The Road Not Taken

I hadn’t travelled much around India except for the south. So when Prema asked if I was interested in a Sikkim trip, I yelled my yes. After a long wait, the day finally came..

Getting there
Kolkata, Siliguri (West Bengal)

First stop was Kolkata, and I reached there by flight from Bangalore. The Kolkata airport was disappointing, a sad relic for a metro. I was to stay at the IIM hostel, arranged for me by Gayathri, Prema’s friend and my soon to be co-traveller. The way to IIM (at Jokha on the other end of the city) was filled with curious sights and sounds. Kolkata took me totally by surprise, I was expecting a modern city with fancy buildings. But what met me where old dusty streets, colonial era buildings and narrow lanes filled with cycle-rickshaws. Even though initially it felt like a city stuck in the ’60s, thinking back I guess that gave an amazing charm to the city, that was very different from the other Indian cities I’ve been to.

Next day morning, we got out from Kolkata and visited some places around the city, including the Indian Museum, the Howrah bridge and the Victoria Memorial. And we were joined by the fourth traveller in the group – Deepak. By evening, after roaming around the city on rickshaws and shared taxis we reached the Sealdah railway station to catch our train towards Siliguri.

New Jalpaiguri (the Siliguri railway station) is the starting point of the famous toy train to Darjeeling. This was initially in our plans, but reaching there we found, to our disappointment, that the toy train was closed due to torrential rains and Darjeeling was on strike due to the Gorkhaland issue. With a quick change in plans, we decided to move to Sikkim a day earlier.

The journey to Pelling
Siliguri – Melli – Pelling (Sikkim)

We met our incredible driver – Mr Anjun Rai from Darjeeling – at the railway station and he was to take us up to Sikkim on his Innova. As soon as we neared Sikkim the whole landscape changed and we were now in the vicinity of the foothills of the Himalayas. The roads that were already in difficult terrain, were damaged due to heavy rain. But our ‘Schumi’ negotiated all the curves, bumps, landslides, waterfalls(!) expertly and soon we gained his complete trust. The scenery was incredible, with the road winding around green mighty mountains all around and the Tiesta river roaring in all its full glory below us. It is a sight to behold. And I would definitely rate this as one of the best (and also among the hardest) drives in India.

Pelling is famous for its majestic views of Mt. Kangchenjunga, but unfortunately the cloudy weather and all the fog around us made us miss the view. Pelling was an interesting little town though, with lot of sight seeing opportunities. We visited a few waterfalls and a rock garden. Next day we bid adieu to Pelling and headed to our next stop – Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim.

Pelling to Gangtok
Pelling – Rabdentse – Legship – Gangtok (Sikkim)

On the way back, Schumi gave us two unsolicited stop overs – one at Pemayangste and the other at Rabdentse. Pemyangste was the first glimpse (of many) Buddhist monasteries that we would visit. It was an interesting building, which is around 300 years old. The sights and sounds of the monks praying inside (no photos allowed, but you can visit the prayer hall) is something not to be missed. The second stop – Rabdentse, was our only little trek in the whole trip. It is a moderate 2 km walk on a well laid but slippery stone path away from the main road and once there you are treated with the ruins of the old capital of Sikkim. It is well organized, peaceful and full of green. We spend sometime there and after a few customary snaps we continued our journey through the mountains to Gangtok.

We made our tea-stall stop at Legship, a small temple town on the banks the Teesta. There’s a queer little pedestrian hanging bridge with the river thundering below. Spend sometime there having chai and laddu Sikkim style, with Prema engaged in her ’streetscaping’ experiments. That was our last stop and we reached Gangtok by nightfall.

