Day 6: Agra

It was barely morning when we started out to go to Agra; the hectic schedules of the last couple of days had us exhausted. In the late morning we stopped in what I would like to call a typical Indian Dhaba to have breakfast, which had the worlds best lassi, maybe its simply the exhaustion playing havoc with my senses… none of us was ready for the long trip ahead, not in the scorching Indian sun any ways… halfway there it had me wondering if the trouble was worth it…

Mom and dad called on the way, to see if we’d reached Agra yet… dad was once again reminding me of things to look for in the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort… I wished they were coming along with us too… it would’ve been more fun if dad had been there in person to show the places…

We reached the Agra fort around noon… I complained to dad saying I didn’t have the energy to explore and he chuckled saying I was being like an old lady already!

Entrance - Agra Fort

Agra Fort not only contained the palaces within its premises, it also houses the army, in the Mughal times it was the Soldiers of the Mughal emperior who had their quarters there, during the British Raj it was the British army and now the Indian army. so most of the fort is out of bounds to the public...

I was disappointed cause the one place I wanted to see in Agra fort; Jasmine mahal was closed for renovation, that’s where Shah Jahan stood at sundown to see Taj Mahal in the last 7 years of his life while he was being held captive by his own son… they say Aalamgeer didn’t want his father wasting money building another Taj Mahal in black marble for himself and so he was held captive in his own palace… towards the end of his days his eyes were too weak to see Taj Mahal and he had had a mirror put there and he was content with seeing Taj Mahal's reflection...

Shah Jahan stood gazing at Taj Mahal under the golden dome seen in this picture... too bad it was closed, i really wanted to get a view of the Taj Mahal from there...

we left Agra fort to go and have lunch after a good hour of roaming around there... next stop being Taj Mahal... i had decided Agra Fort was not worth the trouble... and was wondering if Taj Mahal was... by the time we reached Taj Mahal, it was past 3 and a cool wind and begun to blow... and the sun rays had lost its strength...

One of the entrances to Taj Mahal - they say the gate depicts separation between mortal life from that of the immortal. Some also believe the gate symbolizes purdha

first glimpse of Taj Mahal

the view as we entered...

Here a guy from our batch laid out his heart at her feet, knowing he wouldn’t get his hearts desire, still he did and he wanted the whole batch there as witness...

With the setting sun we bid our goodbyes…

all of us carried in our hearts a wish to come back…

then it was back to the uncomfortable seats of the bus which would carry us back to Delhi, at least we wont get baked anymore!! and the trip was an experience i wouldn't have missed for the world...

Day 5: sights of Delhi

We tried to cram in a few places of historic importance from around Delhi into a few hours of sight seeing… we ended up going to see the Qutub Minar, Lotus Temple, Raj Ghat, indhira Ghandi Memorial museum (I was the first one to protest when our bus stopped here, but ended up being among the last to come out of the place, rashmi pravi and I lost track of time…), and we saw the red fort and India Gate from afar… the sun was very low on the horizon when we passed by the India gate, it simply looked awesome with a ball of fire behind it…

Inevitably we were bamboozled, we were not taken to many places we were promised, but by the end of the trip we neither had the time nor the energy to fight… I didn’t even have much energy left to take pictures; Delhi’s scorching heat soaked it all up!!

Caveat: late afternoons or early mornings would be the best time to go around, better yet; I guess the weather would be more pleasant just before winter, then you can really take your time n enjoy the sites…

Kutub Minar: we've all read about it in our social studies lessons way back in middle school... and recently we've seen the place in Fanaa...

Day 4: Bhidh mein ghum…

Dawn was breaking as we approached Delhi the night sky was just beginning to turn gold near the horizon… I was still trying to shrug off the sleepiness when the muezzin’s call for Morning Prayer filled the air; there was the silhouette of a minaret and dome almost right next to the rail way tracks; which took my breath away…

We caught a train the day before in Gorakhpur (three hours ride away from the border), around 6:30 am we stopped in the station in Delhi, even at that early hour the station was swarming with ppl, we were caught up in a sea of nameless faces…

It was drizzling in Delhi when we came out of the station and boarded a bus bound to AIIMS… we’d come to India to attend the annual medical students festival; Pulse… around 5000 students from around 106 medical colleges were to attend this year… it took us almost the whole day to complete registration…

While waiting we were able to see around AIIMS which was a city in itself with its very own Olympic size swimming pool!! I am sure the place would’ve been at least half as big as Male’!! Hassan (a Maldivian doing mbbs in AIIMS) and Munshidh (my cousin also doing mbbs in Delhi) showed us around. By the end of the day we’d run into some Maldivians thanks to Munshidh, some were friends from my school days and others colleagues who’d worked with me in IGMH… though it was my first trip to Delhi, it wasn’t such a strange place after all!

