My Incredible India Discovery

All of us were having busy days at work and needed an excuse to escape work-dom! As random as it can get, we decided one evening to do a full day outing to Tada. Mainly to hang out and bug Mewan during his last days in Chennai :P. So in a matter of an hour, we had our cab booked, route decided and group excited for the trip :)

Date: Oct 2, 2012
Janta: Mewan, Ramya, Raj, Jeeva, Srini, Vishnu, Me :)
Destination:  Tada (aka Ubbalamadugu Falls)

We decided to leave early morning from Chennai so that we could reach Tada at a decent time and get good amount of time to trek. The cab picked up Raj, Jeeva first (they were the bakra's to wake up early) and then picked up Ramya, after which they came to pick us (Mewan, Vishnu and Me) up. This was probably my 6th trip to Tada falls, though with separate gangs! Tada is close to 2 hrs drive from Chennai towards Chittor. The drive is pretty good until you reach the entry point of Tada. After which it gets a little uneven with almost no roads.
Until my last visit, Tada was not really a big hangout place and there were almost no shops/security/entrance fee/parking lots. This time, loads of change! There was a specific entry fee charged for every vehicle and for folks with Cameras. They also checked vehicles for liquor! Looks like Andhra tourism department found a new way to get some income ;)
We started trekking towards the falls close to 11 am. The trek started with a long walk on a not so stoney path. The small stones turned into bigger ones and then got more complicated with a pile of rocks! All of this was along the stream which is created due to the falls and we had to cross the stream several times during the trek. At some points, it was easier to walk in the water than get on to the shore and climb the rocks! Not complaining, as the stream water was amazingly clear and cold, we loved getting drenched in that water. Our walk went on for close to 3 hours until we hit a point where it was impossible to climb - impossible not because of our capability but because of the amount of crowd present! It was a herd out there, As if Gandhi bapu had specifically asked people to gather at Tada for a march or something!
We couldnt reach the actual falls due to the heavy mass of people :( Better luck next time! Anyways, All of us had our share of adventures during the trek - I lost the sole of my shoes (Yes! this has happened to me at the same place before!), Srini fell while jumping from one rock to another! Ramya had a royal fall from a small rock (she calls it hillock), Vishnu slipped a couple of times and scared the stones! Jeeva slipped too - I am assuming it was because of the slimy stones, but you never know who he spotted and slipped ;)..And Mewan lost his walking stick :P Nevertheless,  all of us had an awesome time teasing Ramya and Mahes babu, making fun of Raj at every thing he spoke, fighting with Mewan whenever he tried to pull my leg and making funny faces wherever we saw a camera focusing on us!

We returned back to our cab completely exhausted and starving! We had walked for close to 6 hours and had woken up every muscle, ligament and bone in our bodies. The only thing we wanted now was a good meal and sleep! We grabbed a nice hearty lunch on the way back and then enjoyed the car ride back home with Jeeva as the DJ :)

For those of you who are interested to go there/just curious:
Route to Tada: http://goo.gl/maps/54l0v
About Tada: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbalamadugu_Falls

OK, I realize that this post has been due for more than a month now. Sorry folks I just got caught up with maid madness and life as such :) So, now I am here trying to do justice to this beautiful travelogue of mine and making sure that you still enjoy reading my blog :)

Sometime early March 2010 our gang @ work decided to do a weekend trip. We had many options, From Pondicherry to Elephant valley, to Wayanad, to Goa, to Pune. We had almost finalized going for a 3 day trek on the out skirts of Pune and realized that it cannot happen cos we were all from the same team and all of us cannot take the same day off :( [Lesson 1: Never make friends gang from the same team...lol]

