This holiday was something all of us needed really bad - all of us had been so caught up in our daily life that we just needed something entirely out of the ordinary. Well, we asked for it and we got it! We were out from the 1st to the 8th of September, and went to Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Here's an account.
Day 1:
Rithiks finished her last exam of the term in the morning, and in the afternoon, we got onto a plane to Delhi. We were supposed to reach at 6:50 in the evening but ended up reaching at 8:15 (most of the excess time being spent circling above the Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi since there was too much air traffic!). We then reached the guest house in Gurgaon where we were put up, and fell asleep really soon!
Day 2:
At about 6 in the morning, we set off for Agra. I slept through most of the journey there and back, but was woken up at regular intervals. The first one of those was at a Dhaba for breakfast. As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a clown standing just outside the car window, waving vigourously. Talk about rude awakenings! Turns out it's some sort of small town version of a publicity stunt for the Dhaba. We enjoyed a typical Dhaba breakfast (Paneer paranthas with pickle and HUGE blobs of butter that made my dad's eyes pop out of his head) and then proceeded. I fell asleep. I next woke up when we were entering Agra, and all I can remember of that instant is LOTS of people and minarets everywhere. I pointed out one of many petha shops to my folks and was told that we'd come back to it in the evening for a snack, but that didn't happen. We decided to go to Fatehpur Sikri before Agra, and I battled to keep awake.
On the road to Sikri, we got caught up in a traffic jam that made us Bangaloreans feel entirely at home. Apparently there was a truck accident there. Well, atleast traffic jams in UP don't start for no reason at all!
As we entered the town (or village, rather) of Fatehpur Sikri, the shop density began to grow thicker and thicker. The one thing about these shops that struck me as strange was the fact that though their signboards were written in the purest Hindi script, their names were all English! (Imagine 'Fine Jewellers' and 'Modern Enterprises' written in Hindi!)
We entered the protected area to a flood of guides who offered us better and better rates for a tour of Fatehpur Sikri. My dad chose on of them (at random, I think). We got a detailed tour of Buland Darwaza (which is HUGE, by the way, and gives one a slight sensation of inverse vertigo). My sister chose to look out for the beehives right on top!
Inside, we went around the enclosure, ending up at Salim Chisti's Dargah made of marble, and which had these really cool wall murals made of shell, and looked multicoloured in the light. After avoiding a whole lot of vendors, we went back to Agra.
We got off at the Agra fort not really expecting much. We were pleasantly surprised since the Agra fort in not only very beacutiful, but well maintained at well. The whole structure is impressive, right from the drawbridge across the moat. The other things that I loved about the fort were the information boards that were put up everywhere which makes guides obsolete, the greenery everywhere and the fantastic view of the Taj Mahal from the high galleries. We sat on the pedestal where a handful of the Mughal rulers actually sat, and took our own sweet time in seeing the fort. We then came back down, had some bananas and set off for the Taj Mahal.
At the road leading up to the Taj Mahal, we got a cycle rickshaw ride halfway to the gate. As I saw the Taj Mahal, I was awestruck. No matter how much you've heard about it, read about it or seen pictures of it, the Taj Mahal has a way of keeping you spellbound, whether by its tip-top condition due to constant restoration or by its sheer workmanship, or by its lovely gardens, or by its wonderful marble flooring which is cool even at the height of the afternoon heat in spite of being exposed to the sun the whole day. It leaves you, well, speechless. (Until you come back home, that is, and ramble on and on about it in your blog!)
On our journey back to Delhi, I was rather sleepy and I dozed off (yet again). I woke up when we were somewhere past Mathura, and by that time all of us were ravenous. My mum said we could stop at a McD's she and my sister had seen, and I was thrilled. I waited eagerly for the joint to arrive. And waited. And waited some more. But no, the McD's outlet seemed to have vanished into thin air! By which time it had started to pour cats and dogs, so stopping for food was completely out of the question. (And let me remind you that all I'd had the whole day was water, a couple of sips of mango juice, 3 biscuits and a couple of bananas!)
As we got into Faridabad, we saw that the roads were flooded and jammed. Luckily, our driver is a native of Faridabad and knew all the shortcuts to get us out of the mess. We were relieved that we were on a diesel SUV rather than a small petrol car (which we saw breaking down by the dozen!) and our driver was positively thrilled about his vehicle's superiority!
Reached the guest house after 10. I don't remember much more except eating and hitting the sack!
Day 3:
The day dawned bright and clear (though I wasn't awake to see it) and we went off for a Delhi Darshan with my dad's ex-classmate, Mukundan Uncle, and his son Govind. They'd rented a cab which, coincidentally, turned out to be the same one we'd rented the day before!
