Despite having grown up in the Kumaon Himalayas of Uttarakhand, I’ve never been to this part of my backyard. But the pandemic has been full of surprises; it fuelled the rediscovery of my roots, and shaped my travels in a way that I started taking the detours I never took, making pit stops that were never on my bucket list. It also gave me a new set of cohorts, my folks whom I would have never otherwise chosen to hit the road with, or expected to metamorphose into ideal travel companions. When Chalnichina was bookmarked, I had to look it up on the map to see exactly where it was. Beyond Dhaulchina but before turning for Mukteshwar, near Lamgarha but not quite, and somewhere off the road to Pithoragarh, is how I finally placed it. With our woollens packed for the looks-like-spring-but-feels like-winter weather, we set off on the three-hour journey from Nainital.
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