Then we said, to hell with the leave, let’s just go chill out in Goa. Praveen made the entire plan in like half an hour and we were all excited to go there! - Guess what, that also flopped, this trip would 1. cost us more than we thought 2. would need us to take 2 days leave..(back to square one). Finally, we all settled for a nice, neat nature trip to Kabini.
Why Kabini? - err simple. It can be visited during the weekend and nobody needs to worry about taking leave. Yes, some of us had already been there with a different set of friends, but that was not a problem at all.
So, as usual, like the enthu-patani I went ahead and booked train tickets, accommodation in Kabini River lodge, Cab service from Mysore - Kabini - Mysore for 8 of us. Super-duper excited that all of us are finally going somewhere!!!!! But, all the excitement came down in no time, when we figured out that out of the 8, 1 had to go to US, other had project deadlines and other two had sudden/urgent commitments at home. So our 8 person gang shrunk to just 4! [Lesson 2: Avoid making advance book for any trip :p] However, the good part is, the 4 of us stuck to the plan like glue and decided to make it come what may.
On July 23rd 2010 we took the train from Chennai to Mysore (Mysore express). The train journey was pretty historic for the reason that, Aanchal, was travelling in a train for the very first time!! (Yippee!!). She had no idea how a SL class in the train would be and it was fun answering doubts like: middle berth kaha se ayegi? upper berth pe kaise chadte hain? Koi Shoes le gaya toh? etc etc. Another historic moment is Praveen finally learnt how to play cards :) hehehe. He hates playing cards but because of popular demand (i.e. 3 out of 4) he had to learn. We first bugged him with "5 cards" and then we super-bugged him with "UNO". Our man was the champ in UNO by the end of the trip ;) [Lesson 3: There is always a chance to learn new things ;) ]. After the cards session we were all set to sleep when Aanchal said "story sunao" - and whenever she said that, the prompt response she got was "Ek gau mein ek kisaan raghu tatha. Toh kisaan ka naam kya hain?" lol... We did finally entertain her with various stories from our life. Praveen was so ignorant that he snored when Vishnu and I were animatedly reciting our love story! Aanchal also did share some stories from her life, which I would refrain from mentioning here (obviously!)

July 24th: Day 1 @ Kabini - We reached Mysore in the morning and we had our cabbie waiting with a placard. We set out for Kabini after a quick breakfast at a nearby hotel. The road trip was scenic and musical - Our driver had songs from God-knows-which-era that we had to plead him to put something more recent and understandable! We reached Kabini River lodge in 3 hours and we were pleasantly surprised by the campus. The place was well maintained and the lodge rooms looked elegant. We explored the campus, jumped on to the tyres hanging on the tree and climbed a tree and took some funny photos until we got our rooms. 
We were asked to assemble for lunch and then our Jeep safari was @ 3 pm. The lodge, not only had good rooms, they had very friendly people to help us out and also had some good food served :). After hogging well at the lunch, we started our jeep safari. the weather was simply awesome, cloudy, cold and drizzling. Praveen took out his heavy binoculars to spot Cheetahs and leopards, but it could only spot spotted dears. The more we looked around, the more dears, yeah in cycle gap we saw peacock. langur, Elephants, kingfisher and many more birds and animals. But to our bad luck no leopard came to honor our presence :( [Lesson4: Go to Kabini during summer, there are more chances of spotting a leopard] We finally ended our day with loads of UNO games and idea photos ;)

July 25th: Day2 - Our day started very early in the morning, by 6 am we were out for our second round of safari - boat safari :). The river was serene and beautiful. We spotted many birds , sambar deer and an elephant crossing from one side of the river to the other. Our morning safari ended in couple of hours, and we again came back without any signs of a leopard :(. We packed our bags and left Kabini with the hope that next time we come here, the leopard  will be nice to us :) We spent the rest of the day @ Mysore. We saw the Mysore palace, St. Mary’s Cathedral (One of the oldest ones) and did some random shopping too :) We had far too much time to spend before our train and were desperate to find a place where we could just sit and yap! We landed in the same hotel where we had breakfast on Day1. We spent 3 hours over 1 cup of tea and the restaurant guy started giving us dirty looks [Lesson 5: Never book a return ticket so late in the night]. We played decent and left the restaurant before the manager came and chucked us out! We decided to just go to the Mysore Station and wait! The friendly driver dropped us back to the station and watched people come and go and comment on every creature on the platform until our train appeared.  We were delighted to step on to it and get back to pavilion :) and that marked the end of our trip :)
So, finally we made a trip and had a super time too :) Looking forward for more...praveen where are we going next?

