Don't be Jealous, Just Travel!

Two people, Pooja and Sathish left comments on my previous post, saying they are jealous or almost jealous that I get to travel and trek. Ah! let me show you the reality of my 340 days and you will not grudge my travels at all :)

OK, there are a few trees in the view but still it is so harsh and so much dust and heat during summer. This is a view that greets me daily from my office.

Here is some more of the same.

After watching all this concrete throughout the year, little wonder that at the first opportunity...

... we long for a little of this

And this ...

And a little bit of this too. A few more days in the concrete jungle and then we head once again to the mountains. So Pooja and Sathish, are you still jealous?

Two More Weeks: Till then I Remember the Har-Ki-Doon Trek

Roughly two weeks later, we will trek in Uttranchal again. I am counting the days, till we see such places again. I think this is as close to paradise as I will ever get.

Always used to the sound of the traffic, it is something else to sleep to the sound of the river. In our Har-Ki-Doon trek, our camp at Seema was quite close to this river.

After roaming in such open spaces our three bedroom house seems so cramped but we get so tired after walking for a week or so, we are ready to crash.

Sunsets are special time, the atmosphere is so beautiful and it happens almost every day of the trek.

The flowers end up in my hair many a times!

Another fabulous sunset at Kedar Kanta! I have written in much more detail about this trek here.

Traveling by the State Transport Buses in India

Remember Mr. & Mrs Iyer? If you have seen the movie (and it is a decent movie IMHO) the bus journey and the characters feel so authentic. Well, that kind of guitar playing and song singing happens when you travel by, what we call in India, 2X2 luxury buses. I will give you an account of what happens when you travel by a state transport bus to a hill station in the Himalayas.

This is an account of our return journey Chamba to Pathankot (we actually went all the way to Bharmour).

To begin with, on our return journey too we had a few goats in the bus as our companions. While we were going to Bharmour, there was enough space in the bus to turn around and click a photograph of the goats on the return journey the bus was pretty crowded.

The view most of the time was fabulous but H and I, both have motion sickness and take medicine for it. Avomine leaves us completely zonked, H more than me. It hardly leaves us in any mood to appreciate the scenery (once again, H is more oblivious) but at least we do not vomit all through the journey. The same cannot be said about our fellow passengers.



On this bus, people occupying the two rows in front of us were vomiting away throughout the journey. It was December and it was cold. We all liked to keep the windows shut. When the window two rows ahead would go up, it would mean that the lady was getting ill. She had a young child, a husband and a mother-in-law traveling with her and I sort of felt sorry for her. To make the matters worse, the lady sitting ahead of us decided she was feeling better when the window was rolled up. I did not like the nasty wind that came in but what could I do if an old nauseas lady wanted to open the window? Those who are familiar with the Indian state transport buses will know that many a time’s people sitting in the front row share more than half of the window with you. Well, such was our fate that day. The lady in front kept the window open and the cold wind would make my nose red.



But much more was in store for me that day than just a red nose. Suddenly the lady two rows ahead too open her window (that meant she was getting ill and on a moving bus whatever goes out of the window comes back) and by the time we could get the window next to me (the same one we shared with the lady who wanted to keep it open) closed in came a shower of vomit and sprayed me. I clenched my teeth (by this time I felt I would join the gang and start throwing up myself but Avomine is not prone to sentiments and it held firm) and cleaned myself as well as I could with the water we had on a moving bus. To say that I was in a foul mood is an understatement. Inwardly, I was cursing my husband (he is a software engineer and we can afford to travel in much more luxury) but he has to drag me to god forsaken places (but that is how I get such good photo opportunities) with such inconvenient journeys (remember we had goats too in the aisle sitting quite close).

Anyway, we reached Pathankot after 5 uncomfortable and long hours. I took out the long coat I was wearing (that still had the traces of the cleaned up vomit) and cleaned myself more thoroughly.

Then at 9.30 in the night we boarded a train to Delhi. We were traveling sleeper class (when H is around such things happen) and to my surprise our co-passengers were the same lady with the kid and the husband and the mother-in-law. I said I was so sorry (in Hindi) that she got so ill on the bus and actually one can buy a medicine and that stops the vomiting due to the motion sickness. And pat she replied, yes she is aware of it but could not buy it because they were in a hurry to board the bus. The next minute I opened my sleeping bag, hopped to the top berth and started reading a novel and did not speak a word to anyone till we reached Delhi in the morning.

Thunder Strom in Delhi

As I was preparing to sleep at night, all the windows in my house started playing drums. High wind was blowing and we had to lock up every window to prevent it from breaking. Then I tried some photography but I have just one pick worth sharing. Here it goes. Has been taken at night when the sky was bright with lightening.

Now I am waiting for the power to come back! I tried making a few videos too but managed to capture mostly dark patches with just a few moments of lightening.

OK Tata Bye Bye!

No, No, I am not going anywhere, this is the name of a website: Oktatabyebye.com and they are running a cool contest for people with travel bug. They will give the winner of the contest a laptop, a digital camera and 50000 rupees to travel for 15 days and blog live about it as you travel. For more details and entering the contest check out their site.

Indiamike and The India Tree

Update (August 22/08/2008) Once again I do not know why the Indiamike site is not loading today. I have not been able to access it too. Hope it will start loading soon.

Update (November 14, 2006): If you have come to this blog looking for why the Indiamike site is not loading on November 14, I am equally clueless. If fact, I used the site this week for information on Sikkim. If you know something about why it is down, I would be highly obliged if you could leave a comment.

There used to be a super place to hang about for all those who love traveling in India. The place is called Indiamike. Then something happened to the forum and the owner Mike archived it. I had got so much help from Indiamike forum for planning my trips to Bharatput and Bharmour. Thank you all. (As per May 12, 2006, Indiamike is up and running again.)

Now we have a new India travel forum The India Tree and it is a relief to see many of the familiar faces around. I have to start planning the trek which we would do in June. I will soon head to The India Tree for advice now.

Update: Indiamike is up again and now we have two forums, Indiamike and Indiatree for travel lovers. I think this is good news.