I looked out for the tiger or lion in any safari I've been to, even when I know in my heart that it's an improbability, this time I looked out for the snow clad peaks. And imagine my excitement when I actually caught sight of them!!! The majesty couldn't be captured in a photo, which usually happens with natural scenes like this one, so though I clicked a few pics, the best picture will have to be in my memory (how corny!).
Back to Delhi for a day just to break the journey, when we actually managed to catch Iron Man 3 that had just released ;). And back to home sweet home by the Rajdhani once more.