I recently went to an ECO Beach Resort in Pondicherry called - The Dune. I heard about this one from one of my friends from Pondy and he kept saying it’s a nice place to go to! I finally made it there on my anniversary (wow I wrote my previous post here while I was honey mooning and now It’s anniversary). Anyways, our anniversary fell on a weekend and for celebrating we wanted to go to a nice place which didn’t ask for loads of travel, and bingo! We went to Pondy!
What can I say about this place, I initially thought that it was an over-hyped, over-priced place made for the firangs who visit Pondy and I and Vishnu would probably be the only Indians around! I am so glad i thought wrong! - The place was heaven! It had nothing high fundu about it, a place made with simplicity and common sense. The cottages are not luxurious and hep, but cosy and serene. I must say the place is little expensive, but I also think that it is a trade off for being close to nature. The cottage we took was "The Flex House". It was supposedly sea-facing - but after tsunami, they grew tall trees/bushes in front of the cottages (Govt rule). The cottage would be a size of a one bedroom apartment. The wall and windows were illuminated and the bed was placed right in the center of the room (Like a big box in the middle of the room). The windows would open to a sitting area facing a small lawn which had a tiny lotus pond, a hammock and a bench. We were given 2 cycles and were told to feel free to cycle around the place.
I have never driven a cycle in my life (though I have driven Scooty, Kinetic Honda and every other small bike). I took inspiration from my hubby and sat on the cycle, nervous! After a few meters of cycling (and him running after me) I finally got the knack and Yippppeeee!!!!!!!! I could CYCLEEEEEE! We spent most of the evening cycling and exploring the property. We finally parked our cycles near to the beach and spent hours looking at the soothing water. We as usual got into our funny photos mood and went click click click :).
We came back from the beach later in the evening and as we got into the cottage...Tada...surprise!!!!!! We had a beautiful flower decoration done on the floor. This surprise was given by The Dune staff :) So nice of them, I thought! We spent some lazy hours and finally went for dinner cycling :). As we entered the fully lit restaurant, the manager routed us away from the restaurant to the tables outside in the lawn. As we approached, I figured we were in for a surprise again! Yes, I was right; the table was beautifully decorated and specially reserved for the both of us :) We had a nice long romantic candle lit dinner and were waiting for our huge bill to arrive and that's when another surprise struck us! The manager, the chef and the waiters all gathered at our table with a small cake which said "Happy Wedding Anniversary" and a big card with a big drawing and signatures of all the staff @ The Dune! We cut cake and thanked for their surprises! Both of us surely enjoyed that moment and completely fell in love with the place.
I was happy that we went there to celebrate our special day! We completely enjoyed our short stay and we never wanted to come out from there. The weekend went by in a swift and the next day we were back to the scorching hot city called Chennai and were back to our normal routines as well!
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/sak.adeeb/TheDuneFeb2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCNz36Mmtkc6cAw
About the Dune: http://www.thedunehotel.com

