Day 4 of 12 days of North India Trip

We were back to Jaipur in wee hours of 25th September 2009 and later on finished few hours of much required sleep. It was the fourth day of the trip and we had set a new record in this trip for being together for more than 3 days on any of the trips so far in last 3 years. 4^th day started with a little bit of heat. Already Jaipur was burning, and Lawrence lost his control after his routine breakfast time was slipped by 2 hours (it was 9 AM). All of us were tired of the previous night journey and still looked sleepy in the morning. However Lawrence did not appreciate me sitting quiet outside the lodge and doing nothing. He yelled at me terribly and just walked away for a KM  in search of a hotel though there was one very close to the lodge. Girish and I, then, followed the Mr Angry (and hungry) man and walked close to the bus stand. We were supposed to enquire about the bus to Delhi from Jaipur. Apparently there were no seats available for AC buses to Delhi. Then a thought popped up  – “why not travel to Agra directly and ask Sriram to join us in Agra” – and it seemed like a better plan. We informed Sriram and decided to leave from Jaipur at around 11 PM to Agra. All set and we planned for one more day’s sight seeing in Jaipur. 


On a sunny day, this is one thing you can't miss noticing

Amber Fort was one of the places we wanted to visit and also Jal Mahal.  We negotiated with a Rickshaw driver for a good deal to and fro journey to Amber Fort. The driver also went on telling us the history about Jaipur and few forts. I don’t know whether he knew anything or he was bluffing because we idiots did not know anything. It was a great fun when the driver called Girish as Abhishek looking at his tall stature and the goggles.

As soon as we reached the Amber fort there was a guide waiting for us. May be the driver had called up and told this guide “Bakra logon ko leke aa raha hun mein”. He did not charge us much though. It was really hot, and the place was burning. We had to walk  for some distance to avoid paying for the jeep. It was kind of a small trekking. The guide said us he made us walk to save 200rs from our pocket. 


Every bit of shade was occupied



The guide then started his typical history lecture on the fort and the King who built that. For a change the King (Jai Singh I guess) seemed to have only 2 wives. Maharaja Jai Singh completed the initial structure of the fort. Then Raja Man Singh, Senapati (Commander in chief) of Akbar enhanced it to palace complex. There was a nice interesting story that he told us about how Raja Man Singh made friendship with the neighboring lower cast people who troubled the rulers of the place before him; and then intelligently his Sena killed all those people (in thousands) on a holy day when the enemies didn't hold the weapons.

Confusing pathways inside the Amber fort

Stories apart… I know it is always boring…. Coming back to our gang, everyone in the group wanted some sort of shelter where we get to hide under shade.  We were in that place at a very wrong time of the day. The sun was right up above our heads.  Every few steps we walked we felt thirsty and the eyes searched for water source, or a shop. We reached interior part of the palace complex to see a beautiful building. The guide let us go inside and explore the place, take few pictures and asked us to come back in 15 minutes.

In desperate search for a way out

We went inside took few pictures, and then headed towards some basement to explore the place. The fun part was that the group was split and I lost touch with other people for a while. I then started searching for them; meanwhile I had crossed few pathways and lot of turns. I was totally confused where I was. I could hear other guys from some distance and managed to reach them. I asked “where is the way out” and they said “we are also searching for it” – Next 10 to 15 minutes were like real fun.  “Hey I guess this way” – there was a dead end..  “Hey I found it.. should be this way” – Again dead end.. It went on like that for sometime. The building seemed like a vicious circle. One of the ways we took, lead us to a dead end and there was Jail at the dead end. Amazing fun. We somehow managed to find a way out. The feeling was like “Oh God why did we find a way out?”

Ended up in a jail!!!!

