Sunday are always lazy, uneventful days, but not this Sunday. With a whole day off, we planned to take in as much of the sights around town like good tourists do.

Our host family recommended we head into town through a jungle detour which turned out to be as much fun as it sounded. Luckily for us city people, there was a clear-cut path, which was easy enough to make our way through. But the lack of trees meant no shade, so the sun boiled down on us. We finally reached Ranikhet after much heaving, panting and thirsty water-gulping.

Ranikhet, very like the rest of the pahadi areas, has only one form of public  transport - share jeeps. The experience in any of them can extend from extremely fun to extremely painful, all depending on how many people are squeezed in. The ride to Chaubatia had few of us  and a lot of laughs with everyone teaching me a little hindi as we rolled along the curvy mountainous roads.

Chaubhatia, it turned out, was where all the tourists were, who just like us were looking for the famous apple orchards. Maybe they too had illusions of it being an Adam & Eve paradise, where we could pick apples freely as we went by. Instead, we found ourselves with several “guides” insisting we use them to find our way. Stubbornly, we decided to find our own path there but never made it. But losing ourselves in the forest turned out to be divine with some stunningly beautiful forest scenery to enjoy.

The ride back home from there was super entertaining! We waited in the share-jeep with an eighteen year old boy, and a very sleepy, skinny old lady dressed all in white with a few bright orange beads.  While we waited for the jeep to be overloaded (a long, long time), we learnt to recite a few jukass words in Ranikhet slang with our new friend as we watched the old lady fall asleep on Husain’s shoulder.

Funniest though was when her frail-looking self woke up, only to abuse the driver for making us wait. Some of her threats included catching him by the ear and swinging him round and round before finally killing him. The driver didn’t even bother to defend himself, muttering that she could surely kill him as he walked off nonchalantly.

As we finally gathered enough people to leave Ranikhet city, we found that this was not the end of events. The driver started to urge three people to jump out of the jeep  quickly before we arrived at the checkpost saddled with  cops. Apparently, road safety policemen in Ranikhet are serious about their job and overcrowded jeeps are a strict no-no.  So we drove past them as the driver faked smiles and waves to cover up his undercover act, and as soon as we were a little ahead, we waited for our three former companions to join us once again. Stuffed jeeps, if nothing else,  makes for great entertainment.

And there ended our adventures only to move onto other kinds as we collapsed onto our beds letting our tired, exhausted bodies rush our minds  off to sleep to ready ourselves for a new day.