The Lake Resort - Naukuchiatal

From The Lakeside resort, Naukuchiatal

From The Lakeside resort, Naukuchiatal

When we were at Naukuchiatal we stayed at Dancing waters, Club Mahindra's resort. It has well appointed rooms, but the it seems more like staying in a hotel, than a resort. We spent most of our second day at The lake side resort which is nearby. It is just at the lake and one can go boating from the resort itself or just walk under the trees and enjoy the feel of the lake. When I had first seen this lake side resort I had been absolutely enamoured by it. This time round the location was unbeatable and the staff very friendly but the resort seemed lacking in upkeep.

In the afternoon we lounged about in front of the lake enjoying tea and excellent cheese chilly toasts while the children went for paddle boating yet again. We decided to return to lakeside resort for dinner later.

From The Lakeside resort, Naukuchiatal

As we entered the premises of the resort later in the day it seemed quite deserted and if we had been alone we may not have ventured there, in the dark. We had already placed our order in the restaurant. We initially decided to sit outside but changed our minds because of the cold breeze. The food was great and we had a great last evening together.

The Strawberry farm at Kiccha

One of the attractions while going to Kumaon region by car is the strawberry farm at Kiccha. This farm is the source of strawberries for fruit marts of Lucknow, Delhi etc. The climax of our La Martiniere break is this farm, esp as Shaleen is extremely fond of strawberries. While returning home we stop here to buy strawberries in wholesale. It is situated between the 2 and 3 km milestone while reaching Kiccha from Haldwani on the right side.

From Strawberry farm at Kiccha

After entering through this gate we go about a half a km inside and have to look around for the farm because every year the position of the farm is changed to another plot near by.

From Strawberry farm at Kiccha

From Strawberry farm at Kiccha

We bought 14 kgs of strawberries, all freshly picked in front of us. It took us 2hrs to collect these delicious strawberries. Costing us Rs.60 a kg

Dancing waters, Naukuchiatal - Club Mahindra resort

This time of the year is a good time to take a break for parents of children studying in La Marts, as it is the only school whose session starts so early. While the rest of the schools have exams we can chill out during Holi Holidays. Many years back it was Reshu who enlightened us with the idea of taking a short break at this time of the year.
Thanks to Club Mahindra this year we had a ball. A great time with friends.
We started from Corbett after breakfast for Naukuchiatal. We went via Haldwani, it took us almost three hours to reach there, Dancing waters, Naukuchiatal. It is a school converted to a resort. The restaurant and activity centre are on the second floor. It would be wise to ask the management to reserve lake-side facing rooms to make the stay delightful.
We had a sumptuous lunch and then waited for Anupam and Shubhra and kids to join us.
In the evening we decided to walk down to the lake but half way down, it became too dark to continue so we came back and enjoyed the dinner spread.

The Wild Crest

We stayed for two days at the Wild crest resort, Corbett park. Dr. Sanjay Singh helped us in getting the reservations. The resort was a homely place, our car could go right upto our room. As on a road trip we tend to keep a lot of loose luggage and eatables and we had the car fridge with us is was easy to get all the luggage inside.
The resort had a swimming pool also and had made arrangements for holi celebrations on the 11th of March. Holi was celebrated with great zeal by the resort's foreign guests while we were happy to be just onlookers. The whole purpose of going out on holi was to escape the colour etc. as was rightly pointed out by Divya.
We walked upto the river from alongside the resort. The next day we took an early morning safari though we just saw some deers, hens and peacocks and of course the ubiquitous tiger's paw prints, but no tiger.

The Den, Kwality Inn

Rajan gave us some great ideas about how to see Corbett park in the best possible manner though we were not able to follow his suggestions completely on this trip. Next time round when we go to Corbett we are definitely going to try them out. He suggested that we should book a cottage in the core area of Corbett, other than Brijrani, even if we prefer to stay outside the park, at resorts with better facilities. By booking a room inside we will have access to the national park between 6am to 6pm for safaris for which otherwise we will have to take permission and we would be wasting a lot of time.
The other idea was to go on the road which passes through the park and we might be able to spot a leopard or a tiger crossing over to the river. In the morning we went over to The  Den, Kwality Inn, a sister concern of the resort we were going to move into 'The wild crest' for the next two days.

Corbett Hideway

We stayed for just one night at Corbett Hideway

on the 9th of March'09.It was a lovely resort. As I have mentioned before the food at Jim's Grill was great. The waterfall area was especially beautiful. In the daytime it was quite warm even in the month of March and the waterfall area was like a cool haven.

A road trip to CorbettPark and Naukuchiyatal from Lucknow

We took a road trip to Corbett Park and Naukuchiyatal from Lucknow during Holi. We started on the 9th of March '09. We started early at 5:30am with Pankaj, Divya and kids from Lucknow. We had the day's food with us. As usual the National Highway 24 which has major stops at every approx 80 kms--Sitapur, Shahjahanpur and Barielly.
We had bought a pair of walkie talkies from Penang, Malaysia and they were put to good use with two cars going in line we could communicate with each other with them, without having to use our mobiles.
Another thing which was of great use was the special cloth which Shaleen had got from Big Bazaar with the help of which you can put almost anything on the dashboard without it sliiping off even when the car would turn acutely. This cloth he had seen the cab drivers in Singapore use.
FM radio was available till Shahjahanpur from Lucknow, so we had latest music available to us without effort. We used the HP pumps for refuelling and washroom facilities. From Barielly we went to Moradabad as Pankaj and family were planning to stay there for the night as Sanjay and Moushmi's guests.
After having a delicious lunch at Moushmi's house, we left to meet my friend Minoo. From her house it took us around 2and a quarter hours, to reach the Corbett Hideway, where we were staying as Club Mahindra guests.
We liked the room and the resort was good. We tried the food at Jim's Grill it was great.

Genting- First world Hotel- Reception area looked like a railway platform

We had been strongly recommended to visit Genting Highlands for the theme parks so we planned to stay there on the 1st of January 2009 for one day. When we reached First world hotel, by the cable car, we were shocked to find that the reception area looked like Railway platform. It was so crowded with many people waiting patiently and icecream and candy vendors. We had a long 4hr waiting period for checking in, that, when we had made a confirmed paid booking through internet!! We were shocked and dismayed. Maybe it being a public holiday contributed to the mass public inflow to Genting. Moral-- STAY AWAY FROM GENTING ON A PUBLIC HOLIDAY!! By luck we got our room earlier otherwise we were supposed to leave our luggage in a baggage room and proceed to the theme park.
We took a combined ticket for indoor and outdoor theme parks. The parks esp the indoor one was open till 2:00AM.
I enjoyed the roller coaster but we had to separately purchase tickets for that. Our family of four got separated in two groups in the outdoor theme park due to some misunderstanding and we lost almost 4 hours looking for each other and we were literally in tears, when we found each other. IN GENTING STICK TOGETHER!

Sunway Lagoon our second best stay in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur

map of Sunway lagoon theme park

We were in Sunway resort hotel on 31st Dec 2008. After having a great breakfast there was a lot for the indian palate as well. We went to the theme park and and the water park. It was fun. The wave pool was great and I loved the Victoria falls. The entry to Water park, Amusement park and wild life park was included in the stay package. We would have had to pay extra to go to the extreme park and scream park. In any case there was not enough time to cover these  3 parks. We had not taken our cameras and handycam along so we do not have many photos of the theme park but I found a great video on you tube and i am embedding it for you folks.