Grey Shades

Continued from previous post - " Last post on Trip to Auli " The train was at 6:00 AM to Agra. It was the first time we would be traveling on Shatabdi Express and were very keen to experience the fastest train in India. There was a new kind of excitement as the train went from 30kmph to 40kmph…50kmph…60kmph. After that it never went faster than 40kmph, the reason being fog. Plus, the train lines are so congested there that our train had to stop every 15 minutes or so for other trains to pass. As soon as we changed tracks  another train passed on the other one within minutes. I found it extremely dangerous. Imagine the consequence if someone on one train pulls the chain? The supposedly 3 hour journey took six. What made us feel worse was that the groom, Ayush (we fondly call him Sethji), whose wedding we were attending was waiting for us for more than an hour at Agra station. He wouldn’t listen to us when we said we would take care of ourselves. Agra, the town, is real di...

Continued from previous post - " At Delhi ". This is the last post in the ‘Trip to Auli’ series though I will be continuing with the rest of the trip later. Before I do that let me list out a few tips for people looking to visit Auli. The first tip is to get yourself a good credit card that offers discounts on hotel and flight bookings. Saves you quite a few rupees. If you already have such a card, you are good to go. We did our bookings (flight, train, hotel bookings) online atleast a month and half in advance, so I suggest you do the same. Flight and hotel bookings in Dehradun were done via makemytrip.com. We got hotel discount coupons when booking flight tickets so it again saved us some moolah. So do check if the offer is still there and book the flight BEFORE the hotel. If you are not planing to use the hotel discount coupons, book tickets at the respective airline website, after finding the cheapest deal @ ixigo.com. Booking directly at the airline website will s...

Continued from previous post - " Trip to Auli - Day 6 and 7 ". Soft hands were pushing me roughly and all I could do was mumble “5 mins more” but those hands wouldn’t stop. “Wake up, waake up..” followed by “you know what the time is?” a little louder than before. Opened my eyes to see a fully dressed Ashwin standing over me… “Just get dressed. We have to be in the station in 20 mins.” That was enough for me to jump and rush to the washroom. Ten minutes later I was fully dressed in whatever clothes I could lay my eyes on. When we reached the railway station the train was already waiting and within minutes we were en route to Delhi. The journey was uneventful. Near the end of the journey we thought we should finalize what to see and do in Delhi and pulled out the Delhi map that we had picked up at the Airport earlier. I had kept the entire of next day – Sunday – for shopping (yes, the entire day. Who goes to Delhi every day? – other than Delhi-ites of course) in Palika B...