When your heart is a wanderer, you go places. And travel stories, my compassionate reader, are not merely a retelling of the enchanting places you go to; it's a crepuscular melange of times and cities that made your life a little better, it's a potpourri of vestiges that you can't really blog about.
A smell, effervescent, evanescent yet sweet. It's tea. I wake up to the aroma of it and find myself in a train that a night older version of me had boarded. My family is there, bright eyed, the morning people they are. I rub my eyes and focus my attention on my toothbrush. I let it go. The focus shifts to the tea. Funny how you start having bed tea when you are not even in your bed but in a train compartment that is travelling at 55 kms. per hour to your destination. Here, it's Mathura. I beguile myself into thinking that it's a long way ahead and drift back to sleep.
It's 11. The station has arrived. Wonder where it had gone even though it's stationary. The luggage is put out and the coolies are called in. The halt is broken and the journey has started.
The Hotel room. A demure guy walks in with a jug of water. It's hellish to taste. The first thing that makes your body register a change of places. It's as if it makes it official- " You Sir, are in a place you don't belong to" . To this, your mind says- " Well sure I am not. But for some days, you will have to make do". A taxi is hired and the first place it takes you is way too crowded for you as a boy to want to go in. Still, you do. It's the Birthplace, the Janmabhumi. For reasons they teach you about in books, it's just another crowded place. For reasons they don't teach you about, the place is divine. It has a spark, sparks, a fire that emanates sparks. They are not visible but they fall on you. It is mysteriously cool. The hair on your body respond to it and the heart in it already has. You can't get all of it within you, but then the taxi driver has other plans and you have to move on.
Next big stop? The Buland Darwaza at Fatehpur Sikri. For obvious reasons, it's a hot summer day and you can't help satiate your thirst. So you cry for more and more water but you don't like to drink it too. And then you see it. At first stairs, then a gateway and then a palacial city. Oh the Kings and their lives. You stand at the gateway and you feel so small in front of history.Maybe you are small.
It's the day after. And the family is going to visit it. IT, THE TAJ MAHAL. We approach it. It gets bigger and bigger, then suddenly smaller. We feel the magic and why it's a wonder. There is some mysterious beauty about it. The Marble, its luminescence. The Yamuna, its might and felicity. You have to leave but your heart yearns to stay. So you overstay and it's the first and last thing you visit that day.
Again the train. This time to Ambala. A taxi will be hired there that would accompany us for many more days to come. Next Hotel room is in Chandigarh. Chandigarh, the first planned city of India and you know why only when you visit it. The Driver makes a hault at the outskirts. He has to fix himself some 'paans' because you don't get them in Chandigarh. Time for some rest. The night would rest in bed, the day after would toil.
There is nothing more surprising than how two extra minutes of morning sleep amount to three hours. We are late somehow, the morning people wake up at a not so morning time. Some breakfast and off we go in a jiffy. Outside, the city is ours as much as we are hers. The Rock Garden, The artificial lake, the zoo and all things that were part of the plan are visited in single file. The Pinjore garden, something not part of the plan. The night would again sleep and the day would welcome the rays of the sun in a taxi that is moving towards the cynosure of our journey, MANALI.
My dear reader, you might have visited many hill stations and would have heard a lot more about many others. But chances are strong that the beauty of Manali would not have received the words it so dearly deserves in someone's admiration. Oh how should I, your petty author with his miniscule vocabulary, tell you about this place? We first saw fit to call it the Switzerland of India even though we have never been to Switzerland. An adjective perhaps may describe it? Or better yet, a picture. Yes, a picture-
Once again in the hotel room of Manali, the best we had had at that point of time, ever. Hotel Seagull. A large, cozy, comfy place with a balcony and the view is great. THE VIEW. A diffident guy walks in once again. He has brought tea this time. How astonishing is it that we enjoy the simplest pleasures of life most gratefully when we are in places we like to be. Ahh...the tea, the balcony, the hills and Manali. We unpack to find out that my kid sister has 'stolen' the key to our previous hotel room. First some speculation, then a laugh- initially a nervous one but later hysterically at her stupidity.
Another day and this time, the focus is on the local spots. We have been told that we would see snow for the first time in our lives and so we don't want to spoil the fun of the smaller spots after we have visited the big one. That day, we boated, we sang, we played, we ate and went to sleep to repeat it all. Next day, Solan Valley. The people and the greenery. The people and the paragliding. It's like birds in the sky, Only they become bigger and bigger as they keep coming down. And the blue skies with those milky white clouds. Nature's lap was never so endearing.
The day after would be Rohtang and it's going to be a big, big day.
Up at 5, the morning people are back in form. We have a comfortable breakfast, basking in the first rays of the sun. Later, we leave for Rohtang. Success is a journey, not a destination; but in case of Rohtang, it's both. The roads, with its twists and turns and their scenic beauty- sublime. A hault to rent coats and boots for the snow. Finally there, in that white heaven. If someone has seen that place and if he/she were to die after it, he would see the heaven and reject it for Rohtang.
Again, the snow- a climb, a fall, snowballs, a descent, and it keeps repeating itself. Finally exhausted. Into those small chai shops they have up there. We order tea but wonder where they get their water from? We know it's the snow. The appetite is lost. An idea- Maggi and Chai made out of packaged drinking water. Ahhhh....the sudden elevation to prosperity you experience when you are on a trip.
There and back again. Time for some shopping but things are too expensive. We fight the urge and win. It would be the last day in Manali, for the next one will open its eyes in Kullu. Some spot seeing there and then to Manikaran. In Manikaran Sahib now where they harness geothermal energy to cook the entire food for themselves. Even you can try it with a small sack of rice and dip it into the boiling water. It's pretty cool.
A debate. Our minds are fixed to visit Shimla but our driver urges to go to Dharamshala instead. Of course we win. But later regret it. We have made the same error we thought we were so careful about not making. There is no considerable point visiting Shimla after Manali. There are multiple reasons to support this point. For one, there is no snow. For two, its HOT. So we do so some local sightseeing. With some help from good food, we succeed in enjoying them. Then came the Maal Road. Finally some respite. The prices are favourable and the quality is better. An essential part of a journey gets settled here.
The mind is limitless but the body has boundaries. It's broken by the time we descend. The last two days of the journey, we spend in the breakfast, lunch and dinner schedule at our Kalka Hotel room. To pass time, a chess board is bought and we play doubles- Silliness is the most memorable thing you do in your life J .
In a train again that is speeding up at 60 kms. an hour towards home. HOMECOMING- no better word than that. And once you are home, you see it in a way you never have. Things and people seem to appear more lively and comely. Maybe that's why we go places. Maybe that's why, we love to travel.
nice story.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it Avik
DeleteWow. That's quiet some travel. From Fatehpur Sikri to Manali to Shimla.
ReplyDeleteIt sure was Param; took us 15 days :p
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