Thanks Munshidh, for all your help… the stay in Delhi wouldn’t have been the same without you around!!

Day 3: Across borders

It hardly took us 30 minutes to reach the border from the hotel, I never realized we were so close to India! At the Nepali Immigration we got down from the jeep; thaana, ashish, Chakre’, Rashmi and I… we were going to walk across… Nepal and India sharing an open border save for me n thaana no one else had to go through it… so the rest of the group went on ahead…

Ashish, thaana, Chakre and I found ourselves crossing a border not more than 2 years after we crossed the Nepal-China border together… during our first year field; we were sent to a village along Arniko highway… it took the ten of us (ashish, chakre’, subash, abhishek, sanjay, mishrey, anil, hosim, thaana and I) almost 7 hours (on the top of the bus) to reach tatopani; the town at the border. Here we were together again, except for sanjay… we miss you sanjay and we’d also miss the strum of your guitar ;)

It still amazes me sometimes to see how close we’ve become even though we are from different countries with different cultures…

as we walked through the gate into India we came across a sardar with a colourful turbine around his head and language changed from Nepali to Hindi in just a matter of minutes; yes, we were definitely in india!!

Day 2: Where did the hills disappear?

The sunlight streaming into the room woke us up. Hosim, thaana Div and I were sharing a room… brimming with excitement we quickly got ready and went outside; we had plans to go to Lumbini…

Wait a minute! Where’d the hills go?? There were no hills as far as the eyes could see; Nepal is supposed to be hilly or the horizon was supposed to be dotted with snow capped mountains! But no, we were in Terai; the plains of Nepal… we had missed the transition from the hilly region to the plains in the dead of the night… so it came as a slight shock I suppose… the vegetation not so different from what we find in Maldives, I felt closer to home and felt more homesick than I had felt in ages!

To Lumbini we could not go, the Maoists were kind enough to declare a “Bandh”; a curfew, but still we went around in Rikshas (its the way to move around in Bhairava, i for one didn't see any taxis around!). Though we couldn’t go out of the city we thought it safe enough to move around in the city.

Our first stop was Bhim hospital; that’s where hosim’s dad worked ages ago, even before she was born… next stop being a sweet shop which is rumored to be famous all around Nepal, we just had to taste “peda”… Bhairava proved to be a very small place; every corner we turned we ran into IOMites… and that was fun…

Having nothing else to do, we went to the Bhairava Medical College to meet hosim’s friend who’s studying there… the campus was impressive; spacious… but I still say I like our campus better… coming back into the city centre we were shocked to see tires set on fire and protesting people in a place we’d left a couple hours ago so peaceful!

Towards evening the bandh was lifted and things returned back to normal… and we went for long walks around the city…

Day 1: we left; finally!

I’ve always thought of Kathmandu as a little town hustling n bustling with activity on the top of the world, alive with colour, tiny buses and cars puffing up smoke, with tiny little mud houses in the periphery, (any ways that’s how I imagine it would be portrayed in a cartoon) little mud houses with its very own little goats n buffalos grazing nearby and cute little grannys on the front porches puffing away on their hukaas (waterpipes)

Now I am too, a part of that scene, heading towards Bhirava (which is near the Indian border). All 44 of us from our batch were packed into one of those buses, en route to India; yes, finally we’ve left on that trip I’ve been telling everyone about for years!

The bus we traveled in; it was from Nishan travels so I presume it would be an accurate guesstimate that it would be awesome ;)

D, I am sorry but I broke a promise I made you, it was just too tempting!!! I promise I was sitting in the bus like a good lile girl, but there was a traffic jam and we had to wait on the road for a couple of hours… n you know how easily I can get bored! We ended up climbing on the hood of the bus just to pass the time… and there we remained until we reached narayanghat (Chitwan) I am not sorry one bit I did that!!!

View from the top of the bus – to the side its river trishuli which you see flowing, that’s where we went white water rafting in 1^st year

The highway near narayanghat was narrow and flanked by dense foliage, the trees were silhouetted against the night sky and we saw the stars shining in between; it deceived the eye, it was as though the stars were moving instead of us! And the flickering fairy lights made it all the more magical! the best part was, that i had my friends with me...

We reached Bhairava, Sidhartha(ahem)nagar almost 5 hours later than we should have cause of the landslides… groggy we stumbled out the bus and into the hotel’s warm beds we so needed!

flit.. flutter...

Am just flitting around the house wondering what I should do, where I should begin… there’s laundry to be done and cloths to pack… but I don’t feel like doing anything :P maybe it’s the inactivity after so many days on the road or its simply excitement over going home?

I miss my friends… the group of 24 started dwindling from Mumbai, by the time we reached kathmandu it was 12 of us and now its just me… thaana too left this morning…

oh well… now; pulse and the India trip seems merely a dream, in the end, memories are all we are left with, innit?