Travelogue

DAY # 1: SETTLING IN (yeah…yeah…the usual…)

We had a flight on ‘Indigo’ at 8:45 in the morning. Everyone had to wake up pretty early (not me of course! I’m always woken up last on these occasions) and we reached the airport in time and got into the plane. When it took off I had one of those funny jolts you get in your stomach whenever you rise suddenly into the air. I had fun looking out the window, listening to my MP3 player and occasionally reading a bit of ‘Gone with the wind’ a book we recently bought (and I even saw the movie recently!). Well, we reached Delhi by 2:00 in the afternoon or something. Then a car came for us and took us to ‘Vishal residency ‘a hotel booked by us in Delhi. We took a little nap and rested a bit. In the evening we went to a small place to talk about a tour bus coming to pick us up tomorrow (my parents did the talking obviously >~<) from ‘Panicker’s Travel’ a travel agency and went to Karol Bagh for a bit of shopping. I bought a few shirts and stuff and we all got glasses and caps (man, I can’t believe we totally forgot those!) and some fruit too. Our dinner that night consisted mostly of cherries and bananas.

DAY # 2: SIGHT-SEEING (the key word to any tourist spot!)

It’s the day for sight-seeing! So, we go to the Panicker’s Travel place and get into a little confusion about which one’s our tourist bus and there was a lot of shouting and …stuff. Well anyway (let’s skip that part cause details like that go on and on for pages!) We finally did find the right bus and got in and it started. Our tour guide’s name was Mukesh and er… I didn’t really understand what he was saying most of the time cause he mostly spoke in Hindi (let me tell you I’m no wizard at Hindi!). So first we went to the ‘Nehru memorial’ and saw the inside and the outside. The inside mainly contained a history of Nehru and his family and his childhood pictures and it was a really big place too! (We got lost in there once but eventually, found our way) and there was a big veranda and from there we heard a queer honking noise! My mother surprised me by telling me that it was a peacock’s cry. It was a really gorgeous peacock though. A beautiful bird.
Next we went to Qutb Minar and our tour guide Mukesh, took a few snapshots of us and everyone else with trick photography (my dad attempted it too. He was supposed to get me touching the top of Qutb Minar, like Mukesh did. Instead, he ended up taking me touching a lamp post. -_-)
Then we went to the India gate and spent some time there. I didn’t think much of it though…
Still, we had fun lazing in the grass and eating cotton candy!
Red fort was closed though. Tough luck…
There was a funny road on which nearly all the countries embassies were built. We had fun seeing them from our window. China embassy, Japan embassy, American, France…
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. (lol)
Now we went to the ‘Indira Gandhi Memorial’ and wee actually saw the place where she was killed (shot by her own bodyguards!) and the inside was filled with pictures of her when she was a child, and when she was married, and we even saw an old notebook of hers and her old toys and her room! (We weren’t allowed inside though)
Then there was the Lotus Temple, which was a rather spectacular phenomenon made of marble. But it was pretty hot having to walk up the steps to it (luckily there was a wet carpet on the stairs) and it was pretty quiet inside and had a swimming pool like thing in the back. That’s pretty much it.
Last we went to Birla Mandir. We didn’t go inside though, we were too tired. At least, I was. We were content taking a video of it and some pictures…

DAY # 3: DESCENDING ONE STEP BELOW (actually only one state…)


Today we went to Agra from Delhi. First we visited the Agra fort. Here we spent a lot of time. Our tour guide (today a new guide called Sunil) told us all about how Shah Jahan (the king who built the Taj Mahal) was locked up by his own son Aurangazib along with his daughter, for trying to build another ‘black Mahal’ (his son seems to have thought that he already spent too much on one tomb let alone another!)This infuriated Aurangazib. And also he wanted to be king. However, from the fort he was allowed a special room in which to see the Taj Mahal from. But as he grew older, he could not walk to the place from where he could see it. And he wished to see it once before he died. So, his daughter positioned a mirror for him I such a way that he could see Taj Mahal in it. We weren’t allowed inside the room in which he was imprisoned though.
Next, the place built by Shah Jahan (and I hope you’re all green with envy)… Taj Mahal!!!
It is lovely I can’t deny that. But it’s not as white as it used to be. It’s not yellow yet, but its not sparkling white either. But it looks beautiful from a distance. We went up and were only allowed just inside it where there was a hall like thing, in which the tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and her husband were laid. After this we went around it and took a few pictures of the guesthouse and the other building on the other side of Taj Mahal and the pillars around it. Then we lazed in the nice, shady lawn for a bit and went back.
We were taken to a small marble shop with marble items and bought a tiny, miniature Taj Mahal and some tiny marble animals.
Our last destination was Mathura, the birth place of Krishna. We saw a small temple in which the birth place and events of how he was born were shown. At night, we came back to Delhi.

