Visit to Shagri-La aka Sikkim

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So it finally happened. After lots of discussions and possible destination evaluation (that included trip to Italy also), I finally landed up in Sikkim alongwith two of my friends, Paresh and P2. If you ask me to describe Sikkim in one word, I would just say "Beautiful". Its really different from the Himalayas in Himachal and in Uttaranchal with the Kanchenjunga Peak looking at us with all might and shine.

Day1: Landed up in Bagdogra Airport in the afternoon. Deccan flight was on time and within 2 hrs, we were transported from Delhi to the foothills of Sikkim. We had our hiccups in reaching the airport (started late and a minor traffic jam) but managed to checkin on time. We had booked a vehicle (Innova) before. So we zoomed off to Gangtok, ofcourse after some altercations with the fare they were asking :) Unfortunately, the direct road from Bagdogra to Gangtok was blocked due to landslide. So we took a detour via Darjeeling and settled at Teasta for the night. Had nice dinner at the DGHC (Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council) guesthouse and slept off. So not much happened on Day 1 but we had the nice view of the green hills and kanchenjunga till it was dark. Nice music was playing in the car like Aiwa Aiwa and Shakira.

Day2: We started off for Gangtok around 10 am. The roadside was beautiful and the Teasta River flowing alongside the road was adding beauty to it. We stopped enroute to feel the water. It was cold but refreshing. After some snaps taking rituals, we moved on. Another noticeable thing on the road to Gangtok was funny but useful hoardings put on by BRO (Border Roads Organization). My favourite was "Be soft on my Curves". On reaching Gangtok, we went around for booking a hotel room and finally settled for Travel Lodge on Tibet Road (as it was mentioned in Lonely Planets). The evening was spent going around Gangtok (Hanuman Tok and Tashi View Point). In the night, we went for a musical evening at Escape, a famous disc there. We danced a lot and had good time out there.

Day3: Day started early as we went to Nathula Pass. Private vehicle is not allowed for most tourist places in Sikkim to encourage local tour operators. So got packed into a SUV and entered the high security zone which was heavily guarded by Indian Army. Thr route to Nathula pass is extremely beautiful with shrubs of different colors dotting the hills. Its cold out there. So dont forget to take your jacket and gloves. Changu lake which is 20 kms before one reaches Nathula is a very beautiful place. This is I guess comes close to be a Sangrila. We also saw the highest ATM and the highest Cyber Cafe enroute to Nathula Pass. Thought of checking Orkut Scraps at the cafe :) but noone can get down in that route just like that. This was my second border visit in a month. First it was Wagah and now Nathula. What next?
While coming back from Nathula, we took a lunch break at Changu (also called Tsogmo Lake). There were Yak rides available but we were just happy posing for snaps sitting on the Yak. Returned to Gangtok in the evening. The journey was tiring. After a good dinner at Tashi Delek Restaurant (the place has a nice open place giving a good view of Gangtok), we returned to Hotel. After some discussions ranging from Why we are not starting a start-up to Whether Conversions should be abolished, we went to bed. In most of the discussions, we happily agreed to disagree.

Day4:We started early for Rumtek and visited the Buddist Monastery. We got a young guy named Mone who took us around the place. His knowledge about the place was decent but what impressed me was that he knew so much about history and that too he was Class V dropout. Also he was a confident guy and put up the case that technology is the cause of today's trouble. Forget about the logic but the conviction with which he was speaking impressed me. After a tour of the monastery and some curious questioning about Buddhism to Mone, we took a cottage room near the Monastery. We got a good deal as the hotel staff was out on dusherra and the hotel management agreed at 1200 for the day. It was a great place and the cottage was well made. It was lepcha style cottage. True luxury. After relaxing in the cottage, we strolled in the Botanical Garden and went on a walk to visit another monastery, some 2 kms from the resort. Rumtex is a calm and quite place and if you are looking for a place to relax, book a good resort and spend time here. Its different from the busy city life of Gangtok. Serene and Peaceful. We could hear the sound of a small waterfall from our cottage and it was adding tranquility to the scene.
As the hotel staff was on leave, we decided to cook our dinner and luckily Raju, the only hotel staff present there allowed us to use the kitchen. After playing couple of game of TT there (how can I miss that), we started making Paratha, Wai Wai noodles and Tea. It was a really good experience and we had food in candlelight fashion. Everything was going so well and good that we suspected that something might just go wrong. We started making Ghostly stories and tried to frighten each other. After all the drama and action (cooking), I went to bed and had a nice sleep.