Shashi was sitting out with the guide all this while; sharing a lot of stories. Once we came out, we were then taken to interior parts of the fort like Jail, Kitchen etc. Guide also showed us a place where recently released – “Jodha Akbar”- was shot and he also showed, with a lot of excitement, a vessel and said “Isee mein to Aishwrya Rai ne pakaya than Jodha Akbar movie mein”.. He then showed us a very huge and well built treasure box. We all attempted to open the heaviest of the opening for this box. It was very heavy and required a lot of effort to open with both the hands.

After spending some time and hearing few more stories, the guide took us down back to the place where our Rickshaw was waiting. And before that, like every other guide in Rajasthan he took us to a Rajasthani Emporium (where he surely gets some commission). Aunty, Chittra and Girish bought few materials from there. We thought we will have lunch there itself and then start back. We entered a hotel and for half an hour no one even bothered to take the orders. I don’t know why but they were just not turning up to our table even we called them several times. We decided to get out and we thought they will stop us but nothing of that sort happened. This is when you start missing a place like Bangalore where for food you don’t have to wait or don’t have to walk for kms.

Hungry souls eating junk food

We started back to Jalmahal; before that we went near a garden (didn’t enter though) and had snacks (remember, no lunch) like Pav Bhaji, Bhel puri and Lassi also. After a while we reached Jalmahal and there was nothing much for us to do there other than taking a picture of it from distance, and also group snap. 


Jalmahal



We owed this auto driver something I guess, for which he took us to another shopping place and pushed us in. However Lawrence and I bought leather jackets. After coming out of this shop, we did nothing much other than rushing to the hotel rooms and packing our stuff; there was a late evening shopping done before leaving Jaipur.


Hawamahal, on a moon lit evening



Last evening in Jaipur



We hurried to the bus stand at around 10.30 pm. Lawrence and I did calculations of our Rajasthan trip; Shashi and Chittra sat together; Abhishesk and Karishma (Giri and Sangeetha I mean) seemed exchanging a lot of stories throughout the way to Agra. Only those 2 voices were heard while the entire world was sleeping. Next day early morning we opened our eyes to see the empty streets of Agra; we pulled ourselves out of the seat to hold the bags and search for hotels again.

Udaipur Visit - Day 3 of "North India Trip 2009"

24th Sep 2009:

Compared to Jaipur, Udaipur was cool and there was breeze even if it was sunny. Hotel reception arranged a guide for us to take us to a place called Fateh Sagar . Fateh Sagar is beautiful lake situated in Udaipur City. Udaipur is called as City of Lakes for having lot of man made lakes. The lakes are still maintained in good conditions and few of them are being used as source of drinking water.

Just to give a brief history about Fateh Sagar lake – This delightful lake surrounded by hills and woodland was constructed by Maharana Jai Singh; it is an artificial lake dug up in 1678 and was reconstructed by Maharana Fateh Sing. The lake has 3 islands for some specific reason. Find out more from googling. :-) In the surrounding of this lake, there is Maharana Pratap Memorial hall. This is an old building built in 18^th century. The guide went on explaining us the story of Maharana Pratap Singh – about his bravery and his wars against the neighboring parts. We tried our best to ignore him but the guide was good enough to hold our attention. The story of Pratap Singh’s horse, Chetak was really touching. The monument has the story carved on it, of how Chetak ended his life after rescuing Maharana Pratap Singh from the battle field.

By mid noon the city was turning out hotter. We, then, went to the City palace. City palace is really big and it took us a lot of time to explore. Without writing much from this palace may I show you few photographs which pretty much explain the fun we had in the palace?

After coming out of the fort, we then had nice meals in a hotel nearby. This is one of the very few satisfactory lunches that we had on the 12 days of trip. How can I forget the name of the hotel which served us that valuable lunch – It is Hotel Meera. 

Colorful Shopping Streets

The Lake Pichola is again one of the beautiful artificially dug up lake which has Jag Niwas and Jag Mandir as islands. The city palace extends along this picturesque lake’s eastern banks which can be seen in one of the pictures below. When we reached the lake, we noticed a cable car taking people to the top of a distant hill. This was very close to the lake. We decided to reach top of the hills by cable car. I am glad we noticed this place which gave us certainly one of the best evenings in the entire trip.

