Tagged: travel

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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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!

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

I rarely travel by train, mostly because of the difficulty in getting the tickets, the inconvenient timings and the thought of going to Bangalore railway station in rush hour traffic. But apart from this, it is probably the most comfortable cost efficient way to travel to Trivandrum. Especially ever since they (re)started charging big bucks for flights.

The beauty of a train journey is that you observe life around you. In a bus its more like, sticking an iPod in your ear, wondering why you never get the seat next to a girl, praying that the driver stops soon rather than testing your bladder control. Don’t know why, but the whole set-up for socializing is missing in a bus journey. Train is different. You seem to feel more comfortable to strike a conversation and you get to know a lot about your co-travellers, even without a word being uttered.

On this Onam trip to Trivandrum from Bangalore, I had this very interesting but typical gang as my fellow passengers. Passenger A, was the typical mallu hero. He comes from this small town near Trivandrum, now making it big in a big-shot company in Bangalore. He likes to tell his tales, his tales of glory especially when there is a girl next to him (Aw! Sounds eeriely similar to me ). Very quickly he takes on the protector role of Ms. Passenger B. For a moment Ranjith (who was travelling with me) and I, thought both of them had come together, then thought maybe they were college mates, then maybe old friends, then as their conversations progressed came to know that they had first laid eyes on each other on this very train. Passenger B was smart too. She made good use of the situation. In no time, poor Mr. A was running around getting water bottles, pushing heavy luggage, ordering food etc. etc. And then they started talking about Bangalore traffic and why you don’t get train tickets and yeda yeda. So attention had to shift.

There is always one pretty girl on the train who seems to be not concerned about the world around her. We had our own Passenger C to play that role. As soon as she came and sat, she pulled out a book and started reading it with vigour as if the fate of the world hangs on whether she completes the book in time or not. The other people in the compartment are unimportant subjects when it comes to our lady, but at the same I’m pretty sure she’s well aware that the glances of all the males in the compartment tend to converge on her. At least I’m sure about my case, since she caught my glance a couple of times hehe. Alas, the queen went to her hive too soon and in the morning as I woke up from my middle berth the lady was already out.

Then there was Passenger D and Passenger E. Mr. D is a perfect artist interested in watching classical French films (without subtitles by the way) and is also intelligent enough not to waste a single rupee as he knows how to use torrents. Mr. E doesn’t seem to be interested, but definitely now has great knowledge of the technology behind torrents, 70mm movies and why Heath Ledger doesn’t deserve an Oscar and some obscure French guy does.

Mr. F is an ‘almost’ fresh graduate out from an engineering college in Kerala. The first people he talks to are us and we start the regular flow of questions –

and in no time it is proven that I know all his friends and he knows all mine!

Then there were two guys absolutely bored. They gossip about old college mates, discuss world matters, ponder about the future of software engineering, wonder whether Chrome can beat Firefox.. more or less putting on a show that they know what they are talking about and at the same time ensuring that others (specially the pretty girl) are noticing them. But then all of a sudden, all topics come to an end. Nothing more to do, they start to observe the people around them. And as they make fun of others, and while one is planning on how to structure his next blog on these observations, they come to know… all these things they told about everyone else, every single one of the traits they can find in either themselves or their close friends. ‘They’ are ‘us’. God sure seems to have used the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V technique a lot when he was programming our genes. Good one my Lord! A true microcosm of people I know, didn’t I say trains were cool?

Bytes were being churned, products were being released, books were being digested and Life continued monotonously. It was time to go off the beaten track again and this time our journey took us to that majestic corner of Kerala called Wyanad.

Bachu, Kurian and I started off from Bangalore towards Kozhikode on a rainy night. There we were joined by Ranjith, Hazer, Anand bhai and Bose from such far away lands as Chennai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram The plan was to rent a car and drive into Wyanad and as usual do what we do best – go where the roads take us. Using the deep rooted network of Bachu (the king of Kozhikode) we managed to rent a Toyota Innova without driver at a very cheap rate.

First day we started off with the goal set to Kuruva islands, but on the way after some typical spontaneous (in)decision making, we shifted target to Chembra peak. The route to Chembra is through a private estate and you need to pay a 20 rupee gate pass to take your vehicle through. We could travel only up to the end of tea estate and from there began the long 5Km (estimated) trek. It was incidentally Bose’s birthday that day and we gave him a grand celebration he will not forget, atop a small forest guards’ watch tower on the way to the peak. Half way through the path to the peak, yours truly lost all his stamina and decided to wait, while others tried for glory. It was a big miss though, and from the photos they took the peak was an amazing place with a small reservoir on top of it! Anyway Chembra is definitely in the must-visit list for Wyanad.

By evening we left Chembra for Thirunelly. The drive through the forest in the night was fun. The major attraction in Thirunelly was an ancient Vishnu temple there, and in another first for our trips, this was the first spiritual destination in all of the 16 trips we have had. We only just had time to have a quick darshan just before the temple closed at 8PM. That night we stayed at a decent government owned lodge there costing us merely 40 bucks per head.

