On April 12, 2025, the Nainital hill station saw massive traffic jams, overflowing hotels, and chaos on Mall Road.
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00:00On 12 April 2025, a long queue of vehicles choked up the main road leading up to Naini Tal,
00:05a scene that's become all too familiar. With temperatures crossing 40 degrees in the northern
00:10plains, tourists rushed to the hills. The roads were jammed and even VIP convoys were stuck.
00:15It took hours in heavy police deployment just to get the traffic moving.
00:19At Naini Lake, tourists stood in hour-long lines for a short boat ride.
00:23Hotels were packed, markets were buzzing, and while tourism businesses were smiling,
00:27residents were stuck, quite literally. Reportedly, students couldn't read school,
00:32emergency vehicles struggled to pass, tourists who came for peace were trapped in pollution and noise.
00:37But here's the thing, Naini Tal's popularity is not the problem, its infrastructure is.
00:43On peak weekends, over 4,000 vehicles entered the town, which has just about 2,000 legal parking spots.
00:49In response, on April 5, 2025, the Naini Tal municipality proposed raising the vehicle entry
00:54fee from 120 rupees to 500 rupees to discourage the flood of cars during peak season and long
01:00holidays. But this isn't the first red flag. The Uttarakhand High Court has warned repeatedly.
01:06In May 2023, it recommended banning private vehicles' entry during rush periods.
01:11In June 2023, it bluntly stated that Naini Tal could go the way of Joshi Mutt,
01:16another Himalayan town now struggling with land subsidence and overdevelopment.
01:20Every long weekend, Naini Tal becomes a mirror of how we treat our hill stations like escape rooms,
01:26never asking if they have the space, the systems or the strength to hold us all.
01:30And if this continues, the question won't be how to reach Naini Tal,
01:33it will be whether Naini Tal can survive the people who keep coming.