A family using the space
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Visiting Nainital with children
Season by season, from a property where three in four guests arrive as a family.
Three quarters of our guests arrive as a family, almost all of them driving up from Delhi NCR. So this is not researched, it is observed, and it includes the months we would tell you to avoid.
March to mid June: the obvious one, and the busiest
School holidays, warm days, cool nights, everything open. It is also when every hotel between Bhowali and Mukteshwar is full, the roads are slow, and prices are at their highest all year.
Come in this window if the holidays decide your dates, which for most families they do. Book early, and expect Kainchi Dham and Mall Road to be crowded by mid morning. Mid March and early June are noticeably easier than May.
July to mid September: the monsoon, and the underrated one
Green in a way it never is in April, temperatures below twenty degrees, and very few people. Cloud comes into the property most afternoons, which for a child is more memorable than anything on an itinerary.
The real risk is roads. Landslips close hill routes without warning and a route open in the morning may not be open by evening. Build a spare day into the plan, call the property the morning you set out, and do not book a flight home for the same evening you leave the hills. Families who do that have a good trip. Families with no slack in the schedule have a bad one.
Late September to November: the best of the four, quietly
If your children's school allows it, this is the window we would pick. The monsoon has cleared, the air is at its clearest of the year, the Himalayan line is visible on good mornings, everything is still green, and the crowds have gone home. Diwali is the exception and it is busy.
December to February: cold, and worth it for the right family
Snow is possible and never guaranteed, which is worth saying plainly because most children arrive hoping for it. Days are bright and sharp, nights are properly cold, and power cuts happen during heavy weather. Rooms have heaters and hot water runs 24 hours.
Good for older children who will enjoy the cold. Harder with a toddler.
What actually matters more than the month
Where the car stops. After seven hours in a car, whether you park at your room or in a lot half a kilometre away decides how the first hour goes. Ask before you book. Nainital town has government lots and no private parking on Mall Road.
Whether the kitchen will cook plain food. Small children rarely want what the menu offers. Ask whether the kitchen will make something simple on request rather than assuming.
Whether there is ground to run on. A hotel on a main road with no outdoor space is a difficult three days with a six year old, in any season.
Stairs. If grandparents are coming, ask about lifts before booking. We do not have one, and we say so on every page of this website for exactly this reason.
One thing worth building the trip around
Kainchi Dham is forty minutes from Ramgarh and the parking fills by nine. Leave at seven, do the ashram before the crowd, and be back for a late breakfast. Children handle that far better than queuing in a car at eleven.