Our first stop (having seen the semi-demolished buildings of Gurgaon) was the National Arts and Crafts museum at Pragati Maidan, which was simply mind blowing. Besides traditional pottery, metal work, wood crafts and ivory carvings, there was a whole section dedicated to textiles from all around India, which I especially enjoyed. There was even a section dedicated to each region in India, and the Karnataka section had a set of humungous jackfruit tree statues, which I had no idea about in spite of the fact that I'm a native of Karnataka and have lived here almost all my life! A fantastic place - I think we spent almost three hours here!
By now, we could hear growling stomachs, so we set off for lunch. The lunch, too was a great experience. We ate at a Greek restaurant (complete with pictures of Greek costumes and traditional Greek music!), filling ourselves up to the brim with feta cheese and olives! And no meal in Connaught Place is complete without a dessert from Nirula's, and who are we to challenge such a rule? We hogged some more at Nirula's.
Our next sightseeing venture was the Rail Museum. (Which is just behind the Bhutan Embassy - we could see their laundry!). This again, was fascinating. Not only did we see models of locomotives, but actual engines and coaches as well (including the Fairy Queen!), and managed to sneak in a two minute 'Joyride' on a tiny train reminiscent of our own Cubbon Park toy train.
We wound up the day with a drink of tea and went back to the guest house. Had a bath after two days and went off to sleep.
Day 4:
We went around Delhi again. We started the day by doing a round of shopping at Dilli Haat, which was awesome. Though we didn't really buy much, it was great fun to see all the handicrafts. But what I enjoyed most at Dilli Haat was the food - momos, fruit beer and missi roti with aloo-gobi!
The next thing we saw was Lodhi Gardens (so called because it's built around Sikander Lodhi's tomb), but didn't spend much time here since we had quite a lot planned for the day. Safdarjung's tomb, too, was quick-in-quick-out.
We then set off for the Lotus Temple, which was really far away. On the way we saw the Akshardham temple, which was, in a word, huge! Unfortunately, we couldn't go in since it was closed. Apparently they have Asia's larget IMAX theatre in there, and Disneyland-like rides. On reaching the Lotus Temple, we got off and went towards the gate, only to find that that too was closed on Mondays!
The last bit of sightseeing for the day was the Qutub Minar. It was fantastic, especially in the evening just-pre-sunset sun. What I liked most about it was not the Qutub Minar itself but rather the ruins behind it. More interesting somehow. Sadly, the Iron Pillar has been enclosed, so I couldn't see if my hands went around it...
We braved a pack of wildly barking dogs to leave the site and set off for Hauz Khas Village. The entire road looked like something straight out of the Mediterranean, and we were all set to go to a Bistro when we noticed a huge crowd, including a bunch of policemen. We made a quick exit. Instead, we satisfied ourselves with a burger and an icecream each from a nearby McDonald's. As we went toward the car again, we noticed a procession coming that would certainly have delayed our departure had we not jumped into the car and zommed in the opposite direction. We were delayed by a little, but not too much. The driver laughed and said to us 'Aapki kismat hi kharaab hai!'.
We met up with another ex-classmate of my dad's, Manjul Uncle. Rithiks and I hit it off really well with his daughters Juhi and Ila, who are about the same ages as us. We had a fantastic dinner of chaat followed by gelatos. On returning to Gurgaon, all of us just popped off. (Quite a routine now, eh?)
Day 5:
Woke up at 4.30 in the morning, I think, and set off for Jaipur on the Shatabdi Express. We reached at around 11 in the morning and were immediately flooded with better and better offers from various taxi drivers. We reached the hotel, freshened up and went to do some sightseeing.
First, we had a really yum lunch at the legendary LMB. Then, we saw the Hawa Mahal (so called because the crown shaped top part of the palace has little windows that lets in winds).
We were bent on shopping for some traditional Rajasthani clothes. We got a little bugged with the driver who tried to push us into some highly seedy shop (owned by a friend of his, perhaps) and proceeded instead to the shops below the Hawa Mahal, which were nicer.
We returned to the hotel, again, and freshened up, again, and set off, again. This time, we went to the Birla Lakshminarayan Temple, which is made almost entirely out of marble. But my favourite part of the day was our visit to Chokhi Dhani on the outskirts of Jaipur.