Gangtok

Gangtok is a lovely small city set on the side of a hill. Being the state capital it has all the stuff you need including movie theaters, petrol pumps (a rarity in Sikkim) and even a Dominos. In the morning we did a small tour of the places in and around Gangtok – visiting more waterfalls, monasteries, museums and the awesome nature. The best pick of the lot was the journey on a ropeway above the city which gave a magnificent grand view of the Himalayan landscape around. Our last stop for the day was Tashi view point, from where we were supposed to see Kangchenjunga. We thought we had finally managed to catch a glimpse, and we were quite certain that the peak we saw was Kangchenjunga. But alas after consulting with the locals, we learned that the clouds had cheated us again. What we saw was no where near Kangchenjunga

After reaching Gangtok, we had our lunch at the delightful Tangerine restaurant, an upmarket place. After finding that I had lost my watch when we reached our hotel, Prema and I decided to walk back up to the restaurant to try our luck. We were told of a shortcut to reach the place after consulting with a traffic policeman, and to our surprise we discovered the M.G Marg. A pleasant shopping street, devoid of vehicles. We bookmarked this for later and walked up the road to hunt for my lost goods. Luckily we found it at the restaurant. On the way back we called up Deepak and Gayathri to join us on the M.G Marg, for an evening stroll around the place. Highly recommend a walk on this street anytime you visit Gangtok.

Hello China!
Gangtok – Tsomgo – NathuLa – Baba Mandir

Next day morning, after taking permits from the tourist office, we headed towards the Tsomgo lake and the Chinese border at Nathu La – treading on a part of the ancient silk route to China. This was the highest point I’ve ever been in my life – around 16000 ft high at the Nathu La trading market. On route we saw the highest telephone exchange, the highest ATM and the highest post office in India. We didn’t have permits to reach the border, and had to stop at within 3kms of it. There’s a small memorial of an Indian general there and also a cafe called the Cafe 13000 run by the Indian army. Had some delicious momos (ok, maybe delicious is a bit relative) and a hot cup of coffee up here. We were not allowed to stay for a long time, and we headed back to the Tsomgo lake. There is a small market at the lake, where we had our brunch. The noodles we got were actually transported from China just a few kilometres away . We chitchatted with the lady over there for a bit and it was time to return back. The roads were extremely difficult, and we had to take regular breaks while the army was working fulltime clearing off roads blocked by landslides.

Back to Siliguri
Gangtok – Pekyong – Rangpo – Siliguri
The way back to Siliguri was blocked again and we had to take a round about route to come down the hills. Sikkim’s new (and first) airport is coming up on this route at a village called Pekyong. That’s definitely going to make access way easier to this amazing land. We finally bid goodbye to Sikkim and to our wonderful driver Schumi at the Siliguri station. That also ended the first leg of the trip with Deepak and Gayathri leaving back to Kolkata and Prema and I going to Bodhgaya.

Bihar!
Patna – Gaya – Bodhgaya

Bihar was all what I expected and more. It is a totally different world out there and the place does lives up to the tag of the wild wild west of India. Our train had taken us to Patna, and a Rs.70 bus ride took us to the Bodhgaya gate on the highway. It was already quite late and we had to travel 3km to reach Bodhgaya proper. We met a monk, a local and two Dutch guys there, and our queer gang managed to get a shared auto up to the city. We didn’t have bookings, but managed to find a decent hotel not far from the town center.

Bodhgaya is sort of an oasis amidst the chaos of Bihar. It was a very spiritual place, and it looked like a international meeting place of countries and cultures. Lots of monasteries and Buddhist temples belonging to countries from around the globe. We visited most of them including the ones from Thailand, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Bhutan and even Bangladesh. The main attraction though was the Mahabodhi temple, were Lord Buddha attained enlightenment. It’s a well preserved monument, and its a joy to take in all the peace and serenity surrounding it.

Our train back was at 11PM in the night, but we decided to get back to Gaya, basically because it was a bit risky to travel late on the Bihar roads. It was time to wind up the long trip, as we waited a long wait at the Gaya railway station telling each other the interesting bits of our lives . And as we did that, the Rajadhani Express to Delhi, rolled in to the station.. And that was it, a great 10 day experience.

