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HERE IS A SMALL PART OF MY TOU DIARY OF THE TOUR I UNDERTOOK FROM MAY 6TH TO 23RD.



Day 1 may 6th 2004

8 am : I am off to guindy station to pick up my friend M.S Arvind (a.k.a chatter box) who is spending , what he calls his last day in Chennai as he plans to relocate to Mumbai . it is a little sad to part off with a guy who’s been a close buddy (however foolish his pranks were ) . so we ignite college memories of the last 4 years in my home , even as I pack my luggage for my tour , for which arvind too was to come , but got a job in Mumbai,so he couldn’t join us for the tour.

1 pm drop arvind and pick up sakthi who joins me from madipakkam enrote to central and proceed in the call taxi with amma also ,coming to see me off.

4 10 pm: 25 minutes for the train to flag off and no signs of Vishnu and kishore
4 11 pm :kishore spotted near dishnet hub at central, he had been late due to his bag tearing in the last minute and him having to borrow a friends bike and do some last minute shopping buying a new bag and fitting all the clothes inside.
4 35 the train flags off and we are on our way …..the tours just begin …GT express slowly chugs it’s way out of tamilnadu …..and we meet a guy called “sandip” from the eee dept of our outgoing batch and …….the journey is full of college gossips over the last 4 years ….heroes and villains of vel tech are discussed at length till Vijayawada station comes at 11 50 pm . sandip goes back to his compartment to get some sleep as he is to get down at Ramagundam which is slated to come at 4 am .


day 2

As usual I am the first to get up in the train ….waiting for some sumptuous meal at the stopping stations as the railway breakfast in the II nd sleeper wasn’t all that good .
The whole day passes uneventfully in the train as I keep shuttling across with my friends from our compartment to the pantry and of course filling water in the wayside stations
All I remember about eating is ….I try out a Black forest cake at nagpur station . the evening is a little eventful as a fat guy comes and requests we 6 to adjust so that his child can sit (at Bhopal ) ,we agree but slowly as time passes his two other kids and his cousin are sitting along with us , with we cramped for space . we learn how cunning and deceptive people in these parts of the country can be …

Another noteworthy event was we closing our eyes and pretending to sleep whenever we heard the sound of eunuchs entering our compartment .

Day 3

We reach new delhi at 5 15 in the morning and struggle with our luggages to shift 12 platforms away to catch our 6 o clock train to kalka station (chandigarh ) . I switch on my walkman and catch a first glimpse of delhi’s private radio stations RADIOMIRCHI, RADIOCITY AND RED FM ………but an hour later ….as the train moved away from delhi …….the FM signals stop coming.

As the train chugs it’s way into Punjab the an unruly mob asks(orders rather ) shakthi and kishore to get up and they find refuge in the train steps. We go thru lands with yellowish green flowers ,pretty similar to the flowers seen in DDLJ . I am the only one to have my breakfast and lunch as others don’t seem to be in a mood to eat.

Reach kalka at 12 and relegate ourselves to a general compartment where only 2 seats to sit are available for the 6 of us . we are happy traveling footboard in this slow toy train . meet a few immature Punjabi “singhs” who tease us , feeling that “sala madrasis” wont understand hindi. We are at the butt of their comments and they start start verbally assaulting us in an indirect manner . we don’t give a ear to what those rascals have to say , but such provoking reaches a boiling point , when sakthi and I apart from our seats ,occupy their seats at a station and start cracking santa –banta sardar ji jokes “ ARE U RELAXING ? NO I AM BANTA SINGH “ a few more jokes like these and they learn the art of being quiet.

We are scheduled to reach shimla by the toy train at 5 pm , but end up being late by 3 and half hours reaching the station at 8 30 pm , thereby cutting short our intended night shopping plan. Much to our dismay the hotel we’ve booked is 5kms from the station and it would cost 150 rs to reach there as it is a sealed area. We settle into our hotel room and eat our dinner very late at a roadside dhaba ,just when it’s about to close and finally I get to charge my mobile at shimla ………the night was pretty cold …….

DAY 4

I wake up at 6 and ask the guys to come for a morning walk,but after last nights tiresome journey no one is ready to wake up. I decide to explore shimla on my own …by going for a long morning walk and have chai at a nearby dhaba. I see the ridge and the mall and head back to the hotel room (HOTEL SATKAR ) an hour later . We load our camera’s with film and test out a few photos in the room .
As we wander through shimla at noon we are approached by a travel agent there and he convinces us into taking a Toyota qualis for rent paying 4500 for 6 persons as our hotel in manali is very far off from the city and we decide to do some local sight seeing today and the next day

The guy who sits in the back seat immediately vomits ….and arvind (anand’s brother ),sakthi and jack do so …..kishore and I refuse to sit back as we are the only ones who talk hindi in the group , so we have to guide the driver (nice excuse ) .The whole day is spent whistling through the valleys enroute shimla to kullu and we stop at a native kullu cloth emporium factory where we get shawls,jerkins,sweaters ….etc at half the actual price since we bought it directly from the factory.

We drive through some of the most scariest terrains at night and finally reach our hotel (SARTHAK ) which is situated on nagger road ,8 kms from manali . On going there we dicover that the documents needed to be produced the next day at the youth hostel trekking camp were left behind at shimla ……….booooo hoooooooooooooooooooooooo


DAY 5

We get up at 5 am and bzzzzzzzz is it freezing ? it’s damn cold in the morning with patches of snow just a few glances away . it must have been around 10 degrees there. We get into our jeep at 6 30 in the morning and set off to reach ROHTANG PASS ,which I hear from the locals , that the area received heavy snow in the past few days and we might witness sub zero temperatures ……..wow ………….

We stop at a shop and take some woolen equipment on rent paying 100 bucks each and are lured into going skating/skiing , so we pay 200 per person extra and with all the gear head off to conquer rohtang !!! In between we stop at a dhaba at 11000 feet above sea level to have our breakfast (mine was …..omlette and noodles ) . Arvind still continues his vomiting streak ……..vomitting on ice …..aha at least one gets free water to wipe one’s mouth here.

Soon we entered a zone where water…….was there above sea level and nothing but water …….or ice alone was there ……….we entered small tunnels of ice driving through them and finally the point arrived. Strong winds and the whitest white snow 360 degrees allover greeted us ……and we started off by throwing ice at each other ,then marched of to a quiet corner to earmark some space ……for us to do skiing without any prohibition.

Since we paid 300 bucks per person ……we decided we will ski for at least 2-3 hrs , but that proved our undoing as the weather was terribly chill (probably -1 ,0 or 1 degree ) and to beat it the sun was shining towards our direction which was blinding in a sense ….and that sapped all our energies ……..Kishore and aanand some how still had some energy in arguing with a local over buying 10 grams of a herb powder that is available only in leh and ladakh in it’s native form. They ultimately bargained and bought 30 grams of this substance called “SHILAJEET “ which ultimately was a native version of VIAGRA ,which we found out a week later , while trekking .

We were definitely the end of it all , but I stopped to have one final look at this place where we enjoyed to our hearts content, learnt skiing and skating ……and yes bargained ….for something we wouldn’t need at this age (SHILAJEET !!!!! ) .

THE NEXT PART DEALS WITH OUR TREKKING EXPERIENCE …….FROM THE 11TH OF MAY TO 19TH OF MAY …..(BEING TYPED ) .