After visiting Lord Vishnu again the next morning, we headed down towards the Kuruva islands. En route, I managed to put the car into a small gutter resulting in some annoyed looks from the co-passengers. Shrugging off their looks I continued on and 100 metres ahead as I looked into my rear view mirror, I could see a tyre lying on the road behind us! And yeah you guessed right, it was one of ours! Shocked, my first reaction was “Oh my god! Am I driving on 3 wheels?” Well that couldn’t be.. it was only our spare tyre that somehow slipped from under the chassis. Hazer the master took to the task and in no time we had the tyre back up. It was an experience especially since all this happened right in the middle of the forest and we had seen 2 or 3 boards saying ‘Do not stop your vehicle’ and ‘Do not leave your vehicle’.

We did’nt find Kuruva island that interesting, but probably because we expected more because of a lot of hype surrounding it. Anyway crossing the river by walking across it to reach the island was not that bad. We left the place by afternoon in search of a lesser known destination Meenmutty waterfalls near the Tamil Nadu border. This is one thing you should not miss! I do not know how to explain the adrenalin, the nature, the greenery in words. You have to be there to believe it. The place requires a 5KM walk of which 4KM is a treacherous climb down through non-existent paths. It was the most thrilling experience I have ever had. For every small step you take, you need to convince your brain that you are not going to die. Seriously!

It was an early start to Sunday as we headed towards the Muthanga wild life reserve. Though we were early, we were unlucky and couldn’t see too many animals except for some deers, foxes and peacocks. Hard luck! But anyway the forest experience was enjoyable indeed. By afternoon after a brief stop over at Banasurasagar dam, it was time to head back home. The journey back again was another adventure. We had to stand all the way from Kalpetta to Mysore in a KSRTC FP and just about got seats in the last non-stop bus from Mysore to B’lore, reaching home somewhere around 2AM.

It was tiring but brilliant fun! So glad that these trips keep on going.. on and on… Lesson for the day? When you need a break, go back to nature, its well worth the effort

The Route:

Kozhikode – Kalpetta – Meppadi – Chembra
Chembra – Meppadi – Panamaram – Thirunelly
Thirunelly – Kattikulam – Kuruvadweep
Kuruwadweep – Meenangadi – towards TN Border – Meenmutti
Meenmutti – Sultan’s Battery – Muthanga
Muthanga – Sultan’s Battery – Ambalavayal – Banasurasagar Dam
Banasurasagar Dam – Kalpatta – Sultan’s Battery – Gundalpet – Nanjancode – Mysore – Bangalore

Tips:

• Petrol pumps are few and far between, so ensure that your tanks are filled at the major towns.
• Keep your base as Kalpetta or Sulthan Bathery and then plan as it is difficult to get acco. at other places, unless you are looking at expensive resorts.
• Have some salt handy as leech attacks are possible in the forest.
• When going into the forest, do visit the nearest forest department office as they might have important information and some places do require a written permission from the department to travel into (which is free of cost).
• English is more or less understood but don’t always bet on it especially in the more remote areas, so it is always better to do your homework and plan if you do not have someone with knowledge of Malayalam with you.
• Enjoy the forest and don’t complain too much about inconveniences, because the whole point of going to the forest is that it is a Forest… away from civilization!

In the first 22 years of my life, I have never been anywhere far from home. To be precise, never even been beyond the south of the country. And now here I am… 8 months in Europe, having visited 8 countries, experienced cultures totally different from what I am used to… It would not be an understatement to say it was all a life changing experience.

So what did I find different? The people, the attitudes, the landscape, everything is different, sometimes better, sometimes worse. The most important thing I learned is that if the attitudes are right, and everybody does what they are supposed to do, the whole setup just works. The foundations are similar and it is not impossible to make the setup work even in India, just that nobody is willing to make the change. Ok, I am not going to start preaching… And definitely not everything was perfect here and in a lot of things India has done much better, we just dont realize it.

On to the less serious matters… As you can see from the blog, I did travel a lot and had a lot of experiences. I had a lot of fun. Here I present my ‘Top 10′ (yeah, I can see some of you laughing ) experiences in Europe…

1. Driving in the autobahn
2. Formula 1 at Nuerburgring
3. Ocktoberfest
4. The 5 days spent driving around Norway & Sweden
5. Venice – absolutely beautiful
6. Neuchwanstein – the fairy tale castle
7. Berlin on a rainy day
8. Vfb Stuffgart vs Wolfsburg – the football match live!
9. Trekking in Oberstdorf
10. Europa park

I was also very lucky to have a few of my close friends here with me during the whole time. Having them here, the time spent with them & the trips with them, ranks above all. What would I have done without you guys!

When this gets posted and if everything goes right, I would have already left Germany…

Auf wiedersehen, Deutschland!