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...

Continued from previous post “ Trip to Auli – Day 5 ” When I first regained conscious that morning, I was aware only of an aching body… and then of the condition of the room – clothes strewn all over, the suitcase open and clothes spread out near the heater. It was nothing to worry – it was like that when we slept yesterday :P Gosh, I don’t know what the room service guy would have thought when he came to serve dinner last night. Eeeeeks !! So that was what we did from 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM – cleaning. The swelling in my hands was still there and Ashwin could not fold his legs at the knee. We had planned to take ski classes for 3 days but since we did nothing the first day, trek the second, we were left with only 2 days for skiing. And after the accident it was impossible anyway. There was no point going to Auli. And by the time we got ready it was already past noon. We had lunch at our hotel and went to the adventure shop to see if he could arrange something for us for the day. H...

Continued from previous post – “ Trip to Auli – Day 4 ” I woke up before the alarm went off :D . That’s because I wanted to use the washroom badly ;) I realized that my entire body was aching but the idea of ski was too much to keep me in bed for long. We got dressed and spent a little time trying to dry our washed clothes in front of the heater. A hanky that hubby put on the heater despite my pleas came back with burnt stripes of the heater on it. The taxi was waiting when we came out after breakfast. On the way we saw a few taxis coming downhill with luggage strapped on top. We guessed it could be the tourists from Clifftop leaving. Maybe the Punjabi uncle n aunty were in one of the taxis? When we reached the trek base, it had started to drizzle, but snow instead of water. It was cute in the sense it fell as snow drops n then became these beautiful water droplets like dew drops :) The trek was as tiresome as yesterday. The day was cloudy, none of the views we were able to ...

Continued from previous post -  “ Trip to Auli – Day 3 ” At exactly 4:00 AM the alarm went off. We dragged ourselves out of the bed half an hour later, dressed up in our layers and went to the terrace. It was as dark as the night before and the sky, as clear. Ashwin suggested that we resume our competition of last night. I caught 2 satellites in different parts of the sky in the interval of 20 minutes. When I showed him the third one he told me that I have been showing the same satellite each time. I am so not a morning person :P I waited and yawned while Ashwin adjusted his tripod and camera again n again. We waited for 2 whole hours before we started to see the effects of light and shadow on the mountain tops. Sadly we did not catch the sunrise. As I said, we are surrounded on all sides by humongous mountains and the sunrise happened on the other side of the mountain behind our hotel. It was disappointing. Neither did I sleep nor catch the sunrise, and even my sat...