Saga of my travels

I have visited many places in India. Some by design. Some others by chance. My jobs took me to various places. Today, if I just think of the places I have visited, I am really surprised!

I was a wanderer. My father had taken me to Trichy, Tanjore, Madurai, Rameshwaram, Tenkasi, Srivilliputtur one time.

Another time to Nagpur. We went to Delhi another time. Saw Qutub Minar. I went up the first floor too.

But the first big real travel happened when I was in the fifth and final year of Engineering.

During the fourth year I visited Jog falls. Not just the falls, but the two hydroelectric power stations. The MGHE which had horizontal turbines built somewhere in the valley and the AB Site which has 10 vertical generators.

We planned to go round India during our final year engineering. We started in February 1979 which makes me 22 year old then.

The route was Madras (Chennai is today’s name), Calcutta (Kolkata), Varanasi, Chandigarh, Simla, Dehradun, Hardwar, Rishikesh, Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Bhopal, Bombay, Hyderabad and back.

Very interesting tour. We had all types of weathers and variety of places.

In Madras we saw a factory in Manali and visited the ship Nankowri which was going to Andamans. We visited Doordarshan studios. Here I picked up the habit of drinking sweet lassi.

Next day morning we left in Coromandel Express for Calcutta. We saw Bhubhaneshwar station, Vizag station on the way. We saw the longest railway platform in Kharagpur.

Calcutta was most confusing. To come out of the Howrah station was tough. We saw the road opening in the harbor (for a ship), we slept through the narration about universe in the Birla Planetarium, searched for South Indian food, visited Esplanade, saw Howrah bridge, Victoria Memorial (from a distance)

We left for Varanasi from there. Varanasi was full of crowd. We went to the banks of River Ganga and hired a boat and went some distance on the river and then took a dip in the river. Here the water was somewhat cleaner than at the banks. We could see a dead body floating next to us, well, a common scene in Varanasi I believe.

We reached Lucknow. For the first time at the thickest curd I had ever even seen! We visited Bhool Bhulaiyya- an architectural wonder. So many doors, walls, underground cellars... unbelievable! I remembered the song of Bobby.. tere nainonki bhool bhulaiyya mein bobby kho jaaye... we really get lost in the maze of wonderful building!

We hired a bogie and locked the doors. People were bombarding on the door. We never opened even the windows. We just let the window open to a small crack and bought puris and aloo sabji. I started having hiccups. No water was available. I finally boldly drank from the tap in the toilet. All my classmates observed me for 10 minutes, found that I did not ‘die’ and then rushed to drink the same water!

The saga of tour could continue tomorrow. So watch out!