Day5: Woke up really early (6) and Paresh and I got into snap taking rituals. We left the place at 7 for Bagdogra but that was only after some drama. Raju was nowhere to be seen and the gate was locked. So we started looking for Gate keys as well as for Raju. 15 mins and still no sign of Raju or the keys. Finally I guess the resort owner or someone heard our frantic calls to Raju and came out with the Gate keys.
The drive back to Bagdogra was good. On way back, we took a break at a place where there is a road to Bhutan. P2 and Paresh took bath in a mini waterfall there. On reaching Bagdogra, I was impressed with the service of Air Deccan staff in helping us go through Checkin process. We landed in Delhi 15 mins ahead of time and reached Noida without any hassles (generally travelling from Delhi Airport to Noida is a big hassle). All in all I would say the trip was great and worth travelling so much.

Some useful stuffs:
1. A copy of Lonely Planet for pointers on acco/food
2. Get Started about Sikkim
3. Tourism Info

Extended Weekend at Mcleud gang/Amritsar

15th Aug was on Tuesday and I was looking for this holiday. Take Monday Off and you get straight 4 days to holiday and this is exactly what we did. Three of us (Nitin, Amit and myself) got together and visitied Mcleud ganj and Amritsar.

Mcleudganj is 12 hour bus journey from Delhi and there are lots of travelling options. One can book Volvo from Delhi or travel by train till Pathankot and then take a cab/bus. Semi Delux Bus is also convenient and it costs you 400 bucks. Plenty of staying options out there. We just landed up there without any prior booking and got a decent place at just 350 a day. A big room with attached restroom overlooking the mountains. Not a bad deal atall. Good thing about Mcleudganj is there is as such no sightseeing place. No sunrise point/no sunset point. It is the whole ambience that makes the place special. People call it mini Lhasa. I would also call it mini europe as I could see so many european tourist moving around with a copy of "Lonely Planet". Another matter of fact is that there are many tourists from Israel. So many that the local cafes have keyboards with Hebrew characters on them. We spent most of the time idling around in Nick Restaurant which serves excellent Italian food (check out my blog in food section for details on Nick). We took a small walk to Bhagsu temple too. Its a good stretch of 2 km walk from main market. Another must watch is HH Dalai Lama's Monastery. Luckily when we visited the place, HH Dalai Lama was there for a 4 day teaching. We managed to get a view of him but could not attend his talk as we had to leave the day the talk started. Mcleud ganj is seriously a place to go and relax. Its a different world out there. Not typical of a indian hill station. Tibetan chants add to the serene ambience. A must visit place to enjoy the ambience and variety of food offered there. Its definitely different.

From Mcleud ganj who travelled to Amritsar via Pathankot. Golden temple was really great. The harmandir temple is majestic to mention the list. I picked up some small boosk on Sikhism and got some lessions. Really liked the concept of Sikhism. Seems to be a no hassle religion based on just karma. The concept of langar (universal kitchen) is too good. It was started as they realized that a hungry man cannot appreciate spiritualism which is so true. Also visited Jalianwala bhag. It happened to be 15th August and what better date to visit such a place. Also went ahead to celebrate indepence at Wagah Border (India-Pak Border) but it was so crowded and so mismanaged by BSF that we preferred to stay outside. It was a stampede kind of situation there and BSF did nothing to avoid that. Rather they complicated by unnecessary narrowing down entry points. They were just overwhelmed by crowd but I would expect BSF to handle such emergency well.

Food in Amritsar was all about pure desi ghee in everything they had. Be it laccha paratha or aloo paratha. Had some nice Amritsari Laccha Paratha/Kulcha at Brothers Dhabba. Seems it is a very popular food outlet. Very very crowded at peak times but since we were keen on tasting some authentic amritsari food, we tolerated the crowd patiently and focussed only on food. Try lassi when you are there too.

Journey back home was comfortable in amritsar shatapdi. Well spent 4 days. Memorable Trip with lot of good quality food...Italian/Tibetan/Punjabi

Bharatpur and Fatehpur Sikri Trip

Last weekend, 8 of us visited Bharatpur bird sanctuary and Fatehpur Sikri. 4 of us (including myself) went in car and rest 4 went by bike. Seeing birds in wild is always a delight. Though the peak season for visiting the place was over, we were lucky to see some birds atleast because of some late rainfall last month which had got the temperature down. Good thing about the National Park is that only environment friendly vehicles are allowed inside it. The list of vehicles include electric bus, hand driven rickshaw and bicycles. We took the last option and I really loved the concept of bicycle ride and exploring the nature. Also i was lucky to catch a bicycle in pretty decent condition.

