Valley of Flowers, An Adventure in many parts

Part 1 - Going, going....... gone!

Ladakh downscaled to Valley of Flowers. Ten days to four! And after some earnest pleading and reasoning upgraded to five. My feet were itching to move. Get the hell out of hot, grimy Noida! I planned, and planned and planned some more. Things were set, tickets and co-travellers arranged and I was all ready to go. There was nothing to stop me now, or was there?

I anxiously awaited the 13th of August, when I could escape the confines of my drab cubicle to the wild outdoors. Usually dates come too soon (like exam dates!) or take too much time (like birthdays), but this one arrived with near perfect timing. I brought my backpack to work so that I could head straight from there to a friend's place for some chole batture before hopping on the bus to Rishikesh.

Somebody up there must have a wicked sense of humour because he decided to have some fun at my expense. By testing my resolve to travel. The first sign came straight after lunch. My boss comes up to me and asks me to join in on a site visit and before I could say ,'but...' he was off in a flash to get an early start on the long weekend! Since I have spent most of my time here rueing the fact that I don't really have much work I felt I shouldn't complain when I do. Anyway, it would take just two hours and I should be back by 5.00pm, enough time to make it for dinner at Sid's. Being the sticklers to punctuality we Indians are known to be, we left propmtly at 4.45, reducing significantly my chances of having a much awaited home-cooked meal. Still, my hopes were up.

First stop, Ghaziabad. The floor manager sat us down in his plush air-conditioned office and fed us tea and biscuits, which I proceeded to gulp down like a shot of tequila, scathing my tongue and palate in the process. It didn't help matters much that the rest of my party were treating the tea as if it were fine wine, sipping it at leisure while making all the approppriate appreciative noises. To cut a very long story short, it turned out that the part we had come to inspect was in a totally different factory all together, where we were plied with more tea and biscuits, most probably to ensure that those portions of my tongue which escaped being scathed the last time could get it's due retribution. The time was now 6.30pm, and my chole batture aspirations had all but evaporated. Frantic phone calls were received from friends. Reassurances were given as to the possibility of making it to the bus stop in time. Alternate plans were made for the chole and the batture to simulatneously reach their final destination, ie. my tummy. Due to further unavoidable delays (note the sarcasm), and the fact that Schumi hadn't come out of retirement to drive me to the bus stop I found myself stranded in god forsaken Ghaziabad with not a chance in hell to make it in time to Connaught Place.

Time for quick remedial action, and like Chacha Chaudhary, my brain works faster than a supercomputer at times of crisis ( the rest of the time it still works as fast as a supercomputer, but with the power plug pulled out). The driver was asked to drop me off at the railway station from where a general class ticket to Rishikesh was purchased. I got on the next train to Rishikesh, the aptly named Delhi-Rishikesh Passenger. So happy was I with myself that I was oblivious to the hordes of sweaty people I had to share the oven that was my railway compartment. The dreamy look and smile plastered all over my face as we rolled out of Ghaziabad made me look positively silly. I awoke from my stupor when I saw the brand name of the coolers which almost half my co-passengers were carrying : "Murphy's". Definitely a sign of things to come....

Murphy's Law !!!



Ingenuity, thy name is sleeping in general compartment!!!



Sure enough, at around two in the morning the train came to a standstill at Sahranpur and quickly emptied and soon it was just me and the cleaners. I smelt something fishy, despite being nowhere close to the coast and decided to investigate. I reached the engine just in time to see the engine driver packing his bags and hopping off! I blocked his path and said he better take the damn train to it's intended destination as mentioned in bold black one it's bright yellow board : "DELHI RISHIKESH PASSENGER". And here I was, a passenger who was neither in Delhi nor Rishikesh. Something had to give right? Wrong. Apparently the train doesn't go beyond Sahranpur after August 7th and I had the misfortune of travelling on the 13th. After that the train's name is just a ruse to trap innocent people like myself into visiting Sahranpur. 'But I have to go to Rishikesh', I squealed, and just like in the nursery rhyme, 'Oh!', said the engine driver, 'I don't care!'.



So, very relcutantly, I got off. It was half past two in the morning, and Sahranpur station was bustling eith activity for this ungodly hour. Yet, it felt like the site of some major tragedy. Scores of bodies lay motionless end upon end, the only sign of life being the slow guttural snores emnating from them, almost in symphony. I hop, skip and tripped my way to the exit from where I got a bus to Haridwar. Around this time I get a call from my friends who managed to catch the bus. The driver was taking his own sweet time getting to Rishikesh and had just stopped for 'lunch' at Meerut (if you want to compare I crossed Meerut at 8.30pm, before they'd even started!). They didn't expect to get to Rishikesh before nine in the morning. This left me in quite a fix, because I would be in Haridwar at 4.00 am!


Dead or Alive?


On reaching Haridwar I was mobbed by touts for hotels, motels, rooms,taxis and what not. I had a few hours to kill so I proceeded to 'Hari ki Pauri' , which is where devotees take a dip in the holy waters of the Ganga. The recent rains meant the river was flowing with tremendous force, free of all her inhbitions. There were plenty taking a dip in her ice cold, silt rich waters. There were plenty of sadhus , all decked in bright orange in ash ready to perform pujas for my redemption, all for a price which was quite aggressively advertised. The place was kept remarkably clean by normal standards and there were quite a few 'govt. officials' asking for donations for it's upkeep. One caught me and tried to extract as much as he could (they must have targets to meet). Asked for Rs.501, expected Rs.101, and got Rs.11. Imagine the stink eye he must have given me, triple it and raise to the power of ten and you will only get close to the look he gave me.


Haridwar, 4.00 am


Hari Ki Pauri




Daybreak


I spent daybreak loitering about here and was wondering where to visit next when my friends called again. The driver' suddent burst of energy post-Meerut meant that they had crossed Haridwar and almost reached Rishikesh. I quickly made by way back to town, rescuing a couple of Japanese tourists from the clutches of an evil auto driver enroute before catching a shared auto to Rishikesh, where I finally, finally, FINALLY caught up with my friends whom I was supposed to meet at 8.30pm the previous night. It was 8.30am....



The trip was on!!! Save a few landslides, there was nothing that could stop us now. Stay tuned for more adevntures.............................