As the cable car went up we got an ecstatic view of the Lake Pichola; and when we reached the top of the hill, we could almost see the entire Udaipur City. We managed to climb further and sat on a compound next to the temple. Udaipur city looked very neat, white color all over (as opposed to pink in Jaipur), well maintained, and very clean. The distant roads and railway tracks looked like pencil curves from the top of the hill. As we sat and watched further,  a trail of flight of few pigeons caught our attention. Girish wondered how on earth the pigeons change the direction every second and move in sync with each other. I said there must be one fellow in the group who would give the commands and guide the others. Recalling this just makes me feel how jobless we were, sitting idle on top of the hill leaving our feet hanging down. :-D

We spent around 2 hours talking about silliest of the things and cracking silliest of the jokes. Then we moved down to a place to see the view of Lake Pichola and the City palace from the other end. The place held us back for the sun set too. It was certainly an amazing evening with very small crowd. On one side the Udaipur city looked like a wallpaper; on the other side the Lake Pichola with the Sun rays reflecting from the water and the water boats creating a pattern in the clean water were treat to watch. Behind the Lake Pichola, eyes could witness range of AravaLi hills lined up one after the other. It was as scenic as a school kid’s typical painting of a sun set behind the range of hills. 

As it neared the Sun Set time, the Sun seemed to move down very fast; the hills formed a beautiful silhouette giving me a great opportunity to photograph! Few small kids around who came with family were running around a lot; they gave a pose to my camera too. A couple seemed to be enjoying the view. Everyone from our gang was in their own world. Girish was over the phone talking to his loved one (s) :) ; Lawrence was watching the Sun go down the Aravali hills and later on engaged himself in listening to music. Sangeetha was busy scaring small kiddos with her bulky D90 camera. I then took over and pulled the kids to pose for my camera. Chittra and Shashi joined the fun soon with their shopping bags. 

After the sunset, the City palace and the Jag Mandir were lit up brightly giving us a delightful view again. This place calls me back; certainly the most romantic place to experience a sunset like that and I am sure I will go back to this place in future with my partner (when I get one) ;-)

So far so good; we enjoyed this evening to the fullest; and there was a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that we were on trip was showing up on our face. We reached down the hill and headed towards “Fateh Sagar” since my friend who belongs to this place had told me that there will be nice chats to eat. When we reached Fateh Sagar, we searched for a nice place for having snacks and found a place besides a small college troop. It was fun watching the girls, whose names were not so difficult to find out since they were printed on the shirts. 

The cab was waiting for us to take us back to Jaipur to the same hotel where stayed before. After having a lot of fun we then had to leave Udipur so reluctantly which gave us one of the memorable days of the long trip. All this was followed by 5 and half hours of journey.

Day 2 - Of 12 days of North India Trip

Day 2:

This is a part of trip report of my North India Tour from Sep 22nd to Oct 4th. This is Day 2 of the trip.

23^rd morning at around 8 am we started to Hawamahal. Before entering the fort we had to search for a hotel for breakfast. One thing a Bangalorean misses terribly when he moves out of the city is the lack of restaurants or hotels. In Bangalore, you will hardly find yourself hungry for a long time, since at every corner you have “Some Corner” or “Some Darshini”. After a km of walk we could find a 3 start hotel; Samosas and Kachoris were available for breakfast along with very costly Idli. :) May be it is just the regional difference that makes me feel how anyone could eat Samosa or Kachori for breakfast? Chittra was interested to try something interesting and she ordered something she had never heard of before. Girish's eyes were really sharp. He had been observing (and later we all) a tall lady in the hotel reception during our breakfast. Though someone directed him to the washroom, his steps continued towards reception.

