New Delhi, Oct. 25 -- The Nainitalwalas like to walk. And living at Abbotsford Estate for five decades, that habit thankfully has not changed. We walk to school, stroll down to the market or the club, run down to the flats for a game of tennis, we take pleasure in walking to a luncheon carrying the party-worthy shoe in hand. And varying on the time of the day, one may discover the langurs feeding on the horse chestnut trees by the roadside, the laughing thrushes cackling over an apricot tree in full blossom by the sloping lawns of the Uttarakhand high court at Barnsdale.

The nature circus quickly slips into the human one. Momos steaming away at the hawkers' corner of St John's School. Lawyers huddled at the corner of Bhagwan dhaba chasin...