110003
Parliament Street
India
18 Apr
Lets see…
Now i can post to my blog and Twitter all at the same time by sending a mail to Posterous via my GPRS on my Nokia N82. Now i need to sit down.
18 Apr
Testing Posterous
Big storm coming in the digital world. Too many ways to autopost into too many things. We’ll get into a recursive loop… And then we’ll need a Spanning Tree Protocol for web applications! Now off you go to Posterous.
18 Apr
How much for a song?
Apple Store used to sell all music for 99 cents till some time back. Now there have 3 price slabs, the maximum going upto USD 1.29. In Indian rupees (INR), this turns out to be around Rs. 50 or more. I’m not convinced whether people in India will pay Rs. 50 or more for a song. So how much would you really pay for one song?
17 Apr
Protected: Garbage being dumped in the shafts in Sun Tower, Shipra Sun City, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad
9 Apr
Voting in Ghaziabad, Parliamentary Constituency No. 55
| Originally posted at: http://merimarzi.wordpress.com/ |
[All thoughts/memories revisited after reading http://pinknblu.blogspot.com/2009/04/jaagore-form-6-being-tossed-for-six.html. Hat Tip: Pinku]
Ahh.. elections are around the corner. Not just the state elections, but the one that will chose the next Prime Minister! Wow.
Do you think I’ll vote this time? And be part of the process that chooses the Prime Minister? Nopes… not me..
Why? Because I stay in Ghaziabad, Parliamentary Constituency No. 55. And the laws here are unique in themselves.
I’m 31 years old and I’ve never voted in my life. This time in a burst of enthusiasm, fueled by JaagoRe, I filled up my FORM-6, not once but twice. (Did it breach some law? I don’t know or care). This is the first time in my life that I had a proper address proof, having moved in my own house in Ghaziabad, where I am the registered owner. This is the first time in my life when I felt confident to fill up the FORM-6 and expect my name in the electoral rolls and get my own Voter-ID card. So when the people from the Tehsil set up a camp nearby (at the Trikona Park in Shipra Sun City, Indirapuram), I went, my FORM-6 ready with all the supplementary documentation (in accordance with the Jaagore.com website). First, the officials from the Tehsil refused to accept my FORM-6. Reason? My FORM-6 was in English (downloaded from the Election Commission of India website). They would accept only the FORM-6 that had been given to them from the Tehsil. These were in Hindi alone.
Well…. you know how futile it is to argue with government officials? So I asked for two FORM-6′s in Hindi. That is when she asked me where I stayed. I told her. She refused to give me the FORM-6 since she was not aware that this new building where I stayed had been constructed in the Shipra Sun City area! It was with great persuation that I, along with some fellow residents convinced her that this building really existed and we had been stayng there for almost a year! It was then time to meet the second hurdle. She asked us if we were owners or tenants. She made it clear that she would not give out forms to tenants!!! This is again totally against what www.JaagoRe.com had told me. The site clearly says in their FAQ that as long as you have been staying at a particular place for more than 6 months, you are eligible to register as a voter at that place. Anyways, since I was an owner, I just asked for 2 forms. They would give me only one. They asked me to photocopy it if I needed more. So I went to the photocopy booth and I learned something new. The FORM-6′s that I had got was not printed on both sides (as it should be)! So I went back to get a properly printed FORM-6. All the FORM-6′s with the lady in charge were printed half and she just shrugged when I pointed out the issue with the forms. Luckily I met someone who had managed to get the proper FORM-6 with both the pages printed. I photocopied from his FORM-6, keeping 2 copies extra. After I filled up the FORM-6, I went back to submit them to the lady. She looked at me unhappily and reluctantly accepted the form, however refusing to give me an acknowledgement. Another few minutes of tussle and another battle was won. She painstakingly wrote down सुनीता देवी in the Signature area (making it obvious that she had studied too little and too late), put a stamp with virtually no ink on it and handed it over asking me to fill up the rest of the details. That is when I noticed that there was no tracking number on the acknowledgement slip. There was no way to track whether my FORM-6 was being processed or had been dumped in a dustbin by सुनीता देवी on her way home.
This was pretty disheartening. I had spent a lot of time running around to submit a form as per the Tehsil’s specifications and there was no guarantee that I’d get my Voter card or have my name in the electoral rolls. The photocopy-wallah had already warned me that this process usually takes 4-5 times to get results.
A few days later, the society RWA president asked residents to fill up FORM-6’s that he would get submitted. I filled them again, taking my submission tally to 2.
This was all in the October-November 2008 timeframe. A few days back, 6-Apr-2009 to be exact, I got the following mail from www.JaagoRe.com:
Dear Siddharth,
Jaago Re! One Billion Votes campaign commends your effort to register yourself as a voter and make India a better democracy.
