Travel
has no real meaning without memories collected from experiences. This post as
the name suggests, is on a very personal terms, where I try to recall and
relive the memories gathered from various travels. Of course, while some were
made with friends most were embarked upon with family. I do not wish to hinder
the privacy of any person and thus the names are strictly withheld. But the
memories which are shared by many would surely make them remember their part in
it. This post is a rather different listicle than I have ever made till date;
and I do so because most of us are on a verge of starting a new life- joining
work, pursuing masters, maybe even getting married (who knows!). This may well
be the last time before we hear of many until we meet in person years later.
So,
let us begin!
1. I
remember having gone to Shantiniketan
with school friends for a project. Though the project itself took us only three
hours of field work (and God knows how many months of analysis and factory manufacturing
of graphs later); the rest of the time was free to explore the place. The
excitement of travelling with friends (maybe for the first and last time)
started our day with some of us actually forgetting to bid goodbyes to our
parents (me included).Upon reaching the place, all of us were most interested in
taking in the air of a new place and enjoying a part of the authentic culture
of West Bengal. We visited a park-
played bowling, took some groupfies
(the term wasn’t very popular then), and caught our teacher lying flat on the
grass trying to capture some insect which had camouflaged itself in the grass.
The next morning a dear friend was greeted by a monkey and I, well saw someone
rather good looking outside my window. Well, I cannot miss out on the great
food that we had especially snacks (at least I had never had such tasty veg pakodas in my life before and sadly
never after too). The evenings were spent working on our project, sharing ghost
stories and one distinct night we indulged in a sleepover. Most of us are in
different parts of India today, but I am sure that these memories of our trip
together (and also a promise to have a reunion ten years later in 2021) would
always bind us with an invisible chord.
2. Mandarmani has been covered at large in
the blog previously, but here are some more tit-bits which actually made the
trip so interesting. This trip was made immediately after my higher secondary
examinations and involved my family members. We had a quite uneventful journey except
some constant blabbering from the driver regarding the choice of songs that I played on the mobile phone. Our
first day spent in the beach passed quickly. We admired the beauty of the place. My grandmother started talking to the people of the hotel. We found out
the timings when there would be no electricity and planned to leave for
sightseeing during those times. I also spotted a couple (maybe honeymooning,
who knows) wearing matching clothes at all times. Evening came, and our
super smart driver instead of taking us to the local shops drove us straight to
the fish market and got the tyres stuck in a quicksand! The rest of the evening
was spent in telephoning the reception to fix our AC till both we and they got
equally irritated of it and replaced it altogether. Oh and I missed the shell
collecting part! The next day saw my uncle hastily entering our room while my
aunt and I were playing (cards probably) to say that he had been calling my
aunt many a times but she had not picked up. She replied calmly that the phone
was on silent mode and thereafter he left. I spoke aloud just then that he
actually did not say the purpose with which he was calling though he came and
asked why she did not pick up the phone! That apart there were no memorable
incidents and after a two night stay we reached home safely and I was indeed
happy with the trip and to get rid of the fidgety driver.
3. The first time I went to Delhi was in 2009 and I fell in love with the place. The ambience
is such that every nook and corner of the city reminds you of an era of
royalty. Our first destination was the Rajghat
where I almost burnt my feet. The second was the Red Fort where I almost fell down in the moat below. It is said
that in the Mughal era, the moat was filled with crocodiles .I thanked my lucky
stars that I did not fall on a moat full of crocs! Let me also hint, that this
isn’t the first and last time I was about to fall on a moat. Looks like I have
a magnetic pull towards moats of all forts. The usual sightseeing followed with
Lotus Temple, Street Shopping, Birla
Temple, Humayun’s Tomb and Qutub Minar. I distinctly remember the name of
the hotel we had lunch in -Art Chillies.
Delhi Haat was reserved for some
shopping. In fact we had such a friendly driver this time, that he actually
influenced us to change our train schedule to Mussoorie, the next day to another road trip to the place. (But it was
not altogether a bad idea!)
4. My
visit to Mussoorie deserves special
mention. I was practically dragged out of bed- a groggy eyed me – at 3:30 am by
my mother. All of us were up and ready by 6 am. It was to be a long trip and we
were to start as early as possible. But we got delayed. Apparently, the driver
was not informed that we were to reach Mussoorie
and so he backed out. But, the hotel staffs were cordial enough to get hold of
another chap who took us. We stopped for breakfast at nine at a place in the
highway (the name of the inn quite evades me) but I never knew highway food
could be so tasty. We resumed our journey through sugarcane fields, a very
rocky stretch of road near Ghaziabad
and lastly hit the mountains. We stopped for lunch at the foothills and then
continued. On our way back a day later we proceeded towards Haridwar before going back to Delhi.
5. My
next trip to Delhi (2014) was just a
stopover to check on a relative and then proceed towards Agra the very same day. But, the day happened to be the oath taking
ceremony of PM Narendra Modi. Delhi
was jam packed and so we were diverted to Jaipur for a halt till the Delhi
airport got cleared. We were already delayed by a long time. Nevertheless, we
resumed our journey checked on our relative and proceeded towards Agra. The next morning finally ended my
patience of 19 years to look upon the Taj
Mahal and Agra Fort (where I was about to fall in the moat again !). The
evening was reserved for shopping. But Agra is an expensive place. The
handicrafts are best to look at for people like me. For those who know me, they
might recall the fact that a baby donkey, which I was trying to photograph, did
not appear very polite and its push nearly wrecked my camera.
6. The
same journey continued the day after to Jaipur
stopping en- route to Fatehpur Sikhri and
Salim Chisti. I had great fun riding a local shared auto which is quite
different from the ones found in Kolkata.
It is more colourful and spacious. Of course thereafter inside the monuments I
burnt my feet . A little kid started stalking us inside Salim Chisti repeatedly saying that he would recite poetry for ten
rupees. Finally after seeing the monument we heard his poetry, gave him some
money and bid him goodbye.
7. Jaipur was my favourite amongst the lot.
The feel of Rajasthan is something
different and invokes in me an excitement that no other place has managed to
invoke. Chouki Dhani a village resort
is a must visit for those who haven’t seen it. That apart I visited the usual
places. The best part of the place was our hotel. It was built on the upper
storeys of a shopping mall. The food was nothing less than that of 5 star
hotels. The only thorn in the entire trip was the return journey when our
Kolkata bound plane got delayed by almost six hours .
8. Asansol was my last family trip taken in
December 2014. This trip also had our neighbours join in. Actually, it was on
the insistence of my friend and me that our parents took this short journey.
The first blow was when my father’s flight got delayed and we had to shift the
entire schedule by a day. We were to start early in the morning but got delayed
because I slept on. I was woken up by my friend at 5 am but then I got back to
sleep and was late by almost an hour. We visited Maithon and Kalyaneshwari
Temple. The next day just as we were about to start our journey – the car
broke down. It took around an hour to get it fixed. We saw Panchet and so excited were we to reach our next destination that
we forgot all about lunch. At nearly 2 pm we remembered , abandoned
our destination , started food hunting and got something to eat nearly an
hour later. The rest of the journey was quite smooth and on our way home we
stopped at Saktigarh to buy Langchas –which are my favourite sweets.
The days ahead were filled with my examination and were quite boring.