The Route

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02:15 am, National Highway 63, around 15 kilometers before Hubli…

A Mahindra Bolero screeched to a stand-still on the other side of the road. As we got out of the vehicle, I could see 2 burly guys in white shirts holding something that looked like a hockey stick. My skin went pale and I could feel a cold chill pass through my spine. Scared to death, but the first thing I thought of? ‘Finally, the “blog” incident I needed for this trip!’

Two days earlier…

This was going to be my third Goa trip in 6 months. But I was always thrilled by Goa’s atmosphere, moreover we were driving and it was my first chance to try the Scorpio. So I could safely say that I was all excited in anticipation.

For the onward journey, we had taken a rather unconventional route from Bangalore, via Belgaum into Maharashtra (Sawantwadi) and then to Goa. The roads were narrow and mountainous after we crossed the Maharashtra border. But it was decently maintained and had low traffic with the added plus of a scenic drive through the villages and mountains. We reached Goa by about 10. The next two days was spent on experiencing the things that you come to Goa for – the beaches and the booze! My co-travelers were also much luckier than me with the casinos and managed to win around 5k!

But the real adventure started after we left Goa. We took the more standard route back, via Karwar and Hubli. Somewhere on the forest roads towards Hubli, after Yellapur, our headlights started to dim out. We first thought the battery had gone weak and then realized that the alternator had burnt out. The electrical systems in the car started failing one by one and finally our headlights were gone and we were left with just one feeble park-light. There were no big settlements before reaching Hubli, which was still around 50-60 kms away. It was already 11PM and our best chance would have been to get to Hubli somehow and find a mechanic there. So we stuck to the first truck we could find with a proper enough backlight and tailed along with it, with no lights of our own at all.

After a few kilometers of tagging along, the truck driver in front of us stopped as he realized that we were in trouble. He came to have a look but there was nothing he could fix. Hubli was still 25 km away and the driver told us to keep following him, and that he’ll guide us to Hubli. So we went along. 10 km ahead and our engine cut off. There was not enough power to even drive the control unit of the engine. Tough luck. The same technology that is bread and butter for me via Bosch, made us get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

We asked the truck driver to carry on, since there was nothing more he could do. We pushed the car to the side of the road and tried in vain to reach everyone (the limited few) whom we knew of, in Hubli. We called up the Hubli traffic police and informed them of our situation. But they couldn’t do anything either till morning. We couldn’t even lock the car, because the battery didn’t have enough power to roll the car windows back up. We were basically stuck; without food or water till morning which was still 8 hours away. So we set up camp inside the car. The mood was still ok, with everyone joking about all that happened. Then came the Bolero; just after 2 o’clock while we were still sitting and chatting.

…

The two big guys rushed towards us and asked me something in Kannada. I told him I don’t understand the language very well. He gave me a cold stare, and then proceeded to go through all of our luggage. We (atleast me) were still scared to speak much. Suddenly as the Bolero moved to cross the road into our side, I noticed a green board with the lettering ‘Police’. I breathed a big sigh of relief! They asked us a lot of questions and still looked very intimidating. They told us that the road is not very safe, but what could we do – we cannot abandon the car there and go. They told us to stay there at our own risk and then get a mechanic in the morning. Then they took away 3 bottles of port wine that we had bought in Goa telling that it wasn’t legal (my @#%#)! But loosing a bit of wine was way better than what I had thought would happen initially; so it wasn’t that bad . We were terribly disappointed by the attitude they showed to us; though. Not even showing a hint of helpfulness.

After this incident I guess we all started to get tense. Only then we started to realize how much of a risk we were taking staying at that place. There were too many what-ifs running through my mind. What if the an overtaking truck knock us off the highway? What if a group of thugs come and beat us up? etc etc. I couldn’t sleep for even a bit, till the sun came back out.

Morning came as a relief of all of us. Ranjith suggested that we push start the vehicle. It didn’t seem a great idea to me; since the engine could cut off while running at any moment the battery dies out. But we decided to try and then limp ahead to Hubli some 15 more kilometers ahead. We pulled out all the equipment that could take away even a milliamp of power – the horn, the music system, the brake-light, the indicators – everything, leaving the engine control unit all the bits of power it could get to make the engine running for atleast 30 minutes. We push started the car and went as fast as we could to Hubli. And we made it! 8.30 am and we were finally back in civilization and in the Hubli railway station parking lot. We got a mechanic to repair our alternator. It took us 5 or 6 more hours; but finally we had the car repaired; all roaring to go. No worries left, we reached Bangalore, just before midnight.