DAY # 4: TWO IN ONE (by that I mean we visited two places in one place…)

In the morning, we woke up to go from Delhi to Haridwar. Oh! And we got a new tour guide from today called ‘Dévéndar’. A very energetic fellow. He said he was a garwhali, so his Hindi and English were kind of weird. Though he did say some understandable words like: ‘come!’ or ‘Go!’ or ‘Hurry!’ or ‘We’re waiting for you only!’
We reached Haridwar by 2:00 (so we started early in the morning and stopped for breakfast on the way) and had to wait for some time in a room with some “Swamijis’ “because there was a problem with the booking of our rooms in that particular hotel. But it was all cleared up soon enough (if you call half an hour soon) and we ate some lunch and took some rest.
In the evening, we went to the Ganga for a little swim. The water was freezing cold. But it was fun. The current was really fast, but there were railings. I even ducked a few times!
Then we went to a Manasadevi temple in a cable car. It was a really fast ride though, only five minutes. We couldn’t even enjoy the view! Well, we went up and saw the temple but when we had to come back…ooooo boy! What a crowd! We had to wait in a HUGE line for nearly an hour to catch the cable car to take us down. We stayed in the hotel for the night.


DAY # 5: FIVE ‘PRAYAGS’ (one of which is a ‘human-eating fish’ river ~ …)
First let me explain that I call it a ‘prayag’. The two that we went to today were called ‘Rudraprayag’ and ‘Devaprayag’. We only saw the other three, i.e. Vishnuprayag, Karnaprayag (called as ‘karnprayag’ by our tour guide) and Nandprayag, from the window. We first went to Devaprayag, which is a sangam (a place where two rivers meet) of the rivers Bhagirathi and Alaknanda. I was feeling kind of sick. However, I somehow managed to come down and see the sangam. -_-. It was incredible I have to admit. You could clearly see the difference between the two rivers; with Bhagirathi’s rather blue, blue and Alaknanda’s rather muddy colour. But before we could put our feet in the cold water, my mom and I (my dad was watching from the stairs above and video taping us) were encountered by a guy who looked like a priest. He made my mom say some weird slokas and it seemed to go on for hours and hours and then it was over…and he demanded Rs.100!!!(WHAT!?! And after he wasted our time? Of all the nerve!) My mom grudgingly paid up (like she had any other choice) when another guy turned up and started reciting when my mother firmly refused. We dipped our feet in and had a little fun and even saw some fishes in the water. Then we went back to the bus. Next we were taken to Rudraprayag; A sangam of Mandhakini and Alaknanda (Mandhakini being the ‘human-eating fish’ river our tour guide told us about, saying that if we fell in, we’d be eaten by fish.). Now, at this point I started feeling sick again. And I had to stay in the bus while my parents went and saw it, so I suppose it must have been nice. At any rate they came back with some pebbles for me. They were pretty nice pebbles. We went to Sitapur in the evening and entered a pretty dingy looking hotel and the room wasn’t what you’d exactly call a good room but, we lived. I hated the moths though. There were so many! We stayed there the night.

DAY # 6: WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN (and thankfully, so did we!)

