Saturday, 21 January 2017

The Solo Traveller

Radhika entered an old looking state transport bus for her way back to Ajmer, she was a bit tired, but it was a bit of the tiniest amount. It was her second solo trip and this time she decided for Rajasthan , the biggest state of the country, culturally and traditionally rich.

Yesternight when she took the bus to Ajmer, she would quickly visit the ajmer sharif dargah and the famous bramha temple and the pushkar lake. And that's what she covered in pushkar. She was all set to go back and retire into the railway dormitory, nice way to save money and time.

In front of her were sitting 4 guys , minding their own business, chatting, shuffling their luggage. On the way downhill like her, they were also enjoying the light show on the hill side. It was when she decided to introduce herself to the group, they were Samar, Rudra, Rohan and Aman who were all freshly graduate other than Rohan, who later turned out to be an IITian who has started his own residential programme for underprivileged children. Samar his brother asked whether or not she would join them for a movie, and she agreed, (who misses out on a chance to watch a good flick plus their destination was same as her's, the railway station)

So all five of them went into the auditorium (just after the national anthem stopped playing). While on the way to the auditorium she had a nice discussion with Rohan with whether or not their should be restrictions for girls as he had imposed none for his male students. His logic was great since he was a firm believer of equality and logical too. He also said that if there were any restrictions on girls ,he might have to lay them on guys too. And the discussion like most of them never lead to any solid end and thankfully the film started. 10 minutes into their seats they started shifting to one row below (what's with them) she thought but shifted too. Rohan and Aman were singing the songs or giving chorus to whenever a song was playing, while Rudra and Samar were busy watching the movie, near the interval she came to know that it was Aman's birthday, she wished him and then the group went back to the movie hall, (Samar was giving Aman his birthday bombs in full swing, while Rohan was standing there smiling).

Their train was at 10.35 and it was on time, (none of them knew how to check that :P), and they left just 10 minutes before that, luckily there was an auto present, and they took it for the railway station.
Even in all this rush, they were hell bound to watch the film, which we never completed, but the auto ride was fun as both of guys started singing (read shouting) again , this time joined by Samar, as soon as they reached there, Aman was running towards station and Rohan started searching for an ice-cream cart, ultimately they both settled for an Amul kiosk on platform 1, they all had their promised ice-cream and the guys ran towards their train.

And Radhika was again solo on her travel through Rajasthan.

Thursday, 29 December 2016

Travel Log #1

Pushkar - the place I was destined to go.....

At 14.10 on a Friday noon, I received a message from the irctc that my train has been cancelled, I had my trip planned to my home town but as I said earlier, destiny.So what I did was , I called my travel buddy Nayan to ask if his trip to Jim Corbett National Park was still in place, but it wasn't to be , they have changed their plan and decided to visit Pushkar instead.

Sunrise from RTDC guest house

We boarded the bus from Kashmiri gate at 23:00 and reached pushkar around 9 in the morning, where we first decided to roam around the city and took good 3 and a half hours for deciding which place to stay at. We finally decided for a government guest house in RTDC.

Pushkar Lake

The day started and we slept, our day started at like 3 in the afternoon when we finally decided to move out of our hotel room, the pushkar lake is a beautiful place to be, just sit there, look at things and think, if you want to of course . We went around the place and checked out a few places starting with the Nirvana cafe, personally I didn't like the place, or maybe the aura of the place , the location was good , food wasn't , not up to our expectations , then we went ahead searching for doctor's cafe which we never found, then we went visited la pizzeria, awesome ambiance, nice place, cool drinks, in was a good experience after all, we tried some local food too, malpua and moong ka halwa, being from Varanasi it wasn't that tasty but it was nice.

View from Savitri Temple

Then we booked a night safari for the next day (and I am writing this sitting under a starry night), we also visited the Brahma temple, and then did a trek of Savitri temple, from there we took the camel and came for the night safari. Its cheap too, plus it's worthy.


Pushkar Lake from NirvanaCafe

So we all did some camel riding on the way here , the dinner served was delicious, mast, as we say.......Right now we are sitting around a bonfire telling stories, watching stars and thinking or not thinking, maybe this is a nice way to reach your birthday ,let's see how this goes......
It went awesomely good, I woke up around 5 am , but since none of them wanted to go , I slept too, woke up at around 7 - 7.30 to an amazing foggy sky, chilled air and everything else I want the weather to do on my birthday , after a great dinner yesternight we were served with hot tea (2 cups actually ) and delicious breakfast, after the breakfast we rushed , other than naina to get ready (he takes his own sweet time) , and then when he was ready we again took a camel cart ride to our way back to the pushkar city.

Ropeway Down from Savitri Temple

View of Pushkar City from Gayatri Temple

Next on our to do list was a second trek to the gayatri temple, not as long or steep as the savitri temple but a fun and safe trek, we reached there around 11 am, just sat there for a while,
under the warm sun singing karaoke and (me attending whatever no of calls I had) and then begun descending down to the town again, 10 minutes later we were there.
What started with a search for ATM (which we never found , not one which disposes cash atleast ) turned into a shopping fest, taking our sweet time (which we had plenty) we shopped for ourselves and our family, after that we went to doctor's cafe (doctor alone to be exact) had our lunch, then there was a second round of shopping for diaries , after that we took a bus to Ajmer, now that little trip in between our trip is a nice experience , not just because of the light show we saw on our way but because we were joined by a fifth member , a solo traveler, a girl studying in Madras, we went for the movie dangal, because we had nothing else to do........
We all enjoyed the movie, half way between we realized that we may just have to leave the hall before the movie finishes to catch our train back to the railway station. We finally decided to leave the hall at 10.20, managed an auto at 10.25 , just 10 minutes before the schedule arrival of the train, but we still wanted to have the icecream, it was an easy find as we settled for an amul kiosk, but the movie was still unfinished , which we did finish once the train was in motion. After the movie we tried watching humorously yours, tried because even jio was unable to stream the video.Now standing inside a metro on my way to office I am finally concluding my travel log, the first one. Something new and interesting to add in ones hobby I guess.


Pushkar - more than just a holy city.