Now that most of the sightseeing and traveling is over, i would refrain on writing posts after posts about our return journey. Lachen was again unbearably cold the next day and We were anxious to get back to the hot plains. We headed back to Gangtok that day after another 5 hour drive down the mountains. Teesta River kept us company all along and both of us finished our last bits of brownie and muruku to distract ourselves from the ever "rocking" journey. We bid farewell to our heroic driver at Gangtok and took rest in the same hotel and in the same room (Wonder if they kept it empty for us).
Next morning our ride arrived at around 11 am. We visited the Gangtok Handicrafts museum on the way back to pick up some souvenirs for the team back in Chennai. We were allowed to see the folks who actually work there and make this stuff; Very impressive. We finally settled on a bamboo stick base pen holder with golden dragons (for the guys) and orchids (for the gals) painted on it. The new driver was extremely fast and brought us back to New Jalpaiguri 4 hours before the train time!
We as usual started hunting a restaurant at the station and spotted the evergreen IRCTC cafeteria. (Remember him from Kolkata station don't u?). We had few dosas and omelettes (as usual) and I was so thankful they made some decent food. They were atrociously cheap (yes you saw it right, Cheap). Their food quality was not the best in town but decent enough to feed the hungry souls like us. Their quantity was far more than what HSB gives in a complete Rs.70 Meal! Hail IRCTC! Though you are not the best, you are not the worst either!
We bought more books and parked ourselves at the platform until our train arrived. I started writing important pointers for my blog (yes this blog) and made sure I don't forget those small but important facts about the trip. I was also on a reading spree and bought more books to while away my time.
The train dropped us back to Sealdah station and we chose not to go to Victoria Memorial again and headed towards the Airport! We bought more books at the airport and Vishnu caught up on the Current affairs from the local Newspaper. In a few hours we were back to Pavilion and Appa (My father in Law) was eagerly waiting to receive us!

What a Trip! Surely the best so far and I hope I do more of these again! As I say good bye to this post, I would like to thank some people who really made this trip the best!

- My Travel Agent - Savion Travels. Especially Mr. Pankaj and Mr.Anand for arranging everything from NJP and back!
- Mr. Ram - Our very wise driver - Showed us the most beautiful sunrise and took us to some breath taking spots.
- The Hotels - Fortune Resort, Darjeeling. Royal Demazong, Gangtok. Fortuna Lodge, Lachen - They served us unconditionally and made us comfortable in the not-so-comfortable weather conditions.
- Mr. Kumar - Our driver from Gangtok to Guru-Dongmar and back. No matter how slow you were, you were surely courageous enough to drive through those paths for a living!
- IRCTC Cafeteria @ Kolkata and NJP - You fed us well and didn’t charge a fortune!
- The cook @ Lachen - You served us the best food ever!
- The book stalls at every station and airport - You are the source of a lot of time pass.
- Finally, Mother India - You are simply beautiful!

Well. Looks like my blog is hibernating in Lachen and it's high time we woke up!

We had numerous alarms waking us up from sleep. We didn’t hear most of the alarms, not cos of sleep, but we were drowned in multiple layers of blankets! The lodge didn’t provide us a heater in the room by default and at 4 am we were nearly close to freezing. The room was comparatively small and just about enough for both of us and 2 small boxes of luggage to fit in. Both Vishnu and I caught a cold (Actually allergy from one of the furry bed sheets) and were sneezing most of the time. We somehow managed to wake up and get ready. For the first time in the trip, I took out my thermal wear and wore it with no hesitation. My leather gloves somehow just didn’t generate enough heat and I just felt numb. The cook was very nice to us and woke up much before us to prepare some tea and pack some breakfast. Our skinny driver showed up sharp at 5 and we started our journey to Guru-Dongmar in the dark. You must be thinking why so much hype for this place where we are going. I actually felt the same way! Aisa toh kya hain yaar that we fought with cold and sleep to get there! I would prefer answering this a little later in the post :)