Today was the most thrilling experience of my life and I believe my parents felt the same way. We went to Kedarnath and were to go up the mountain 14 km and down 14 km, so totally 28 km. But that wasn’t the main thing, no way! We had to go on a ‘Goda’ (a mule that’s kind of a cross between a horse and a donkey) one for each of us! The whole group had a choice between ‘Doli’, (that’s kind of a thing on which four people carry you) Goda, or being carried in a basket on someone’s back.
We chose the Goda, which of course had a ‘Goda Wala’ a guy who controlled the Goda. At first when we reached Gourikund, I didn’t really understand anything but the fact that we had to push through a crowd of people to reach a crowd of Godas’. Upon reaching the Godas’, I was suddenly separated from my parents by a guy from Panicker’s travel (I knew he was from Panicker’s because he wore the same type of cap that was given to us in the morning) who grabbed me back and kept saying ‘Baccha, Baccha’. I felt terrified and started screaming for my parents who were standing there trying to make him pair me with one of them. But he refused, and I didn’t really understand much so I cried a little. Then my mom said that they were gonna be right there in the back and I felt a little better. The guy hoisted me onto a Goda and called a little boy probably a little younger than me and said something to him I didn’t understand. Then before I knew it, the Godas’ in front and my Goda started moving!
I turned around and saw that my parents had also been hoisted onto their Godas and were somewhere near the back of the crowd. In front of me with another little boy was Bharath, a boy around my age in our group on his Goda. We trouped up. I occasionally kept glancing back making sure to tightly hold the – hoop like thing carefully. I couldn’t see my parents in the crowd after some time (I expect they must have been really back in the crowd) so soon I stopped looking back and decided to look about me a bit. It was a pretty splendid view and you could even see Mandhakini from there (Dévéndar had warned us today too about the fish eating you if you fell inside) but I didn’t enjoy it much. I kept wondering what had happened to my parents. After an hour and a half or so, we reached a place where there were some shops and stuff and stopped there to take rest. I was helped off my Goda by another slightly elder boy and was told to wait. So I went and sat down in one of the little shop like things with lot of seats, right next to Sahvan and his parents (who were with us in our group) to wait for my parents.
Soon, horrible thoughts started forming in my mind about my parents; the type of thoughts that come when you are not sure what to do. It seemed a long time and the Goda Wala was even hinting that we should start going when my parents finally came. They came really slowly (and no wonder, since their Godas were so slow) and I ran up to them and sniveled into my mom’s jacket a little and told them how I thought that they had been left behind. She told me not to worry and started going on ahead since her (and my dad’s) Goda Wala for some reason didn’t want to stop yet. Soon I was hoisted back onto my Goda and we went up.
After a distance we saw some snow on the side of the mountain on some rocks and before you could say Jack Robinson, there was a snow fight (I won’t say snow ball because no one was patient enough to roll it into a ball before throwing it on some one else) with people grabbing snow from the walls and throwing it on each other. Even the Goda Walas’ had fun throwing it on each other. Since my Goda hadn’t gone too near the wall, I wasn’t able to get much snow, but I collected the snow that other people threw on me before it melted and threw it back on them. And before I knew it, I had crossed my parents! Whew! My Goda must have been pretty fast to have crossed my parents’ Godas and that too with a head start! But they were pretty close behind me all the same. My mother asked my Goda Wala what his name was (in Hindi) and he said ‘Pankaj’. She also asked the name of my Goda and he said it was ‘Basanthi’. My dad said that it should actually have been ‘Vasanthi’ but in the north they always pronounced ‘v’ as ‘b’. Bharath’s Goda was also called Basanthi! It seemed that my parents’ Goda Wala’s name was also Dévéndar!!! My mom’s Goda was called Puja and my dad’s was called Rani. They complained that their Godas were really lazy and that Basanthi was young and strong. I must say Basanthi was strong and fast and all that, but she had a curious habit: she – all the Godas were girls – always stopped wherever there was water and drank for a very long time. Awfully thirsty mule she was. And whenever we had a rest, all the mules ate some weird sticky balls from big pans.
Well, we reached the top and there was a temple there but I suddenly felt dizzy so I stayed behind with my dad while my mom went up to see the temple. And the boy called Sahvan fainted! Lot of people gave him water and glucose and electrol water and stuff and he looked a little better. When my mom finally came back from the temple, we went down to the place where the Godas were standing and got on. The journey back down wasn’t as fun as the one up since every time Basanthi climbed down the steps that were placed here and there; I got an enormous jerk in my stomach. My mom seemed to like the return journey better though. My dad however was clinging on to dear life! He seemed terrified when his mule went rather close to the side and the Goda Wala seemed to take no notice.
In one place we got separated a bit and I was a little before my parents and it was then that I saw it happen: an old gentleman on the Goda in front of me had fallen down when his Goda tripped on a rock and hit his head on the rock and his Goda Wala was helping him.
I felt a bit scared after this but thankfully, this was just before we reached the bottom. It sure was good to be on plain land again! After my parents came we went over to where our tour guide, Dévéndar, was standing and he sure seemed surprised to see us alive! He told us to walk back to the bus. And after everyone but Dévéndar and one family had come, the driver seemed ready to go without them, but they turned up just in time! That night we crashed in the same room in Sitapur.

