Grey Shades

Continued from the previous post. Joshimath and Auli are places are in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, India. Joshimath is a small one-road-only town, unharmed by mall culture and modernization. All the shops ranging from cloth stores (sarees, dress materials, etc) to sweater shops to dhabas/sweet stall to groceries are there on either side of this narrow road. Taxi (read MUV) is the most common profession of the locals there, music shop being the next in line. Joshimath is the base point for treks such as Auli, Hemkund and Nanda Devi. We covered only Auli and Tapovan. (If you need other details it is better to (re)search the net using Google like we did). There is one Punjab National Bank, and 2 ATMs (Punjab National Bank and State bank of India) of which SBI ATM is out of order. Some locals told us that it has been in that state for a few months now. Cash is NOT always available in the one that works. You would need to go by 10:00 AM or by 5:30 PM. We, at least, did

Contd from previous post " Trip to Auli - Day 1 " Neither of us realized the alarm go off at 4:00 AM and when we finally did get up, it was 8:30 AM..!! :-O The only other option to reach Joshimath was to travel the 8 hours/300 kms by taxi. We knew it was going to be Rs. 3000 (as per our hom ework) two-way, as in we have to pay for the return journey as well. But it turned out to be Rs. 4000. We tried our bargaining skills with the taxi federation or whatever there, but to no avail and so we were put on an Ambassador car, our driver being a Akram. He later introdu ced hims elf to us as Vikram. The views on the outskirts of Dehradun were good. It was very foggy as well. E ven at 10:30 AM, the visibility remained hampered. There are a lot of camping sites on the way. There are lots of shops the locals have set up that offer camping, trekking and rafting. The camps looked inviting with tents and gazebo kind of things set up on the river side. The river itself was blue

The trip started on 9 Jan, 2010 at the vee hours of 4:00 AM. The hardest part of getting up so early and the next hardest part of giving directions to our house to a confused taxi driver tackled, we were all set to the airport. I had not expected the roads and the lightings to look so spectacular in the dark. It was better than Mumbai's Queens necklace :D  Reaching the airport (Bangalore International Airport) and checked in, had an expensive Idli/vada/sambar (Rs. 90) and roamed around the duty free shops till it was time to leave. The Go Indigo flight was scheduled to take off at 6:30 AM. The gates opened at 5:50 and by 6:15 we were tucked in nicely in the aircraft, though the leg space was a little cramped. We even got to see the sunrise on our flight and it was oh so beautiful. Landed at Delhi (Indira Gandhi International Airport) by 9:00 AM. The outside temperature was 10 degrees. It was cold, tolerable and thick smoke was visible when people spoke :D Our next destination wa