So, here we were, having a camel ride in our jeep. The rocks and stones on the road just grew bigger and it hurt us more. Most of the route had steep hair pin bends with no barricades built (Too much to expect). After few hours of climbing we landed in "Thungu" for breakfast. The first breakfast ever at the height of 14,000 ft above sea level! A local family received us and the lady heated up the bread, butter and jam (which the cook packed) and served us tea. We never found the smoky bread, ghee like butter and melted jam so tasty! All we wanted was something to warm us up!! The place had a fire place in the center of the room and all of us sat around it (imagine villagers sitting in front of a campfire). The snow capped mountains were much closer to us. We saw smoke coming out of our noses and mouths...hehe.. There was snowfall in Thungu and the roads were covered with frozen ice. The streams around were all frozen like a refrigerator’s freezer box!
After the quick breakfast we had a 2 hour drive and 3,000 feet more to climb! My back started to hurt and I could no more take to jerks and breaks. We were praying to get to this "God forbidden" Place soon. I had numerous questions running on my mind "Mein kaha hu? mein yaha kya kar rahi hu?..mein kyun yaha hu?" - Only questions with no answers. Vishnu's cold was getting worse and I was afraid he will come back with a non-functional nose! We spotted many military camps and training centers and finally halted at a check post 15,000 feet above sea level. The army personnel insisted us to stand in the open ground for a few minutes as the oxygen level was low and he wanted us to get used to it before we went higher. The check post was pretty small and it was right in the center of a huge ground. The landscape had changed too, No greenery, only brown rocks and white snow! As we approached the Guru-Dongmar Lake, we spotted a temple like construction and some more tourists too. Phew! we were not the only fools to make this trip (I thought). I was already growing disappointed by the approaching temple (Don’t tell me ye dekhne ke liye humne itni tapasya ki!), but wait! As the jeep was nearing, we discovered a BEAUTIFUL Lake! The place was too breezy and hindered us from opening our eyes. The Lake was awesome, glittering in the sunshine and shadows of the snow capped mountains falling on the water; Simply Adorable!! They say that it’s impossible to stay here after 12 in the afternoon as it gets too windy. We stood there for exactly 5 minutes and were ready to head back to Lachen! Trust me, It was worth the effort. The 5 hour drive for a 5 min look at a lake in between the gigantic snow capped mountains is surely worth it!
We had now started to dread our trip back; I am more scared of getting down the steep hair pin bends than climbing! What if the driver loses his balance and leaves the breaks! Went through the 5 hour torture all over again in the reverse order and reached the Lodge by late afternoon! It felt like "To the moon and back".. What a ride! We could smell nice food and couldn’t wait to hog! The lodge manager was nice to us and arranged a room heater (What a savior) and we hogged lunch in peace and warmth! We spent the rest of the day in the lodge doing almost nothing! Just kept drinking teas and eating hot rotis and sabzi and tried to make sure that the room heater worked. (Gosh cold weather made me hungry!)
The day had been extremely hectic and a relaxing evening helped both of us to take care of our “ever-running” noses! Lachen was freaking cold that day and we kept wrapping ourselves in as many layers as possible. (It reminded me of my NJ days where I would be bundled up all day!)

