Grand Uttarakhand — Kumaon, Corbett and the Garhwal Ridge

North-east across the plain and up into the hills, seven hours or so with the climb at the end. Nainital sits in a bowl around its lake at about 2,000 m, a hill station since 1841 and built entirely around the water. The afternoon is the Mall and a rowed boat before dusk. Nothing else is scheduled: this is the longest driving day of the trip and the itinerary treats it as such.

Snow View early, when the Himalayan wall to the north is most likely to be clear, with Nanda Devi at 7,816 m the highest peak lying entirely within India. Naina Devi on the shore is one of the Shakti Peethas and fills from first light. The afternoon goes down to Bhimtal, Sattal and Naukuchiatal, three quieter lakes below the town with far more birdlife and far fewer people than the Mall.

North through terraced hillside and pine to Ranikhet, about three hours. It has been a Kumaon Regiment cantonment since 1869, which has kept development out almost entirely — what there is amounts to deodar forest, a golf course at 1,800 m, the regimental museum and the Chaubatia orchards above the town. Jhula Devi temple nearby is hung with many thousands of bells left by people whose wishes were granted. It is the quietest night of the trip by a distance.

North-east, around three hours, with the twelfth-century temple complex at Baijnath on the Gomti river as the stop. Kausani stands on a ridge at about 1,890 m and exists almost entirely for its view: on a clear day the Himalaya occupies some three hundred kilometres of horizon, from the Kedarnath group through Trishul and Nanda Devi to the Panchachuli peaks in the east. The afternoon is the tea estate above the town, among the highest in India.

Sunrise on the range if the sky allows — it is the reason to have come this far north and it is entirely the weather's decision. Anasakti Ashram, where Gandhi stayed in 1929 and wrote his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, is a short walk from most of the town. Then the long descent south-west out of Kumaon to the Ramganga valley, around five hours, into Corbett for the evening.

An early jeep safari into whichever zone the forest department has allotted — sal forest, chaur grassland and the river, elephant and deer close to certain, tiger uncommon. Then west along the foot of the hills through Haridwar and Dehradun and up into Garhwal, around six hours, reaching Mussoorie at about 2,000 m in the evening. The town runs seven kilometres along a ridge with the Doon valley below on one side.

Gun Hill by ropeway for the Garhwal peaks and the valley, then the level circuit of Camel's Back Road. The afternoon climbs to Landour, the 1827 cantonment several hundred metres above the town, where there is a church of 1839, deodar forest, bakeries that have not altered in decades and virtually no traffic. Kempty Falls is the alternative west of town, and it is busy in a way Landour is precisely not.

The descent through Dehradun and south to Delhi, around seven hours. The Forest Research Institute on the city's edge is the stop worth making if there is time — an enormous 1929 building of red brick and Greco-Roman arcading standing in its own park, and among the more unexpected things in northern India. An evening flight out of Delhi is the appropriate booking.