After the costly breakfast, we came back to Hawamahal; we hired a guide and started exploring the place. One thing about the Kings of Rajasthan is that they had several wives (some king had as many as 23 wives) and countless keeps (same king had 373 keeps). Isn’t that surprising (or interesting? :)). There used to be a very sarcastic smile on the guides’ face when they used to talk about this.

Hawamahal also called as Wind Fort is famous for its unique architecture. It has as many as 950 windows in total around a small fort, 350 of them being on one wall!! The interiors of the fort are really well made. Hats off to the designer of this master piece. I wish we had something similar to Hawamahal (No AC) as our IT office. :-) Guide charged us nominal price for his lecture and he tried to influence us to take him to the next location, Jantar Mantar, as guide. By that time, I guess all of us were bugged with the history lecture. We decided to go on our own.

“Just 2 minutes walk” said Larry and started walking towards Jantar Matar, and it ended up becoming 15 minutes walk under the burning Sun. By the time we reached Jantar Mantar, there was no energy left in me to bear the heat. We had just started to get acclimatized and it was becoming unbearable. I just could not walk around or stand in this place; I wanted to find some shady place and just lie down; I didn’t want to take photos too. Finally I could find one such place under a tree near the compound and that’s it. Meanwhile, Larry and Sangeetha were exploring the place. Shashi (Aunty :-)) covered her face with a stole to save herself from tanning and as she walked in, she looked like a terrorist :-) No offence! Girish wore his bluish sun glasses and was sitting in another corner. Chittra was grinning again and again looking at our goggles as if she looked like a princess of Egypt in her sun glasses. Wine color Sun glasses.. LOL. Sangeetha has fun time taking "Gandhiji ke Theen Bandar" sort of picture of myself, Girish and Larry.

Jantar Matar

It was just around 12 in the noon and we decided to call up the driver and go to Udaipur. Aunty and Chittra did shopping whenever they got any opportunity. Surely their trip expenses would have exceeded anybody else’s.

After the terrible lunch at the hotel we packed out bags again and dumped them in the Innova and headed towards Udaipur which is around 410 kms from Jaipur and it is a close to 6 hours journey on a highway. We decided not to drop by Ajmer since there is only a Darga to be visited. However we decided (rather “I”) to go to Pushkar, to see the World Creator’s temple. Lord Brahma’s temple can be found only at this place in India. I am too lazy to type the history behind Brahma, Pushkar and his mistakes which lead him not to be worshipped anywhere on the earth. Googling will surely help. Following are few of the pictures taken around this place.

The drive to Pushkar after it took deviation from the highway, was interesting; It crossed several Rajasthani villages and colorful temples; I listened to Hotel California Live Acoustics n number of times, courtesy Sangeetha's iPod. When I was bugged I tried reading "God Father", courtesy, again Sangeetha. By the time I could figure who this "God Father" is I was bugged with the book too! and we reached the Brahma Temple. There was nothing much to do there apart from visiting the temple and roaming around a bit.

Pushkar Streets

Hoping that we would reach Udaipur by dinner time, we left from Pushkar. Our dear driver took a different route to avoid the toll tax on highway and few extra kms, which lead us to a terrible journey. It turned out to be more than 6 hours of journey from Pushkar to Udaipur. The journey never seemed to end. The traffic was more and the high intensity beams from the Lorries did not allow anyone to sleep either. I tried to entertain my friends with few real stories that I have come across. Everyone carefully listened to me and had a time pass but no one admitted that it was really entertaining. The stories were like typical Indian movies with sad ending. ;-) We stopped on the way for dinner. By this time, we were slowly hesitating to eat the Rotis and curries but still there was no option. I had spoken to a person in Udipur to keep our rooms booked for a day; we woke him up in the midnight when we reached Udaipur and collected the keys.

That ended our tiring Day 2.

"Dream Destinations" - A Tour of 12 days in North India

18^th September 2009 was the day for which I had been waiting eagerly. It is not that I had a date with some beautiful girl or something, but it was the day since when my 16 days of vacation was starting.

