Vishnu and I had set out from Chennai on Oct 31st to explore North East India. Our journey was very long and involved different modes of transportation. One thing we knew was, no matter how far or how long it would take, it is gonna be worth it, and guess what, IT WAS!
From Chennai we took a Flight to Kolkata. Our flight experience was pretty weird. the airlines called us up 2 days prior to the journey informing us on the change of timings. We religiously followed their time table and reached the airport 2 hours in advance (the flight timings were advanced), the weird part is, the flight was delayed for 2 hours and we finally took off at the same time as before! Grr..
At Kolkata we had 4 hours before our train to NJP and we decided to check out the most wanted tourist spot in Kolkata - The Victoria memorial. The cab ride to this place was quiet an adventure as we did not know how on earth he fit his big ass cab in between 2 lorries and 3 bikes! The cab driver stopped at a strange dark quiet place telling us “Victoria Memorial aa gaya” - We turned 360 degrees to spot where the monument was, but couldn’t spot anything except bushes and trees. Our hearts sunk thinking that we have been cheated by the Cab and he has for some reason Kidnapped us! (hehe…we should have realised that we are no celebs). The cab driver had to “literally” convince us that he brought us to the right place and because of our strange reaction he quickly took his fare and drove away. Like aliens we walked towards the trees and then found the huge monument hiding in the DARK! To our surprise, the Victoria Memorial was not lit and we could not capture the beauty in the night! :-( the only good part was the surrounding garden. We simply witnessed the ‘Colourful Fountain Dance” at the gardens and headed to Sealdah Station…
At the station we took our dinner @ the “humble” IRCTC cafeteria. (I will explain the “humble” - ness in my forthcoming posts…). We ate some quarter dozen bread omelettes (only 3 duh!) and waited for our train to arrive. As the train arrived at the station, we saw a huge crowd of people very obediently getting into a queue at the platform. Trust me, I have never seen such a disciplined queue anywhere before! This queue was guarded by the Cops (of course, what do you think we Indians were born with discipline in the blood?)- This queue was to get into the “unreserved” bogie! Luckily we had confirmed tickets and did not get into this ever-growing queue. The overnight train to NJP (New Jalpaiguri) was comfortable and yes, well lit! (Thank God!) - NJP was our starting point to our 1 week long vacation and we wanted to get there as fast as we could (or rather as fast as the steam engine could).
The train started and so was our reading time..:) We read for a few hours until we heard our co-travellers complain about lights not turned off. We bid good-bye to our beloved books and the co-travellers and proceeded to see some beautiful dreams :)
Some photos and lots more stories coming up next »
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