It’s so cozy and comfortable. My thick beautiful rose printed blanket covered me completely! I could hear him moving around the room, taking pictures, watching tv and just generally whiling away time as I refused to wake up! I finally felt bad for him and managed to unwind from my blanket. I must say this hotel was the best in the trip - but we spent the least time here! We were instructed to be ready by 10 for our trip to Lachen. I again got lost in the welcoming bathroom and took my own sweet time to get ready, I gave more than "own sweet time" for him as well! By 9 am we were ready and we already had rats playing bhangra in our stomachs a.k.a Hungry!
The restaurant at the hotel had the same name as the one in Darjeeling "The Orchid" - and it also happens to be my favorite flower too - It's just a coincidence damn it! (Sivaji aka Rajni). We hogged numerous omelets and toasted bread. We were the only ones in the restaurant and assumed the entire breakfast buffet as ours! The waiter(s) were very sweet to us while serving :-) and were probably thinking "Complementary breakfast ka fayda uthaving eh" – Never mind!
We spent some time walking around the premises of the hotel and taking some more "idea" photos as we were waiting for our ride to arrive. We could hear every vehicle passing by the main road (which was probably 100 meters from us), our big Mahindra jeep finally arrived and a thin, tiny, skinny driver appeared. I wondered if he could even drive the jeep properly. Trust me I thought wrong (you will discover it as we go on with the trip). Our jeep had the sticker "Praise the Lord" similar to the sticker I had on my previous Maruti - Again a coincidence damn it :)
On the way, we visited the "Seven sisters Waterfalls" - Apparently Seven waterfalls together one above the other. We could actually spot 5 and didn’t know where the other 2 sisters were - May be playing in the garden ;) lol. The water and the sun rays collided beautifully to create a mini rainbow; Lovely indeed.
I would avoid getting into too much of details (I would land up writing a novel otherwise) and would try to stick to the important things only :) The roads started to become non-existent as we proceeded. Every path we drove was either filled with stones/rocks/water. It was initially very exciting and looked very adventurous, but as we climbed higher it became too scary. The path was so narrow that I could not imagine 2 vehicles crossing at the same time. But guess what, a huge Army van and our car would pass each other with a centimeter gap. I was unfortunately sitting at the side where the vehicles would pass by! We had the "Teesta" river accompany us all along the trip. We spotted water from every height, width and angle. So many small streams and waterfalls contributed to Teesta. We crossed almost 15 waterfalls during the ride and we didn’t bother to click any pictures as we were having a camel ride (both in speed and feel) and we wouldn’t have got any stable photos! Our bums started to ache and we were growing impatient. The driver had a little mercy on us and halted for lunch at a nice and small restaurant. The good part about this place was - we didn’t have to pay for what we ate here, we don’t get to order either - Food just appears on the table. We had good lively music to keep us alive and rejuvenate ourselves from the painful ride.
No matter how painful it was, I must say the mountains were very attractive; Mysterious and gigantic. Hats-off to "BRO" (Border roads Organization) for taking the effort to create this route. In fact, they are in the process of laying roads on this route and am hoping it will be built before my kid is old enough to visit Sikkim ;-) BRO also painted messages like "Be gentle on my curves", "Please horn while you turn", "No hurry No worry" etc which kept us entertained during the journey :)
The drive from Gangtok to Lachen took us almost 6 hours. Teesta was enjoying every bit of water and we were far from enjoying as we held ourselves tight to avoid jumping and hitting our heads against the roof! I could already see Vishnu frowning to every bump/rock which approached us! It was 6 in the evening when we saw "Lachen". It was already pitch dark and we had no mood/inclination to go anywhere after that. It was pretty cold and we chose to spend the rest of the evening in the lodge. The lodge was a very basic place with absolutely nobody staying there. Thankfully there was a cook ;) He fed us with some yummy food and we hit the bed very early! But before that, the driver came and told us – “Kal subah 5 baje nikalna hain” and we were like - NO, Not again! The driver insisted on taking us to "Guru Dongmar lake" and finally convinced us to be ready by 4:30 am!
We wished "Good night" to Lachen by 8:00 pm and entered dream world in no time! What a day it was!

