India Days 10-11: 18th, 19th March, 2014 – The home run

I knew Rajdhani trains in India had pantries but what I didn’t know was that they make it their motive to stuff passengers silly so long as they are aboard. I had been reading a book in between meals and I must confess I couldn’t read much. And then there were those states of the country in various states of underdevelopment only make us ponder on what went wrong and where.

Meanwhile, we spend a brief halt in Bangalore before changing to a different mode of transport. Appears that in this trip, we have traveled by every land and water transport possible- from mules and ponies to rafts and sleds to trains, buses and thus.

So ends the ‘trip’ part of our trip. This is only one state in the large country that is India. The group had to choose between a bunch of quiet islands close to home and this itinerary. Fortunately, they chose ‘adventure’ tourism. I’m glad to have found them.

“The world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page…”

With these running in my head and The Beatles’ ‘Kansas city’ and ‘When I get home’ ringing in my ears, I reach my home away from home- IIM K. For one last time.

 

PS. Due credits to the partners in crime- 

Veera (the pro-photographer), Naren (the strategist), allam (the sleeping beauty), barre (the baby-doll-obsessed Tom)

 

Cheers to better things to come!!

Mach (the writer and the comic relief)

India Day- 0: 8th March, 2014 – It’s time to roll, again.

After more than 2 months of being a fixture, I am free to travel again. Though these two months could not be called uneventful, this was one trip I’ve been looking forward to; not just because this is going to be my last trip as a student, as an individual, without the burden of having to watch what I do or say. Mostly, it is the guilt of not having seen my home country as well as I have explored a few others abroad. Partly, it was also the intrigue of the innumerable contradictions that coexist in the vast, diverse, colourful tangle that is ‘India’. Ind-yeah!
Though excited, I spent most of the morning sleeping, the afternoon packing and the evening waiting in the train station while the others tried to figure out alternate routes after we missed our train. Yes, the first train we had to catch- missed! We should’ve known that unlike in ‘the continent’, trains here are randomly punctual, infrequent and crowded, besides being few and far apart. The price of our ignorance is us having to make a detour and take much less comfortable coaches, losing time, money and gaining discomfort and a lesson in using call-bluff in real life. Yes, TTEs can be a pain sometimes. And yes, in India, every rule can be bent so far that elsewhere it would break twice.
But on the other hand, there were a few moments when I could catch a glimpse of the horizon in the darkness and the view was nothing less than breathtaking. The silhouettes of the mountains in the starlit night with a crescent moon and the subdued haze make this journey much less irksome. This kinda beauty is different from the cold, foggy nights of Europe with old brick buildings in the horizon. This is unique. This is India. This is home!
All this while and through the night, ‘Hotel California’ was looping in my head; the lyrics seemed so apt and I just couldn’t shake it off.