The guide (Mr. D.D. Mittal) was also pretty good and seems to be quite knowledgable. He was patiently explaining us everything and made us understand different bird cycles. The boat ride in the park in a small (dirty) water channel was fun. The water channel was full of weeds and it seems that was the food for most of the migratory birds. All of us also got a lesson in Boat Sailing with some hands-on experience but it was mostly a photo session :)

After a night stay at Bharatpur and a morning visit to the national park, we moved on to Fatehpur Sikri. This was my second visit to the place. This time we could not visit Taj though we passed through Agra while driving back to Delhi.

Trip was real fun though it got slightly tiring towards the end (we should have slept on Saturday night and probably avoided the extremely bad road from Mathura to Bharatpur and instead taken Mathura-Agra-Bharatpur route). Also the best time to visit the National Park is early morning as Birds come out for feeding early in the day (unlike me...)

Watch Video, some photos and find some useful links about Bharatpur

Delhi Darshan

Finally the most impossible thing happened. After 5 years in Pilani and 2.5 years in Delhi, some of us decided to go around Delhi and see some of the well known spots. We all have visited Delhi during our childhood with faint memories of the places but not after moving over to North India. Last Sunday, Sambit, Tarini and I broke than jinx and visited Lotus Temple, Qutub Minar, Garden of Five Senses and Delhi Haat.

Nice outing. Enjoyed the day and thanks to all of us for making it happen

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Half the World in 10 days...(SFO, Paris, Oslo, Frankfurt, Strasbourg)

and yes I covered half of the world in this time. I went to US to attend a company conference in San Jose. In the free time, I went to San Francisco and all my friends will agree, we had our good time there. One day we went in search of Walmart and got totally lost. The store was just 3 miles from our hotel but it took us almost 2 hrs to reach. But it also taught us the road navigation system in US. It showed how people in US depend so much on Maps and directions and we were lost as we had none. In SFO, we visited the standard tourist locations. Crooked Street, Golden Gate, Fisherman Wharf. and during the travel, stuck with public transport. It has two benefits, one save money and second know more abt the place. The last time I was in US, I didnt learn much as i was travelling by Cab(ofcourse sponsored by company). When you use public transport, we take that extra effort of interacting with people, knowing how to plan your visit. all this helps in knowing the place better.

Visual Treat in Europe
Photos
But the real fun of my trip came from my Europe Trip. I landed in Frankfurt on 12th Feb 2006 from SFO. Lufthansa journey was not so great. From Frankfurt airport itself, I took a shuttle directly to Strasbourg. This is a small but beautiful place in NorthEast France bordering Swiss and Germany. Cathedral there is a must visit and dont miss the boat ride across the city. It has glimpses of Venice(what I have seen in movies). Dr. Mishra prepared nice food that night which I had half asleep(jet lag man). My friend Mittal also joined us from Paris. after a short visit to Colmar next day and some sight seeing in Strasbourg, we left for Paris

Paris and Me: I stayed at Fountainbleau which was just 40 mins by train from Paris. Paris is well connected by metro and you just need to land up in some metro station somehow to explore Paris. Effiel Tower, Louvre Museaum, La Defense, Napolean Castle in Fountainbleau were on my list and covered them. Watching Paris atop the Effiel was a magnificent view. you feel like at the top of the world for some time but why not you have paid 11 euro to reach to the top :)

My next stop was Oslo and I was lucky to visit it when there was heavy snowfall. A white blanket all around the city. It was a totally different experience with Snow and I tried Ice-Skiing also (thanks to Shivali and Koren). Visiting Oslo Nobel Peace Center was great. An e-book on Alfred Nobel was interesting. Meeting Shivali's friend from different countries (Iraq, Jamaica, Australia) was itself a different feeling. I chit chatted with them just like I know them before and you start realizing there is as such no boundaries. Its difficult to define "Foriegn". Yes may be I can define it with respect to Food and Language. I stuggled with food outside and it was particularly difficult in France to manage with English. Oslo was much better.

From Oslo, I moved to my final destination: Frankfurt. I just had 1 night over there but thanks to Taslim, I got to see the River Front, the commercial center, the film museum in a short period of time. On 21st I returned back from European Paradise with sweet memories and a promise to myself that I need to explore Europe more in future.

