Eleven days heaven!!

Disclaimer: All the characters in this epic are fictitious. Any resemblance to individuals' names is purely a coincidence along with confidence! No humans, animals, birds(if they don't belong to animals category) were hurt during writing of this epic. Extreme care was taken to recycle  electrons, neutrons, protons, photons, tonans, that would have got displaced or converted to other form at the time of writing this epic. 

Rats-turned-dinosaurs were yelling at me...."feed me or we shall feed on you!!". Overnight train journey to Bhuj has taken its toll and it was just the beginning of the grand tour.

To our astonishment, we had to settle for a five star kaccha hotel. Menu..sorry, the list spoken out by the hotel owner, sounded so discouraging. 'Jilebi', 'fafda'...! For the food loving typical South Indian gang -ranging from 5yrs to 73yrs, of the size as big as 19, and me being the one of the leaders, torch bearers, it was frightening. How do I even propose this to the gang? But we were forced to prove destiny wrong. It was the loveliest 'fafda' we had! Probably because of the amalgamation of brent and crude used for deep frying. It had created a long lasting taste!


It was an arduous journery from Ahmedabad. The pervious day was quite hectic.
Soon after landing to Ahmedabad, we had to transport our baggage(imagine for 15 people of such a diversity) to Mercedes Tempo Traveller. With less than expected luggage space and more than expected number of baggages, we all had a sense of achievement after loading them inside and still managing to find seats for our fatigued bottoms.

My suppressed, hibernated, broken, ailing Hindi had to ultimately come alive! Being one of the torchbearers, it was the question of pride and more importantly of survival, till my friend Kishore could join!! His family was still several hours away!!
 My 40+ years of life, composed of watching hundreds of Bollywood movies, TV episodes, news(especially Doordarshan's), school Hindi books, and above all the instant Will-of-the-God to save me....all these, all at once, had a profound influence on me so that I could raise to the occasion!! I somehow found out that I could speak , that sounded as Hindi, to a Hindi speaking person!! The fact that he took us to a pure vegetarian hotel was a great confirmation to me! I could finally realise that my composition of Hindi words to form a sentence had started matching with what I actually wanted to convey!! I could feel my chest size growing by 3.73 inches!! (I had scored 98 in maths, you see!).

Gurajat tourism hotel, right opposite to Sabarmati Ashram. We were as hungry as a starved and agitated leopard. It took about only 20minutes for the waiter to realise that we were hungry and that we were there to have lunch. Another 15minutes to decide on the menu. In between 3 to 4 trips to rest room to address my kids' crave to unwind their internally accumulated energy in its liquid form!
The utmost care we had taken while ordering the items were finally bearing wonderful fruits. The waiter came with a plate of chapatis. Surprise no1. We were expecting tandoori rotis :-)
The rest of the items followed with similar surprises. But on a higher note, it was lunch, we finally felt, that we had!! Our first major achievement in Ahmedabad. It was around 3.00pm.

Sabarmati Ashram turned out to be the first place in our long list of historically important places that we visited. We had a lesson on Mahatma Gandhi in our text books. Sabarmati ashram as well was mentioned. So we all were really curious to step in and feel the Gandhi's influence.
Innumerable rare pictures of Gandhiji, of his several associates, many articles used by him, it was all thrilling to watch for real. The ashram premise is quite big and nicely maintained. The Sabarmati river bank was getting all spruced up and new.

Charakas and other instruments used by Gandhi and his associates to weave thread out of raw cotton were eye catching. My son was awe struck at the scene of a lady doing the same. Though he had waited for long for his turn to collect a piece of thread, he was met with disappointment. The lady has exhausted her stock of weaved threads. He came out with quite a heavy heart.
We started moving around other places. After few minutes, to our surprise, we found that the same lady waving hands at us. When approached, she lovingly handed over my son and daughter a decent length of thread she had viewed fresh. My kids' joy knew no bounds. They both thanked the lady.

The photo-family(Raghavendra, Radhika, Rakshit, Rishi) had to be convinced that there were still many places to cover and therefore as many opportunities as well to click tons of photos! Till the end of our trip this family consistently maintained their lead and well protected their record. You can definitely approach these family members incase you are planning to buy a phone with a camera that can withstand such an unimaginable load.