The voter list in Ghaziabad has not been released in English. Thus, we are unable to directly inform you of your voter registration status.
However, you can check your names on the revised voters’ list published by the State’s Chief Electoral Officer on January 22 at http://tempceoup.up.nic.in/ if you submitted the form before December 3.
If you submitted the form after December 3 please check your names on the updated supplementary list that will be released by the Election Commission of India approximately ten days before the polling date May 07. You can find this on the CEO’s website or at your ERO’s office.
Please note, forms with sufficient address proof, age proof and correct entries will will be duly processed to be included in the voter list at the discretion of the ERO.
Regards,
Vandana Krishnan
Communications Manager
Jaago Re! One Billion Votes
I tried about 4-5 times to look up the website (http://tempceoup.up.nic.in/) for the said information. Unfortunately, the website is crap. It has a sidebar that displays the following very proudly under the “News and Events” section:
NEW: Electoral Rolls have been published at all polling stations in Uttar Pradesh on 15th January’07.
January 2007!!! We’re in 2009 now!
Anyways, that was the end to my journey to vote in 2009. I am loath to go hunt down government buildings that have no proper address or directions to reach there and try to find out whether my name is on the electoral list. Especially when a resident in my building has already done so and informed me that his name did not appear in the list. As far as elections are concerned, all the residents in my building do not exist at all!
I had forgotten all my angst and frustration regarding my voting rights. pinknblu’s post brought back everything and I thought it would be nice to put them down for posterity 
| Originally posted at: http://merimarzi.wordpress.com/ |
25 Mar
Of pigeons and neighbours
| Originally posted at: http://merimarzi.wordpress.com/ |
Our neighbour loves them pigeons… and unfortunately our service balconies face each other. Ok.. restart.. that had no link, did it? Our neighbour loves to feed pigeons in their service balcony. So they put out bread crumbs(?) and god knows what along with clean water on a big stool in their service balcony. Now, our service balcony balcony faces theirs. So I can see them spreading feed on a big wooden plank since last year It did not bother me too much, apart from pigeons hovering around every time I’d go out in the balcony… you see I was not very insightful…
So lets imagine you get a huge field as a gift. And it grows food — all sorts that you’d need. And you have nothing else to do, so you move into farming full-time. Where would you stay? … In a house or a small cottage? Now, where would you build it? Would you build it in the middle of the field? Well, unlikely… you’d like to build the house a little away from the fields, wouldn’t you? Maybe there’d be a road someplace on a side where you’d like to stay… nearer the markets maybe etc. etc. Well, definitely not in the middle of the field which you could use to grow more food!
So why should pigeons do any different? Their field is the flat next door. They’re definitely not going to build their house there! So where? …. yes… my flat is the perfect place… they can see when their food “grows” in their field, and yet they ensure that they do not stay and dirty the field area. Bloody pigeons… so now they’ve ensconced themselves in the place meant for the exhaust fan in my kitchen…
When they first started building their nest, I broke it apart… in front of them, and small pieces of nails, wires, cables and stones dropped on the floor… funny, when I’d have expected grass and hay to fall.. but then this is the concrete jungle, right? I thought the pigeons would have got the message. Or so my pigeon brain sized brain thought then and promptly forgot about them. Well, them pigeons are a adamant lot.. they came back, build their nest anew and it seems now that they have a (?) baby pigeon(s) awaiting to hatch !!! So soon they’ll be crapping all over the walls now, and B will not allow me to be me and get rid of it 
I hate those bloody pigeons… and the only solace that I have is that it seemed that there were 3 pigeons involved.. and I hope it’s two males and one double-timing female pigeon… and when the baby pigeons are born, I hope they all get into a fight arguing who’s the dad.. and they all peck themselves to their death….. Muahh…..ahahhhahaha….
Death to those pigeons.. and bad tidings to my neighbours who would never have realized that their feeding the pigeons would become so frustrating to me. And death to me who could turn out such a long and crappy post about such a trivial day-to-day thing in life… 
| Originally posted at: http://merimarzi.wordpress.com/ |
18 Mar
My Trip to Kasauli
| Originally posted at: http://merimarzi.wordpress.com/ |
Kasauli… the little dream town in Himachal Pradesh where I went last week just after Holi. Anindya had taken leave from office and was at my place before Holi. I had to take two days off after Holi and we could plan a 2/3-day trip. It was B’s idea to go to Kasauli. I’ve been wanting to drive to Kasauli for a long time… but with my car acting up in the last few weeks (The battery went kaput suddenly, and then there was a tyre puncture when I had to buy a new tube), I decided not to risk it.
