Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Dalai Lama says "BALLE BALLE"!

Talk of "on the spot" planning!!

Phone conversation at 5PM:

AV: Hey!!
Me: Yup. Sup? (Wow. That rhymes! Din't know that.)
AV: How about we leave for Amritsar at 5.30 today? We'll reach there tomorrow, see the Golden Temple, and after that go to Wagha Border, and then next day it's off to Dharmshala!! LFN's already agreed, and VT and NG will come directly to the bus terminus.
Me: OK. Cool. (Yup. Me the cool "no need for any planning at all" type after all.... heh heh.)

And thus, AV and I go off to the bus terminus to catch the first bus we get to Amritsar. On the way, we find out that VT and NG will not be coming for this trip (Wonder why? Probably because of the intense amount of planning done?), and even decide that if nothing, we both will go to those places. The main point being, we are out of MDI now, we just CANNOT GO BACK!! LFN meets us at the terminus, and we end up taking the 9.30 PM bus to Amritsar.

We reach Amritsar next day morning at 6.30 in the morning, and we immediately head off to see the Golden Temple. I got to tell you, the temple is a sight worth seeing at sunrise!!! And at night too. Totally worth seeing.

One thing I (and I think the other two who were with me) realized is - Never take a woman for her word. Case in point? This person... let's call her "Devil" for now.... had given her word that she would somehow call up one of her friends and get us VIP passes to the Wagha border Change of Guard programme. Now, when someone says "Don't worry about that. It is all taken care of", you would normally not worry about it, and expect things to be taken care of.

Not in this case. Uh-huh. Not even in your wildest dreams.

When we call the person (who, incidently is from MDI itself), we find out that not only had she not done her task, she had conveniently forgotten to even mention us going to Amristar!!

Women.

Anyways, we did end up seeing the show. And what a show it was! Though it did get a bit repetetive towards the end, the intense patriotic feelings that you get during the show is amazing. Totally worth the money. Which, incidently, is NOTHING!!

From Amritsar, we took a cab directly to Dharmshala. To be more precise, Mcleodganj. Everything worth seeing is in Mcleodganj. Atleast the cab driver said so. And we blindly believed him. It's not like we had any choice. The weather over there was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Just perfect.

PLACES TO SEE

1. The Dalai Lama's temple - Very tranquil. Very peaceful. A must visit!
2. Bhagsunag Waterfalls - OK. This was just a very small stream of water falling down. Probably would look better during the rainy season, when there is more water. You need to take a 1.5 KM walk to reach the place. The scenery is brilliant.
3. Dal Lake - There is apparently a dal lake in Mcloedganj. Very small. Unfortunately, when we went there, there was no water in the lake!!!! They were doing a clean-up of the place, and had pumped out all of the water.

In addition to this, I hear there are a lot of trekking tours that one should take from this place.

We then took that same cab back to Amritsar, and then took the amazingly wonderful Punbus (Yes. They actually call it the Punbus!) back to Delhi. The journey in that bus was aptly summarized by AV:

"Punbus - cramped seats, overcrowded, slow, a driver who loves the sound of his horn, blaring punjabi songs... can there be worse public transport!"

So that's that. A truly wonderful trip across Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. I sure had a really nice time over there!

2 comments:

Ishan Bishnoi said...

What the eff is LFN?

Kartik Krishnamoorthy said...

@Ishan: You should know... U SHOULD KNOW!! :D :D