It was time to move on. To visit another wonderful location. Rani ki Vav at Adalaj. Architecturally rich step well. Its beyond anybody's imagination as to how a simple well could be dressed up, decorated so grandly. Restoration, renovation was going on. There was a very interesting and long narrative by the guide about the history and importance of the place. My limited and corrupted memory cells unfortunately has not retained enough data and therefore I am not in a position to write more as of now. But the place is definitely worth visiting.

Our next hop was to Akshardham. After speaking to Kishore, we were convinced about visiting this place. And he was absolutely right. Though I had been to Akshardham in New Delhi, this place was still very exciting to watch. Swamy Narayan's glory was something new to me.
Our first interesting place in Akshardham was rest rooms. Very neatly maintained. Followed by a short visit to ice cream shop. After applying Pythagorus theorem and principles of Newton's unpublished laws, the members could finalise on their choice of flavour. I had Raj Bhog.

After a tiring but exciting tour of the temple, we moved in to amphitheater to watch water show. Its about 90 minutes feast to the eyes. The depth of the content, the great maturity in presenting the content, the marvellous co-ordination of light, water, sound. It was simply wonderful.
We had wonderful dinner at temple's food court. The spread was very good. Even the taste as well.

Practise makes man perfect. After rigorous practise, I had finally realised that people around me, most of the times, now recognise that I am speaking Hindi. So, my tone and tenor had leaped to a great height. The driver had understood that he had to drop us to railway station. Kishore had instructed the driver, over phone, about the exact railway station. Since Kishore was around 5years localite and busy, I had to find out the platform number and inform the same to him!

After several minutes, we realised that our train is actually delayed by almost an hour. The platform had slowly started appearing as luxury spring mattress for some of the members of my gang. There are times where we experience instant-moral-high. We shed all our inhibitions and give importance to only really precious, meaningful things in life. Body's urge for sleep is one such ocassion.  It didn't matter for the gang members whether its on railway platform or in a private presidential suite.

After a long time, 11pm arrived. So did our train to Bhuj.Kishore and his family had already arrived. It was after years I was meeting them in person. It was so nice to see him, Lipsita, Ananya, Aishwarya gelling with the rest of the gang so nicely. Railway department had meticulously alloted the seats. We had to do around 231 rounds(you know, I scored 98 in maths!) to identify our 19 seats.
We all finally managed getting our seats, bed spreads, pillows. All the members slowly slipped into tranquility. The train meanwhile had turned its head towards Bhuj and was on its way with a great purpose!!

Kutch Nahi Dekha Tho Kuch Nahi Dekha (my 40+ yrs of life.....raising to the occassion :-) )

I strongly believe in God! If someone has difficulty in understanding the 'Theism', they should take a trip like the one from Ahmedabad to Bhuj, in train,during night, during Rann Festival.
The belief in miracles, wonders gets reinstated, reinforced! You really ponder...."if not for the divine intervention, there is not even an iota of possibility that our several thousand bags spread accross entire length and breadth of train, remain intact...! Including the sandals/shoes(special items, when found intact, has tremendous mental impact!)". The people's turnover, around 8hours journey, innumerable stops right through the entire night, and our 'sound' sleeps....and the baggages were still safe.



It was around 7am, I believe. The curious Bhuj finally arrived. I call it a 'curious case of Bhuj'. 'Curiosity' engulfed us completely through out our Kutch journey.
We were really curious to find the exit gate.....we had to elbow our way through the thick of the mob to finally realise that we made our way out of railway station. The way I was struggling with my light weight 30+kg baggage, curiosity engulfed even the station security staff. One security official summoned me. Quizzed me for about five minutes. My 'scholarly and eloquent' Hindi was a solid proof that I was a tourist from a non-Hindi region. I had high hopes on Kishore, but God had other intentions. He had isolated me for a while to test my faith :( I managed earning sufficient Grace. The security staff finally cleared me off.
It was my wife's turn now to get curious (and grow suspicious on me)! "Are you sure you talked to the right person? Did you mention the right date and time to pick us up ? Are you sure that.......". Ooof....I usually get perturbed a lot with such series of ego hurts !
Finally we Kishore and myself managed tracing the bus and the driver. There was no way driver could get the bus to the place where we had our of baggages. It was a sea of people, rickshaws and taxi like vehicles.