Nainital, Corbett & Mussoorie — Kumaon into Garhwal

North-east across the plain and up into the Kumaon hills, around seven hours with the climb at the end. Nainital fills a bowl around its lake at about 2,000 m and has been a hill station since 1841. The arrival afternoon is the Mall along the water and a rowed boat out on it before dusk, which is as good an introduction to the town as any scheduled sight and considerably better than most.

Snow View in the early morning for the Himalaya to the north, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m the highest of them and the highest entirely within India, and Tiffin Top across the bowl. Naina Devi on the shore is one of the Shakti Peethas. The afternoon drops to Bhimtal, Sattal and Naukuchiatal — three quieter lakes below the town that most Nainital visitors never bother with and that are, several travellers decide, the better half of the region.

South-west out of the hills into the Ramganga valley, about three hours. Corbett was declared in 1936 as the first national park in India and later renamed for Jim Corbett, who shot man-eaters in these hills and then spent the rest of his life arguing for their protection. The afternoon takes Corbett Falls and the Garjia Devi temple, which stands on an isolated rock in the middle of the river and is reached by steps when the water allows.

An early jeep safari into the allotted zone — sal forest, grassland and river, with elephant, spotted deer and a great deal of birdlife near-certain and tiger an uncommon prize. Then west along the base of the hills and up into Garhwal, around six hours, climbing to Mussoorie at about 2,000 m in the evening. The town runs along a seven-kilometre ridge with the Doon valley on one side and the Himalaya on the other.

Gun Hill by ropeway for the Garhwal peaks and the Doon valley below, then Camel's Back Road, a level three-kilometre walk around the ridge with the rock formation it is named for. The afternoon runs west to Kempty Falls, which is popular and correspondingly busy, and then up to Landour — the older cantonment above Mussoorie, quieter by an order of magnitude, with St Paul's church of 1839, the writers who have lived there, and bakeries that have not changed in decades.

Down through Dehradun and south across the plain to Delhi, around seven hours. If there is time and appetite the Forest Research Institute at Dehradun is on the way — a vast colonial building of 1929 in red brick and Greco-Roman arcades set in a park, which is a genuinely startling thing to find at the foot of the Himalaya. Otherwise the day is the drive, and an evening flight is the right booking.