Chokhi Dhani is a typical Rajasthani village recreated, complete with a resort at the back. They have horse rides, camel rides (which Rithiks and I tried!), village artisans, performers and most importantly, good food. We had a traditional dinner here, served by the men of the village, who kept serving you even if you told them to stop! We sat on the floor and ate off earthenware and leaves. Brilliant. Besides these, I ate a kulfi and a gola and drank jaljeera. Fanstastic stuff. As usual, returned home and dropped off.
Day 6:
We began the day with a typical South Indian breakfast, which we had sort of grown to miss. Nothing in the world like a dosa, I say!
We then went on to a tour of the Ambar fort, a little outside Jaipur. The loveliest part was Sheesh Mahal or the palace of mirrors, which had wallsful of mirror designs. Also rather interesting was the natural airconditioning, as I like to call it, in the palace. No idea how they did that! But the most amazing part of this fort is, funnily enough, not a part of the fort at all. They are the guides, who show around the foreign tourists and speak to them in their own language. Cool, huh?
We then saw the City Palace of Jaipur (where the Maharaja and his family still live). This included a small apparel museum and a museum of weapons, and a display including the world's largest silver bowl! Then, we crossed the road to see the Jantar Mantar, which is my favourite monument of the ones we visited throughout the trip. We saw all these really cool contraptions built 200-300 years ago (or more!) and they fascinated me. Even though it rained, I walked all around the place seeing all the amazing sundials (including one which is accurate upto 2 seconds!) and wiry mechanisms. They rule!
We then had a quick lunch (South Indian again!) and headed back to Delhi.
We reached Gurgaon at about 11 at night, and were taken to the guest house by a taxi (who royally gypped us - 250 bucks for a 5 minute ride!).
Day 7:
This day consisted mainly of shopping... Sarojini Market in the morning (honourable mention - the masala soda we had here - fantastic!), then an auto to Central Secretariat Metro station and then to Connaught Place. Here, much to my despair, my folks decided to get into Palika Bazaar. I think we spent a sumtotal of 2 minutes in Palika Bazaar - we got in, searched for the nearest exit (which, by sheer luck, was the Janpath one) and ended up using Palika Bazaar more as a subway! It was then off to Janpath for shopping, by which time we were so sick of it that we just finished off quickly and went to Nirula's and had ice-cream for lunch.
That done, we took the metro to Dwarka. By the way, for those who haven't gone on the Delhi Metro, go. It's amazing, almost exactly like the Singapore MRT, only better - they reuse the tickets in Delhi, and don't in Singapore. And then, we went to Najafgarh by some weird tiny feeder bus. At Najafgarh, we caught a private Haryana roadways bus and in two hours reached the rural part of Gurgaon (Gudganva, with a nice accent!). From there, we took a phatphatiya back to the guest house and slept. (I'll bet you knew that!)
Day 8:
It was time to come back home, and we were frankly quite relieved. Since the plane was scheduled to take off at 9.50 a.m., we got up early and reached the airport early and all. We sniggered at the Kingfisher Airlines flight that was supposed to take off for Bangalore at the same time as us, but had got delayed by 40 minutes. At security check, my sister said something about a flight to Bangalore being delayed and taking off only at 11.30 and we pooh-poohed her. Well, turns out she was partially right. Our flight was delayed, but didn't nearly take off at 11.30.
After enjoying a free snack courtesy Indian Airlines, we were all set for the flight announcement, but when it came, it was to announce a further delay of 30 minutes. At 11.50, when we (finally) boarded the flight, and we thought we were positively at the end of our patience, someone decided to disprove us.
When we were about to take off, the pilot announced that there was a technical problem and that he would have to take the plane back to the docking station for a patch-up. Everyone groaned and deboarded.
But looking on the bright side, we got an OC meal at Indian Airlines' expense at the ITC restaurant in the airport. We were scheduled to take off at 3.00 p.m. When we finally, FINALLY took off, it was 3.40! And let me tell you, it has never felt as good to land in Bangalore!
If there was one thing the trip was not, that's boring. From close escapes (four people were found to have suffocated to death in a car in Faridabad the morning after we braved the floods right there, and houses in Jaipur were flooded the day after we left) to making it to the newspaper (the bistro we were planning to go to in Hauz Khas village had been sealed, leading to the commotion, and later the same day, the procession had halted traffic for a long time. So we made it to the newspaper twice in a day. Not bad, eh?) to using tons of different modes of transport (Plane, a proper train, a toy train, the metro, taxi, three different models of cars, a mini bus, a normal bus, a long distance luxury bus, an auto, a phatphatiya, a cycle rickshaw and even a camel! And, of course, the evergreen mode - by foot! ) to just experiences (the flight back, need I say more?) the trip kept us on our feet at all time!
Told you I was full of myself!