DAY # 7: A WARM BLANKET AND A HEAVY SUITCASE (*sigh* nothing beats that combination…)

Today we woke up as usual at 5:30 and our destination was to be Badrinath. So we got into the bus with all our things (we had a little scramble in the morning searching for a mirror of mine we had lost, but we found it) and started. Dévéndar said ‘bholo: shri jay Badrinath!!’ (Kind of like ‘hip, hip, hurray!’)
Now here’s something funny. Till today, Dévéndar and his friend Bijay had been sitting in the front with the driver and the cooks. But yesterday, it seems they had a fight, so he and Bijay had to go and it back in the two vacant seats. (lorl. Laughing out really loud!)
We stopped somewhere to see a temple of some sort after some time. Now this is when everyone got really pissed off. Dévéndar had been in a hurry all morning that we should reach the gate in time before it closed and he suddenly said that we had to wait two hours for the gate and wouldn’t even allow the driver to cross the gate and then park there! My father shouted at him a lot and gave Dévéndar a piece of his mind (you show him dad! >^ <) and he finally agreed to let the driver park outside the gate! (And just in time too)
At around 1:00 or something, we stopped at Joshimath for lunch at a place with a small waterfall and were told to wash our hands in the falls after eating! Then we got back into the bus (after many a persuading word from Dévéndar who seemed to take it for granted that we could be as brisk as him) and continued our journey to Badrinath. Around this time I was starting to feel really queasy and my stomach hurt a lot. After we got down somewhere to stretch our legs and came back, I decided to go to the back and sit with my dad (because in the front I kept banging my face in the thing in front of me) but it was no better because I got constant in my already aching stomach. My dad seemed used to it because he soon starting playing twenty questions with Sahvan and his dad. I felt too dizzy to think so I refused to play with them. In the evening by 4:30 or something we finally reached Badrinath and the Ashram we were going to stay in.
But we had to wait a while for the rooms to get booked. Now I felt dreadful. My stomach was churning horribly and I started crying a bit. Then the rooms were ready pretty soon enough. I practically ran all the way to the room with my mom and burst inside after unlocking the door and dashed into the bathroom. I felt a little better after that and I ate some pills too.
It was a pretty nice room compared to the other rooms we had been in before and it had a good toilet too and a nice view from a big window. But it was soooooo cold in Badrinath! So I was made to lie down on the bed and my mom put a lot of warm blankets on me and that’s when I made a strange request. My mom was just unpacking a small black suitcase when I asked for the heavy suitcase to be placed on my legs. (!!!) And it was so comfortable and nice that soon I had a whole mountain on my legs and when Sahvan and his parents came to see the room, they didn’t know it was me till my mom pointed me out!!! That night we slept in the ashram.


DAY # 8: FIND YOUR COUNTRY’S BORDER NEAR SOMEWHERE YOU’VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE (yeah… I did)