All’s well that ends well!

Map of the route we took. Marker ‘F’ is approximately the place we got stuck.

Goa photos coming soon!

Goa has been in my mind for quite a long time and each time we have planned a Goa trip; something or the other would eventually block the trip somehow. So the other day two of my colleagues Arun and Gummy (Goutam) came and asked me whether I knew any place where to get a self drive rental car to go to Goa, I joked that I’ll get them one if they take me along too. In the end; we eventually left in Gummy’s Swift and not the rented car; but I still managed to get a seat along with Gummy, Mathew and their two room-mates Rakesh and Rakshak.

We started off from Bangalore in the evening; a bit apprehensive about the road conditions and driving at night. However almost everything went along smoothly except for some stretches of bad roads in between and some scary maneuvering by ’some’ of the drivers just to make sure that the ABS works We had begun a round of betting in the car as to when we would reach Goa. Bids ranged from 4.30 AM to 8.30 AM, but Rakesh got it perfect at 8. Once in Goa we had a brilliant government guest house to host us; courtesy Mr. Mathew. Along with an A/C room; a complimentary breakfast all for the price of Rs 40 per head. Now that’s what I call value for money!

After dozing off till evening; we were ready for our first (mis)adventure. We went to the Casino! I know you would be already guessing as to where this story is heading to… and yeah you are right! We went all-in and we returned all-out! But as we consoled ourselves after the fiasco; it was indeed a different experience. Now we can say that we have tasted sweet victory in a casino despite the bigger bite of bitterness in the end. Next destination was Baga beach. The shack restaurants on the beach were awesome. The atmosphere with the IPL matches going on in one place and karaoke in another one with people dancing all around was amazing. We had initially planned to go to a disc and even got entry into one (using Mr. Mathew’s influence off course). But then we were so comfortable at the shacks that we decided to drop out on that. The other reason could also be interpreted as the lack in willingness to go in a disc as a stag and drool over the hot chicks while they were dancing with other guys.. ahh.. no .. we didn’t want to look like losers! :p So we stayed at the shack very late into the night and finally came back to Panaji (were our guesthouse was) and crashed into bed.

Next day was quite the same pattern with us sleeping most of the day. Afternoon we went up to Wagathore beach where Aamir Khan and his buddies had done their gig in ‘Dil Chahtha He’. It was a short trek up to a fort near the beach. The view from there was spectacular; covered on three sides with the sea and nice looking beaches. After a few photos we headed back down. The scorching sun sucked all the energy out of us and at one point it seemed that it was impossible to move a muscle! But we overcame that and headed towards Condolim beach to do some water sports. But it was way too expensive there; so we headed to Calangute were the prices were much better. We did a round of parasailing (which is awesome; you should try it once) and also a trip on the water scooters (which is not so great; unless you convince the guy to let you drive the scooter). After that we crashed back to Baga which was not that far away.

We stayed on at the shack long into the night and then after we were convinced that we were drunk enough we headed back to Panaji. On reaching Panaji; Gummy and Mathew wanted to go back. Now that wouldn’t have been a crazy idea if Baga wasn’t 25 km away and it was already 2.30 am. But anyway I was game for it too; and Gummy, Mathew and I went back. We were caught by the police thrice; and I’m really impressed with the user-friendliness of the Goa Police. They just asked me for my driving license and when I produced it; one guy just quipped whether I was sure that it’s my photo in the DL (it was taken 6 or 7 years back you see). But that was it! They just waved us off. Cool! The trip back was really worth it and a feast to our eyes. The carnival atmosphere was still going strong even at 4′o clock in the morning! After a satisfying and ‘educational’ trip we headed back home.