Yaaaawnnnn! Its 3 am and I am sooooooo sleeeeefy! Vishnu woke up promptly and got ready and i was still feeling lazy. Woke up quarter to 4 and managed myself to look presentable. By the way, today Nov 3rd is pati dev's birthday too! What a way to celebrate hubby's birthday (I thought!). Our super punctual ram bhaiya was already waiting for us and I had no clue why we had to go to some place this early in the morning! It was pitch dark at that time and ram bhaiya was driving at 45% angle (climbing up). He showed his driving skills on extremely steep curves, where both Vishnu and I would almost say our last prayers and Ram bhaiya will zoom with ease..phew!
In 45 mins we were at "Tiger Hills" - There were lots of tigers here at one point (During British rule) and that’s why the name. It is the highest point in the Darjeeling area with a smashing height of 8000 ft above sea level. We were here to watch the "Sunrise". Being in Chennai I have always enjoyed sunrise sitting at the marina and was hoping an equivalent experience. We were the first enthu-patanis to get there and by 5 am the place was packed! The temperatures were at an all time low and the swift breeze made my teeth chatter!
Though it was cold, the sky was clear and grey. We had the Kanchenjunga on our left, a small tip of Mt. Everest behind, the China border in front of us and the sun on our right! We kept circling around the hall to capture the beauty of all of them. The silver moon was still glittering in the sky like a beautiful bindi and as the first sun rays showed their presence, the grey sky was turning into a golden yellow. The mountains were changing colors too. From grey, to orange to yellow to silver to bright white! The clouds above the sun had a "Golden lining" and were shimmering with pride as the sun finally showed his face to us! It was like a huge diamond ring popping out from far. A Picture perfect - Mountains, Sun, clouds and few birds chirping high above the sky. The most beautiful sun rise i had ever witnessed. The crowds cheered loudly as the sun rose and the noise had suddenly turned to a "wow" in chorus!
Waking up so early in the morning and going through the dangerous ride was simply worth it! What a start to this day!
We couldn’t capture the beauty into the camera (we didn't have the right lens) but captured it in our eyes :) ...This is just the beginning of the best birthday Vishnu could ever have. More fascinating things happened to us today and watch this space for more updates :)

Its day 2 in Darjeeling. We woke up to see a beautiful view outside the hotel room. The weather was cooler than last night and I could find the need to grab a sweater :) Our driver - Ram bhaiya, was exceptionally punctual. He said he will be picking us up at 9:45 and he was there sharp! We ate a hearty breakfast and set out for our first day of sightseeing in Darjeeling.
Our first destination was the "Peace Pagoda". Let me mention to you that I am not a "History" person, so I personally did not try to find out the meaning of a Peace pagoda or the reason for its existence. But honestly, the pagoda was a masterpiece. It depicted the 4 main parts of Buddha's life and the sculpture was gold plated. Amazing indeed! We got into our usual photography mode, took loads of pictures :) and yes, the beautiful Kanchenjunga was more clear that day.
Our next destination was the famous "Rock garden". Very well built and a beautiful picnic spot. i have never ever been to a rock garden before and this was my first, so whatever I saw was bench marked as the best:) The entire place was filled with tourists but we had enough space for ourselves to strike some real funny poses :) We spent more than an hour there walking a complete big loop of stairs around the falls. With a kutti trek we completed our excursion to this refreshing place :) and then Ram bhaiya signaled to go for the next "tourist spot" of the day


We fought our way to a busy bazaar on the Darjeeling roads, apparently it was school disperse time and we were blocked by far too many school students. I should mention that he was busy watching the gals and I was busy watching the guys :) We did notice similarities in dressing sense amongst the crowd and were wondering if the schools had specific classes teaching the same :) After all the noise and traffic we landed at "Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park" and "Himalayan Mountaineering Institute". The zoo was very impressive. A well maintained, nicely organized zoo :) One place where both Vishnu and I became kids and jumped for every creature we spotted. Some of them we loved watching were the Snow leopards, Indian Tiger, Red Panda, Clouded leopards, Himalayan Wolf, Black Bear and pheasants. After this visit, we called every dog on the street - "Wolf", cat - "leopard" and monkeys - "langoors" hehe. Nevertheless, the place was worth seeing :-)
Inside the premises of the zoo is the HMI (Himalayan Mountaineering Institute). We visited the museum which had the list of legends that have ever climbed Mt. Everest! It was interesting to see the tools and the equipments the mountaineers use, pretty fascinating. The HMI canteen offered some good soup and fried rice for the poor starved souls (us) with live music. Yes, the cook was apparently a part time musician and he played the guitar! Some lovely Hindi songs (yes Hindi again!) and a nice short and sweet lunch just made the trip to HMI a memorable one.
As we came out of the HMI and zoo we were hoping that this was the last destination for the day, cos our legs had started to ache (remember the walk and trek in rock garden). Our bodies had gone through too much of exercise and wanted to just relax. Alas! The driver bhaiya didn’t feel the same and drove us to the famous tea gardens. As usual, the photographer and the model started their session and completed pretty quick with a piping hot tea :-)