I woke up today morning at the time I wanted to! (Not that I knew what time I was gonna wake up, it’s just that I woke up peacefully without Dévéndar banging on the door at 3:00.) We bathed and dressed and went out for a little shopping and also to see the Badrinath temple. But we decided to go to the temple first. So we walked across the bridge and taped the Alaknanda from there which seem to have followed us for 400 km! It was really beautiful and there were even natural hot springs (onsen) where people bathed. Well we reached the temple and had to wait in a long line for about 2 hours but we enjoyed the view and stuff and when we finally did get in, it wasn’t as incredible on the inside as it was on the outside. It was pretty crowded and when we got in, I didn’t even see the god cause when I was trying to, a lady elbowed me in my back and said something like ‘aass dhoss’ so I got pushed away. Then we had to get out and see a gallery of pictures or something. After that we decided to shop a bit and walked through the streets stopping at stores and buying things like trinkets, bangles, necklaces, rings and souvenirs for friends. We even got a small ‘Jhule méin Krishna’! Then we came back to the hotel for lunch. Actually we were supposed to visit Mana, the last village in India, at 3:00. But Dévéndar came and woke us all from an afternoon nap at 2:30 saying that we were starting now! We had no other choice than to comply so we started getting ready to go to Mana. After everyone had got into the bus, we started. We were there in less than five minutes. Dévéndar told us that Mana was the last village in India and beyond that there was only China. My dad had told me that if you ‘spit’ you could see china. So I was rather disappointed when we were told that china was only beyond a mountain and that we’d have to trek, (I dunno, some 60 km I guess) to see china.
We had a lovely view of the sangam of Alaknanda and Saraswati though. At first we didn’t know there was a sangam and that Saraswati was even there, but Dévéndar told us with detailed explanations. We saw a small cave like temple. I didn’t think much of it. Then we saw the starting place of Saraswati (it was only for 200 m) a little way off. It was awesome…
We also saw a black mountain dog with a glossy coat. It was a splendid place. We stayed there a while longer and went back to the ashram.


DAY # 9: AN IN-BETWEEN PLACE (that sounds kind of like the in-between ‘wood between the worlds’ in Narnia…)

Today we didn’t do much. We just went to Srinagar (not the one in Jammu and Kashmir) to rest for the day. We stopped somewhere for lunch and got out occasionally to stretch our legs or have a snack. We reached a place called ‘Hotel Urvasi’ by evening and after some time me and my mom got out to go for a little walk. As we were going out of the gate we saw the manager’s dog and said hi. We bought some chocolates and stuff and came back and stayed the night there.
Oh! And I suppose you all want to know why I call it an in-between place. Elementary, my dear friends. I call it an in-between place cause we came here from Badrinath since we couldn’t go to Rishikesh (the place we’re going to tomorrow) in one day. So we didn’t really do anything here. It’s just somewhere in between our former place of visit and our destination…it’s as simple as that.


DAY # 10: FINAL DESTINATION (the final word…final.)

The last day of our trip! And our last stop which was at Rishikesh. We got up at 5:00 in the morning and reached there by 10:00. First we went to ‘Lakshman Jhula’ a bridge. Then we went to a yoga centre and saw a lot of monkeys there! They ate mangoes that people gave them and one even burst open a packet of ‘pori’!
Then we went in a ferry ride across the Ganga. We bought some fish food a lady was selling but it turned out to be plain old chapatti dough balls! And also, there turned out to be no fish. So I just dumped them all in the river (who knows some invisible fish might eat it Θ­­­_Θ) one by one.
Now something funny (but it was a bit alarming too) happened to me. I was feeling hungry so we bought some buns while following our group. I saw people giving food to some cows and I asked my mom if I could give a calf that was standing there, a bun. She said it might not like it but I could try. So I carefully gave the calf a bit of bun and it ate it. And then my dad urged me to give it another. And when I did, and started walking back with everyone else, it followed me asking for more! Then thankfully my dad shooed it off. After that we bought some cucumbers and were munching them as we walked into a temple we were supposed to see. And the moment I stepped inside, a big cow saw the cucumbers in my hand and came close to me, so I gave it to the cow. And then it started following at an alarmingly fast pace! I screamed and ran. I ran so fast and so far that before I knew it, I had gone around the whole temple in a circle!
We had lunch and then it was time to start for Delhi. We reached there by 8:30 or something. Everyone bid farewell to us and we did likewise. Some stopped a bit to exchange addresses, phone numbers and email IDs and left cheerfully. We came back to Vishal residency (but in a different room this time) and had bananas for dinner and packed all our things so as to be ready for our flight tomorrow.


LAST DAY (our return trip)

Not much today except that we woke up and bathed and stuff and got ready for our flight. We left Vishal residency around 12:30 and went to the airport. Our plane however, was delayed by more than an hour and a quarter since we were supposed to start at 2:45 and only started by 4:00!
So that delayed our return a bit. But all the same we came back and that’s all that matters. We collected our luggage when we reached Chennai and climbed into a taxi and drove home. Though it was an excellent trip, all I can conclude from it is this: we were damn lucky to come back in one piece after that experience! (?~ ?)