Next day was our last in Goa and after filling up the car with the legal amount of liquor we were allowed to carry back we returned back to a mostly uneventful drive back. On the way we also had a short stopover at Old Goa were we visited the church of St. Francis Xavier. I had heard of this person in a Social Studies lesson in third standard and always wanted to visit his grave; where his body still lies preserved after 500 years. One more tick in my checklist. The guys also put on some temporary tattoos on their hands; I wasn’t that wild enough to do that; even though I should have tried something like that.

That was it. Our Goa trip. And in the end I can say that Goa is simply awesome. Don’t ever miss a chance to go there! If somebody asks you to arrange a self-drive car to go to Goa; always say Yes!

Went for a trip to Nandi Hills early in the morning today. We wanted to see the sunrise there, and we were lucky enough to reach there on time for that. Contrary to my expectations, it was a real nice place indeed. So close to Bangalore, yet so far from the hustle and bustle. Too lazy to write a long blog post, so I leave you with some pics. Didn’t come out as good as I expected, but trust me, it was more beautiful than what the photos could record.

Photo Credits: Espresso and Me!

We planned and even started off the latest in the series of ‘Keeral’ trips with the destination set to Goa. We even booked a place to stay there for a change, but circumstances (to be specific ‘Traffic’ and professional unpunctuality) made us end up at Chikmagalur, a good 700 kilometres away! First of all, we were left hung out to dry by some idiot in Calicut who had promised to rent us an Innova. We were delayed by around 8 hours when finally we managed to get a replacement car (a Qualis!). The plan was that Kurian and Hazer drove to Bangalore, meet the rest of the gang here and leave in the evening. But we ended up leaving Bangalore at 11.30 PM instead. And to our luck all the roads were jam packed with lorries and buses owing to the Diwali rush. So we made a quick decision to change routes and head towards Chikmagalur without having much of an idea about what to expect there.

Bad luck didn’t seem to end with the traffic though. It was around 5am now and I had been driving for around 3hrs and thinking about handing over the wheel to Hazer. But then the roads became suddenly better and I thought maybe a little bit more. Well bad judgement! As we were cruising along the superb roads, suddenly a huge gutter appeared from nowhere and before anything could be done, the car was in it with a huge thud. I knew something was wrong then and there as the steering suddenly had a jerk. We had to stop and luckily the town of Hassan was just 4 km away. We decided to limp on till there and get help. But that would mean another 3 or 4 more hours lost because the earliest of the earliest workshop guy would open shop max at 9. So we decided to do a gamble and change the front tyres because we had a feeling that the problem was that the wheel-rim was bent. Bad luck didn’t end there either, we did not have a lifting jack in the car to prop it up and change tyres. A good lorry driver lent us one though and we managed to do it and bingo problem solved!

The road from Hassan to Chikmagalur was awesome and picturesque. We stopped over at the town, had our breakfast, still having no clue as to what to do next. We called up Kurians friend and he told us about a few worthwhile places around. So we set off to the first one in the list – ‘Kemmangundi’. The road was all kaput, but the spectacular vistas made up for it more than enough. It took us a lot of time to traverse the 50 km to the place, but I would say it was great to be forced to drive slow as we could soak in the brilliant atmosphere around. We booked a place to stay there and head off to a place called ‘Point Z’. The road was motorable only for a little bit and after that you have to trek. I went along for a while but seeing the steepness of the mountains to climb I chickened out and went back to the car while the others continued. It wasn’t much of a miss though, since the peak was covered with mist. The one hour I spent waiting in the car was a totally different experience! It was mystical, alone in the forest, no access to mobile networks, knowing the nearest human is at least 5km away. I tried to soak in the experience as much as I could before my tiredness got the better off me and pushed me to sleep.

The night was spent in a dilapidated cottage playing cards and gossiping. Two years on and we still had something about college to talk about! The food was not that great and damn expensive – but that didn’t stop us from spending close to a thousand bucks there! The other major incident was the fight against the leeches. Each time somebody removes one from his leg, the next guy would start yelling ‘Leech!’ It seemed to go on endlessly. After a lot of blood and a lot of salt we managed to win the battle (it seemed).

