Nainital to Dehradun Road Distance: 290 km · 7-8 hours · Cab from ₹3,300

This is a long day across the whole width of Uttarakhand. You leave Dehradun on the Haridwar road, skirt the Rajaji forest and drop to the Ganga at Haridwar in a little over an hour, which is where a driver stops for breakfast before the plains. Then the road turns east across the Terai through Najibabad, where the Kotdwar road goes off to the left, and on through Kashipur to Haldwani. It is flat and quick but full of sugarcane tractors, and the good dhabas are around Kashipur. Haldwani is the last proper market, so fuel and water go in there. Only in the final thirty-five kilometres does the road climb, in a string of hairpins above Kathgodam, and Naini Lake appears suddenly as you come over the ridge. From July to September this last climb is the landslide section and can close without notice. In December and January there is ice in the shaded bends near the top early in the morning, so we aim to be climbing by mid afternoon and never after dark.