During the time I waited for this day, there were plenty of plans crossed my minds as well as my friends’ who also got so many days off. Lawrence and Sangeetha had got 7 days off; Sriram had got only 3 days off giving him 9 days of vacation. Later on I tried to influence Girish to pull him for this trip and he too agreed; and then Chittra and Shashi joined who also had 7 days off.

First of all the plan was to go to Manali-Leh. It was ruled out since Sriram could not have made it because of the lack of so many days to cover it. Then our plan shifted to “Valley of Flowers Trekking” in Uttaranchal. But then it was again a flop show since Uttaranchal Tourism folk informed us that it is the end of the season and the roads are already closed. Then there was Lawrence’s master plan with Gangotri-Gomukh plan. There was a problem with this plan too; that we could not get the permission for trekking to Gomukh from Gangotri from the Uttaranchal Forest Dept for the dates we wanted.

Finally, we decided to go ahead with “No Plan” – which, in the end, worked out much better. We booked tickets to Jaipur for 22^nd Sep and fro tickets from Delhi for 4^th Oct. Between 22^nd and 4^th there were no cabs, hotels, or anything booked in any of the places that we planned to visit. From this point onwards till the flight took off, every hour was counted, lot of shopping was done (adding to the trip expenses), and gmail status message was changed several times. In the end "No plan" turned out to be "Gangothri-Gomukh" plan, all lead by Mr Lawrence Mesquita. :)

Today I am just trying to fetch or recall those moments of happiness, abundant beauty of the places we visited, joy of being with friends for such a long time, beautiful journey which seemed eternal, the best jokes which made us ROFL, the frustration out of hunger which made us yell at each other, the groans of the tiredness while trekking and so on.. Though all those moments are still stamped in my mind as fresh as they were then, I don’t trust my memory and want to put down everything here. This is for my reference when I want to look back on these 12 days. If there are readers to this page, you may read it at your own risk or just skim through the photographs. :)

Here it goes from Day 1 to Day 12.

Day 1:

On Sep 22^nd Tue, I did not require an alarm to wake me up early in the morning since I was eagerly waiting for that moment. More than me my mother had so much of excitement that she prepared lot of eatables for us, spending a lot of time in preparing them a day before. I fought with her since she was making me carry some more weight (didn’t realize the importance of it basically). I yelled at her and said I will dump it in the airport only and board the flight.

At around 9 am when I reached airport I could see Girish, Chittra and Shashi waiting near the entrance. Sangeetha too joined in. Lawrence was supposed to travel from Goa to Jaipur. Sriram was supposed to start after 3 days to join us in Delhi.

First thing which I noticed on the airport was Shashi’s huge travel bag, and the next moment I was convinced since I knew she would be doing a lot of shopping for her boutiques that she has set up in Bangalore. Sangeetha’s Wild craft bag looked taller and heavier than her. To exaggerate this further it looked like Sangeetha's poster on a wild craft bag :-) lol. Chittra looked dreaming about feeling the snow in Himalaya and stepping on a desert land in Rajasthan. Girish looked, as usual, very cool and calm (the only time I found him unusual was in Delhi.. Read on..) We had few sandwiches before we boarded the flight.

At around 10.15 am the flight took off from Bangalore after a nice ;-) air hostess gave the travel instructions. I and Sangeetha had seats next to each others'; also Chittra and Shashi. Unfortunately Girish had to sit between two old gentlemen and it was fun to see his face. I thought the oldies would have bugged poor Girish; at the end it turned out to be the other way.