We reached the hotel soon, and decided to attack the "mall road" a little earlier than yesterday (so that I can get some shopping done, of course!). The mission was successful. We shopped handbags, sofa covers, Buddha table piece..blah blah blah and Vishnu was already worried that the lugguage we got was not enough to fit in the new stuff;-) And yeah, he also kept reminding me that we had more places to go during the trip where I can shop and stopped me from buying more stuff! GRRR..We returned back to the hotel, had an early dinner and slept early as our driver bhaiya was gonna come at 4 am next day! Yes! 4 am!! (The only time I woke up at that time was to eat during Ramzan fasts and tomorrow will be an exception!) So, see u tomorrow @ 4am.. Good night!

Our drive to Darjeeling was very smooth. Good roads, nice sceneries and frequent chai breaks made the drive easy on us. Most part of the route was adjacent to the “Himalayan Toy train” tracks and we kept singing the Rajesh khanna hit “Mere sapno ki raani…”. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any train on those tracks (the trains run early in the morning and we were on the roads post noon). Our driver had a huge collection of Hindi songs; I specially enjoyed it because most of them were peppy numbers and big time hits of Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Shashi Kapoor :) (Don’t bother if you don’t know them, Google if curious)

After a while we started spotting hills which lead to little bigger mountains and to much more bigger mountains. Like a mystery, they were getting unfolded from the dark one by one. As we were approaching Darjeeling we spotted “Kanchenjunga” and we went “WOWWWWWWWW”. I had never seen such a gorgeous and spotless beauty! I had absolutely no words to describe this gigantic creation of nature. We kept sighting the mountain from every possible angle. Our camera just could not capture the white snow capped mountain as it matched with the sky color.
We finally reached our hotel and took our own sweet time to get ready and get set for a small walk in the town.

We are very used to being late :), we come from the concrete jungle where we come back from work late, and we sleep and also eat late. Habitually we got ready at 6:30pm (Which I think was very early for us). When the receptionist spotted us going out, he was taken aback and said “Madam, itne andhere mein kaha jaa rahe ho? Shops sab bandh ho chuke hain??”.. And I went “:-O” (Don’t imagine my face doing that, instead think of the yahoo emoticon version of this ;-)..)Later did we realize that the sun sets early here and people are early to home, early to bed and early to rise. We still took a chance and walked out in the dark.

The town was deserted, we felt as if it was midnight on the roads. A curfew to be precise! We did feel a little scared on the dark roads and felt out of breadth by just walking up a few galis (streets). We finally made our way to “The Chaurasta” - The place is little elevated and acts like a tourist spot as it provides a good view of the town. We could not do much of photos due to scarcity of light and headed back to the hotel pretty soon. Like hungry scavengers, we straight went into the restaurant for a delicious meal. And to add on to the flavor, we had pianist playing lovely all time favorite Hindi songs (Yes, Its Hindi again).. I felt so much at home and enjoyed my supper.

We were finally good to call it a day and were excited for another eventful day. A nice long day came to an end and so will this post :-)

We arrived @ NJP next day morning (Nov 1st to be precise). Clueless on what to do next I call my travel agent asking if someone has come to pick us up. After half an hour of negotiation with the wrong agent, I finally received a call from the driver who was impatiently waiting at the station premises to pick us up and take us to our first sight-seeing spot - Merick Lake.

The lake was nice and calm. The water looked clean and did have some small fishes too. The place was well equipped to be called a “tourist attraction” with lots of shops and horse riding too. The lake was surrounded by a neatly maintained lawn and was divided by a bridge at the center.

Vishnu and I started our “photography” skills and took some good pics of the lake and us :). We spent a good half an hour at the lake and enjoyed the breeze and the music of the small ripples which were formed on the lake.

This was our first, but not the last beautiful spot of the trip!…