Next day morning the plan was laid to go off to Kudremukh. We stopped over again at Chikmagalur town to have lunch and continued on to the next leg of the trip. We ended up driving most of the day, but again the roads were good and the surroundings smashtacular! At Kudremukh we went to this place called as Gangamoola which is the place were the mighty Tungabhadra river starts. It was again a nice place, but with more leeches. This time we were more careful and didn’t let too many of the slimy little things to prey on us. The only place to stay in Kudremukh is a forest department dormitory unless you are an employee of the iron ore company there. It was a very cheap option and also had the added thrill of staying right in the middle of the forest, though nothing noteworthy really happened there.

Next day was an early start since the guys had to reach back in Calicut by atleast 8PM before dropping us in Mysore. The roads again were beautiful by all means. We were able to do 200 km easily in 2-2.5 hours. By lunch time we had reached Mysore, had food at a mallu hotel there and it was time for us to split. Being totally unplanned we weren’t able to enjoy all the places to the fullest. We calculated that out of the 84 hours of the trip, around 50 was spent driving! But I’m not complaining at all! All the places we went to had a lot more to offer and I’m sure we’ll be back, well prepared next time!

Album @ Picasa

A typical Sunday in our house would be not much to speak of. It would only rank slightly above watching paint dry. So this particular Sunday we decided not to put to the dust bin, like so many before it. Someone had told about this place called ‘Sivasamudram’ and partly to quench Ranjith’s dying thirst to go on a trip on his Apache we decided to give this place a try.

We were pretty punctual to start off with, planned being a 6 am start and realizing a 7 am start – pretty good for our standards. We took the Mysore road from Bangalore, knowing that it is probably 30km extra. We had a quick bite at one of the many ‘pure’ vegetarian dhabas en route and rode along. The road was excellent and the guys had a great time ripping along. We left Mysore road at Maddur towards Malavalli. That also meant pretty much the end of proper roads. The road from then on were glorified country roads at best. The traffic though was light and the scenery awesome. It was hard to believe all this was less than 100 km away from the hustle and bustle of Bangalore.

We reached the place by around 11 having taken some lavishly long breaks on the way. It was not that difficult to find as there were plenty of signs to guide us. Sivasamudram’s claim to fame is its two waterfalls and the fact that Asia’s first hyro-electric power plant is situated there. As we were not very interested in the latter, we headed straight to the first of the falls – ‘Gaganchukki’. The waterfalls were just grand! The sound, the view everything was amazing. But there were just too many people and it seemed highly commercialized even for Indian standards. We spend some time there taking snaps.

The second waterfall, the ‘Bharchukki’ even though visible quite clearly from here was actually an 18km drive away. That place looked grand again, but was more crowded and dirtier (I mean extremely dirty) than the first one. However again the view just made up for it. There is another waterfall quite close to it and you can go down and have a dip in the water if you want to. We did go down, but the water was too crowded to warrant a dip. A word of caution though – going down would seem quite easy, but bear in mind that the farther you go down, the greater the panting you’ll have to do while you climb back up

Just after noon we started off back. We made a horrendous decision to take the Kanakpura road to Bangalore. The road was just about navigable at best. It took us a lot more time even though the distance was much lesser. On the way, the only notable incident was that the Splendor (our other bike) lost its headlight. So we had to guide Bachu all along back to Bangalore. It was a little bit too tiring for my liking going on a bike. Well, I am more of a car person I guess Anyhow it is a nice getaway if you wish to kill some time when you are in Bangalore. Its worth it, just to soak in the peace and calm of the villages despite the crowd at the destination.

Route: Bangalore – Maddur (via Mysore road SH 17) – Malavalli (SH 33) – Sivasamudram (NH 209) 134 Km
Alternate (highly not recommended) : Bangalore – Kanakapura – Malavalli – Sivasamudram (NH 209 all the way). 119 Km