As the flight took off to cross the sea of clouds and reach the sky, our enthu also had reached the heights. It is such an amazing feeling to be so high up in the sky and look down to find the roads and rivers look like paintings. The top view of Sahyadri Mountains as we were approaching Mumbai was breathtaking! As the flight moved closer to Mumbai, the beautiful view was replaced with never ending Slums. I thought “Slumdog Millionaire” was an exaggeration but then the real view was even worse! The slums looked hooked into the hills, apart from several kms of stretch on the ground level. Slums start just an inch after the airport boundary. Anyways.. There was a half an hour break in Mumbai. After that the flight took off to Jaipur.

Just before the landing in Jaipur, we got a message that there is a turbulent wind and we may experience a bit of it before landing. It was one of the scariest landings. We got out of the flight after the landing to experience even worse. Hot blow of wind in the Jaipur airport was threatening. It was nearly 40 degrees Cel of temperature. People grinned at me looking at the jacket I was wearing. Next moment I took my jacket off and boarded the bus to the terminal. After collecting the bags, none of us wanted to leave the shade and get under the Sun to search for a taxi. We managed to hire a prepaid taxi, Innova, from Airport asking him to take us Hawamahal Road.

We did not know even a single hotel in Jaipur, because of our so called "No Plan" plan. Driver too came to know and he said he would guide us. He took as to few hotels all of which were 3 stars. I don’t know what made him think we are so rich. He was finally making fun of us saying that we will have to be on footpath for cheaper accommodation. After a lot of roaming around we got to a place called Sugandh Retreat, close to the bus stand and a complex called Amber Tower. The accommodation was good and reasonably priced. By this time I could hear the empty stomachs crying out of hunger. Only then I realized the importance of the Chapathis that my mother had packed for all of us. The Chapathi and typical North Karnataka Chatni Powder and paste of red Chilly is kind of trademark of my mom's cooking skills; it tasted heavenly to be honest.

I negotiated with the same driver for our drive to Udaipur and Pushkar for the next day and places within Jaipur. It worked out cheap and best for us. We paid him 9000rs for taking us to Chokhi Dhani on the first day evening and then to Udaipur on the second day. In the evening, after a brief walk nearby we headed towards Hawamahal Road from where I had asked the driver to pick us up. We headed towards a famous village resort called Chokhi Dhani..

Chokhi Dani is a unique village resort where one gets to experience typical Rajasthan Colors. Chokhi Dani means a “fine hamlet”. The interiors look really grand and like a Rajasthani Village itself. There are lot of folks dancers who perform, few Rajasthani Emporiums, Camel rides, Cart rides, puppet show and Rajasthani dinner service inside the resort. They charge 350rs for your time spent in Chokhi Dhani which includes a dinner.

Good Earning for Choki Dhani Owners

It was a good start for my camera too but there was no proper lighting to assist me. It was quite dark with the only light

coming from the lamps. I tried few slow shutter shots and was quite happy with the results. :)

Dancers Performing in Chokhi Dhani

Puppet Show

Dinner at Chokhi Dhani

It is a big place and we got to roam around for quite some time. We got to see every unique thing about Rajasthan from Cultural activities to Food. The Rajasthani folk dance was good to see - We, joining the folks with few steps was fun – Camel Ride was kiddish, the Kulfi tasted very sweet. Finally the dinner with Typical Rajasthani Servings was new experience for us.

Funny thing happened when we were waiting to wash our hands before dinner. Lawrence does not like waiting and to irritate him there was a girl who was taking a lot of time to make way for others. Lawrence said slowly "Haath do rahe ho ya phir naha rahe ho" and apparently her boyfriend or husband overheard it. Good that he took it lightly. Otherwise I could imagine Lawrence getting hurt with injuries on his face :) The servings were quite new to us but Dal Bhati tasted very nice and small Jelebies were tastier. The peaceful dinner pretty much ended our day 1.

We headed back to the hotel having planned for the next day.

Purple Drop

I still have a trip report to upload from Alleppey trip.. Till then posting this new picture here.. which got good response from my friends.. It is a smallest droplet on a small flower petal.. Thanks to the macro technique worked out cheaper with The Reverse Lens Technique....