Couple of things that really moved me in Europe was Punctuality and Discipline. One incident that will remain with me for long time happened in France. We had a train ticket from Colmar to Strasbourg that was supposed to reach Strasbourg at 5.14 pm and we had the last train to Paris from Strasbourg at 5.19 pm. We asked at the tourist info center whether we should take a earlier train from Colmar and reach Strasbourg a bit early to catch the Paris train in time. The guy replied "No problem. 5 mins is more than enough. Enjoy your time in colmar". Can I think something similar in India? I hope I can in coming years...

Day out at Camp Mustang at Manesar

We had a team outing on 25th Feb. nice 1 day trip to a camp in Manesar near Gurgaon. It was real fun. I enjoyed Parasailing and Zorbing the most. Did it for the first time. I was slightly afraid of ParaSailing (may be acrophobia) but once i was up in the sky, it was a wonderful. But by the time I was comfortable and started enjoying my moments up in the sky, i made the decent. It was a short stretch (may be just 2 mins). Zorbing was also a great experience. Felt like doing Shirshasan inside. Could not stop laughing while rolling.

Other Activities like Tent Pitching, Jimjar were interesting. Tent Pitching was a great team effort. We took some time to figure out how a tent is pitched but after that we did a really good job of pitching it properly and also had some designer window and door designs :) Our team lost the Tug of War miserably. I was captain of one of the teams and we got the Runners-up prize.

Only thing I dont miss in the trip is the long 2+ hr bus journey from Office to the camp. Luckily Manish came to our rescue and while coming back, I came back in his car.

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Weekend Getaway to Ranthambore

Last weekend, I visited Ranthambore, known for its National Park. We were a group of 23 people (all from my company). Took the Dehradoon Express from New Delhi Railway Station on Friday night. I suggest look for a better train if possible as it stopped at every station. We got down at Sawai Madhopur(nearest railway station for Ranthambore, just 10 kms) next morning. We got into the Canters (of our resort "Tiger Den") waiting for us and in just 20 mins, reached the resort. The canter was open (with no roof, no windows) and was really cold. Luckily there were blankets which saved us from the morning cold of Rajasthan.

After a heavy breakfast in the resort, we got together to play Cricket. Junta was very enthued for the game and we had a nice lush green ground waiting for us. We played some 5-6 games and enjoyed a lot. As it was grass all around, I didnot mind diving to stop the ball. Anyway that didnt helped much as I could not save lots of runs instead of my dives :) Lunch followed the match and after that we went to see Ranthambore Fort. The guide told all kinds of stories associated with the fort. I liked couple of views of the National Park from the fort. After the fort, we went ahead to see a nearby lake but were disappointed to see that the lake is all dried up. We cursed the organizer for taking us to a dry lake and that too in the cold in the open canter. Anyway after getting back to the resort in the evening, we played DumbC around a nicely lit bonfire. Though we started with Antakshari, I was successful in dumping Antakshari and getting people to play DumbC(I am bad at Antakshari). Dinner followed and then we were back to our rooms. We had to wake up early next morning for the Safari. Still some of us managed to stay awake till 12 and we discussed a lot about our company, work, people etc etc(stuff that generally happens when 5-6 people of same company get together).

It was tough waking up at 6 but we all managed and we were in the Canter by 6.45. We entered the forest area by 7.15 and the next 3 hrs was spent going around the forest. We watched different kinds of birds. I loved Kingfisher bird sitting on a tree in a small island of a lake. That was a fantastic site. We couldnot see the tiger but we saw couple of other animals like Neelgai, Sambhar, Deers, lots and lots of birds. It was fun, particularly the way the driver was trying to create an atmosphere that the tiger was around. Actually I think we were close to the tiger. Most probably it was hiding under a bush. There were some peacocks on a tree near the bush and they didnt move from their position for 1 hr. Most probably they were afraid of the tiger below them. Anyway we didnot see the tiger.

We were back in the resort by 11 am. Had a heavy breakfast and again played cricket for an hr. After lunch, couple of folks(ladies and their (poor) husbands) went for shopping. Rest (including me) relaxed by the pool side. Tambola was played in the evening. After some snacks(Pakoras and Tea), we left the resort by 8. Had some light dinner on a pathetic road side dhaba close to Sawai MadhoPur Railway Station.

It was a good trip, all of us enjoyed a lot. We were least bothered of not sighting the Tiger. All of us had a good time and why not, particularly when all expenses is paid by the company :)