Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Two week Vagabond: Leg 1: Chennai-Delhi-Jodhpur

Well friends, I had promised you all the story of my trip to North India. I know it was promised a couple of months back. But better late than never. So here goes.
I had planned a 2 week adventure of travelling alone through North India. Covering the deserts of Rajasthan to the snow capped peaks of Kashmir. But as it almost always happens to me, the adventure began a day early.

Friday, March 26th 2010 Morning:
I had packed my bag with the stuff I needed to take on the trip. All the packing was done and I just wanted to check how the weight of the bag would feel like on my back. I raised the bag on to my back and I heard something snap. Lack of physical pain told me that it wasn’t my spine. The shift of the whole weight to my left shoulder in the next instant explained the situation further. The right strap of my backpack had chosen the perfect time to bid goodbye to the buckle that was holding it steady. It was already 10:00 AM and I didn’t have time to take the bag out for repair. I was left with 2 choices; either travel through North India on one strap or go out and get a new bag. Since the weight of the bag was not inconsiderable, I decided on the latter. So around 10:30 in the morning, I found myself near Anna Nagar Round Thana, searching for a suitable backpack. It was almost 11 by the time I reached back home with the new backpack. I had to go through the whole process of unpacking what I had already packed and the re-packing what I had just unpacked. I reached office around 12:00 Noon.

Friday, March 26th 2010 Evening:
I reached the airport by 4:30 PM. So I wouldn’t really want to comment on why I actually went to office that day. I was travelling on Kingfisher airlines and that is always easy on the eye, if you know what I mean. Landing in Delhi around 7:30 PM, I had to face the weirdest pre paid taxi system that I have ever come across. While taking the receipt for the payment at the counter, the guy in the counter wrote a number on the back of the receipt. On enquiry he told me that it was the spot number from where I would get the taxi. On getting out of the airport, there were different parking spots with serial numbers. Mine was number 12. I reached number 12 and found the spot vacant. There were empty taxies sitting idle in many other numbers but they wouldn’t budge their car to number 12 where a passenger was waiting. I had to wait a good 7-10 minutes before a driver lazily drove into the number 12 parking spot. As I had a good 3 hours to go before I caught my train, I wasn’t really bothered.
There was about a 2.5 hrs wait before the train came. The right time of arrival at Jodhpur was 9 AM. After months of planning and charting out, finally there I was, putting the plans into action.

Next: Two week Vagabond: Leg 2: Jodhpur - Jaisalmer

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

molto intiresno, grazie