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Raja Dasgupta and his friend, Shubhajit, recently drove from New Delhi to Nainital with their wives
My name is Raja Dasgupta. I recently drove from New Delhi to Nainital. I was accompanied by my wife, Chandana, my friend, Shubhajit Sengupta, and his wife, Matoshree.

We live in the C R Park, a Bengali bastion in south Delhi, and work for an insurance company.

It was after a lot of discussion that we decided upon a plan to drive to a destination not too far away from New Delhi and one where we could recollect our old days. All of us have been together since our college days when we had shifted from Kolkata to New Delhi for higher studies at the Delhi University. Since then Nainital has been our favourite hill station.

Incidentally, I bought a diesel Volkswagen Polo (1.2 Comfortline) a few months ago. The car has been performing extremely well in the city. Now I was keen on taking it for a long trip to experience the power of the three-cylinder, 1,200-cc VW engine.

We started on a Friday morning with me behind the wheel. Criss-crossing the city roads, we drove past Ghaziabad in 25 minutes, there being not too much of traffic. Past Ghaziabad we took NH 24 and drove towards Moradabad. NH 24 goes to Moradabad and, after Bareily, leads to the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow. Though narrow, the road was in a good condition. It’s a two-lane road with a broad divider in between and tends to become a little unsafe as passenger carrier three-wheelers run on the highway. Fortunately, we were able to avoid the chaos and reached a town called Hapur in UP. We had clocked about 65 km from the national capital.

After Hapur, we crossed the river Ganga in another 40 minutes. It was almost 9.25 am by then. The road now had normal traffic and good and bad patches alternated as usual. My car was performing brilliantly well and even the rear passengers, our wives, were seated comfortably. By 10.45 am we reached Moradabad, where we made a brief halt at a roadside dhaba for refreshments.

After this half-an-hour break, Shubhajit and I swapped seats and he took the wheel. We were headed towards Rampur, 30 km away, and were still on NH 24. After Rampur, we had to leave NH 24 and take NH 87. In doing so, we got stuck in the city traffic, but finally made it to our desired route. The road led us to Bilaspur, a small town in UP near the Uttarakhand border. Another few kilometres and we entered the State of Uttarakhand at Rudrapur city. The city is very close to Pantnagar, where a lot of automotive manufacturers have set up their facilities in recent years.

We had driven for almost 240 km from New Delhi and it was 1.30 pm now. We found a decent eatery where we stopped for lunch.

At 2.30 pm we were back on the road. By now Shubhajit was so much in love with my car that he would not let go of the steering wheel. So I let him drive on. We still had to do another 75 km to reach Nainital. We soon crossed the scenic Haldwani and eventually fetched up in Nainital by 5.10 pm. The final couple of kilometres were simply too good to be missed by our cameras and that’s where our better halves came into the picture, clicking away merrily. Later we checked into the hotel where bookings had been made in advance and called it a day.

The following two days were a happy trip down memory lane for us as we visited all our favourite old joints. We had an amazing time.

Come Monday and it was time to head back to New Delhi and the work-a-day grind. Now, however, we had many more memories to cherish of the happy days spent in Nainital. There is no doubt that we would soon find ourselves in the grip of a desire to visit the place again!