Mukteshwar: A quaint getaway from city chaos

I decided to go to Mukteshwar just a day before I was about to leave from Delhi for a weekend trip during first weekend of May, 2012.

We did some quick research on the route and place to stay there. After reading a few reviews on Tripadvisor, we decided to stay at Resort Sequester in Peora Village. This village is about 18 kms away from Mukteshwar town but you can take a different route while driving from Delhi to ensure that you don't have to travel away from Mukteshwar.

As for route, we drove via Moradabad-Rampur-Bhimtal until a place called Talla Ramgarh where we took a left turn.

Our room at Sequester

Peora Village has just about 50 odd houses and a couple of resorts to stay at. Resort Sequester is just a 2 storeyed building with 4 rooms for guests. Each room has a 360 degree view with glass and wood taking place of concrete walls. The rooms have a double bed, sofa cum bed, dining table, refrigerator, television and a microwave oven. The rooms are quite spacious including the kitchen and bathroom and are attended to by a caretaker named Bhaskar who is performing his role perfectly. He takes care of all that you need. We even asked him to bring us a comb and he obliged!!!

View from Van Vilas in Bhimtal

We left Delhi around 11 in the night and after negotiating 3 toll booths and a traffic jam because of road widening work reached Mukteshwar around 9 am. On our way, we had breakfast at Van Vilas in Bhimtal. However, they weren't ready to serve us at 6am and took some time in providing us with some paranthas and sandwiches. The food seemed stale and the place had enough spider webs to make us leave that place sooner than we wished. Though, there location was quite good right next to Bhimtal Lake.

View from our room. Sky god wasn't favorable though

As soon as we reached Resort Sequester, Bhaskar came down to take our luggage to our room on the second floor and the three of us jumped onto the double bed without even talking to him. We even filled the check-in register after waking up for lunch!!! He was kind enough to not disturb us in the meantime. Meals provided here had the taste of homemade food which was perfect for me. For anyone wanting to stay there, I would suggest taking a room on the 2nd floor as you get a better view of Trishul and NandaDevi peaks from there on a clear day!!!

Woods between Peora and Mukteshwar

After lazying around in the room whole day, we left for Mukteshwar town the next day. The drive to Mukteshwar from Peora is quite scenic as it passes through dense woods of a protected forest area. Once in town, we went to the temple and Chauli ki Jaali behind the temple. At Chauli ki Jaali, we saw some school kids doing rappelling and mountain climbing. I have done these in school, so immediately decided to rappel down the cliff. As 85 feet rappelling site was occupied by the school kids, we did 300 feet rappelling which seemed frightening to look down from. However, the site was brilliant with just a couple of overhangs and all three of us did that quite easily.

 Then we drove back to Gurgaon stopping for Lunch at Italiano before Bhimtal. For anyone familiar with the name, I would like to warn that the quality of pizza served here isn't the same that you get at Italiano in Gurgaon. Else driving back was easy as there was minimal traffic towards Delhi on a Sunday evening and we reached back in just about 8-9 hours.