First came the hotel bookings. I had heard that Kasauli had very few hotels, so pre-booking hotels was important to me (as opposed to B’s usual idea of going to the place and then looking for accommodation!). I usually book HPTDC hotels when going to Himachal. They’re reasonably clean, usually have a reasonably good view from the rooms and are usually located a little out of the way, away from the heart of the city. Also, more importantly, they have an online hotel booking facility 
. I’m a sucker for anything online. You have to book at least 2 days in advance on the website. Luckily, I just managed to fulfill that criteria. I started looking for rooms on the 10th for availability on the 12th and 13th of the month. Rooms were available at the only HPTDC hotel in Kasauli, the Hotel Ros Common! The peak season is still about a month away… perhaps that is why getting rooms was easy. Now, I had to think about travel. We dilly-dallied between hiring a cab for the three of us and taking the bus route. A lot of thought went into whether we should book a HRTC (Himachal Road Transport Corporation) Volvo online.. That would have put us off by Rs. 660/- per person. And this would take us only till Dharampur. Then we’d have to look for a connecting bus/jeep to Kasauli from there. Finally, we decided to go by bus… but not a Volvo. We needed to take a really late night bus to Dharampur so that we we’d reach Dharampur at a time when taxis would be available and hopefully not in the middle of the night.
So on the Holi-day morning (11-Mar-2009), we drove to ISBT (Kashmere Gate) to book our bus tickets. The last bus to we could find was at 10:30 PM. Any bus to Shimla would probably go via Dharampur. The fare was only Rs. 186/- per person this time, the bus being a normal down-to-earth bus. We were told it would take about 7 hours to reach Dharampur, which was fine by us.
HRTC Bus
The best part about these government buses is that they tend to leave on time. So at around 10:30 PM as promised, we were on our way to Kasauli… There’s something about the rocking motion of buses that puts me off to sleep fairly fast (though not as fast as my friend Jaggu 
). So I’m fairly blank about the bus trip except that we stopped about 2-3 times for food etc. When we got down at Dharampur, it was around 5:00 AM. It was dark and cold… freezing cold. It was not the dip in mercury actually, but the wind chill factor that really made it cold to be outside… was I glad to be zipped up to my neck in a warm jacket! I shivered and thanked the higher powers (whoever they may be) for the tea shop that was open. While I sipped some extremely sweet milk tea, Anindya ran around looking for a taxi in this sleepy town. (It being the day after Holi, perhaps the taxi-wallahs were drunk and were happily snuggled in their warm beds.) Anindya’s good at these things.. I would perhaps waited till daybreak to look for a taxi. The taxi took about 20-25 minutes to find and agreed to take us to Kasauli for Rs. 200/-. Anindya had found another person who wanted to go to Kasauli too. So we pooled in and paid Rs. 50/- each. The drive was about 10 km. and we reached in good time.. sometime around 6:00 AM. The taxi dropped us just before the Cantonment area. Entering the Cantonment area by jeep and crossing it to reach the Hotel would have required us to pay some sort of a toll tax of about Rs. 65 (?). We chose to save that money.. and off we went walking, looking for the Hotel Ros Common (Approx. GPS co-ordinates: 30.89 N, 76.97 E).
We reached the Hotel about 6 hours before we were allowed to check in! Usually these people allot you rooms if they are vacant. Unfortunately, all the rooms were occupied then, but after 12:30 PM, they were *all* empty!! So we went in each room to decide which one we wanted to stay in 
. Hotel Ros Common has a total of 9 rooms. We found out the following about the rooms:
|
Room No. |
Rate per day (Rs.) |
With a window? |
|
1 |
1800 |
No |
|
2 |
2000 |
No |
|
3 |
2000 |
No |
|
4 |
3000 |
Yes |
|
5 |
2000 |
No |
|
6 |
1800 |
Yes |
|
7 (Annexe) |
1400 |
No |
|
8 (Annexe) |
1400 |
No |
|
9 (Annexe) |
1600 |
Yes |
Entrance to the Hotel Ros Common, Kasauli
As you enter through the Hotel main gates, Rooms 1,2,3 and 4 fall on the right side and Rooms 6 and 5 fall on the left (in order). Rooms 7,8 and 9 are in an Annex some distance below the main hotel. The rooms in the Annex would give you more privacy and the caretaker there would usually bring meals down so that people don’t have a problem staying there. Rooms 7 and 8 are suites — two rooms each with a double bed in each one. There’s a separating door in between the two rooms. Only the front room gets the TV though. Room 9 is a double-bed only. But it seems to have a separate balcony and windows. This room would probably be the best choice for couples who’d want privacy. I have my eyes on this room for next time It’ll be easy to book too since this room is only one of it’s type. So, if I book the Rs. 1600/- room, I’d get Room No. 9 for sure.
The Hotel staff was friendly in general (except one, who we chose to ignore). A lady would sit at the reception during the day time, and she was especially helpful. She even let us have wine during lunch, although she requested us to keep the bottle hidden away from sight. The food was ok… at least the non-veg food was. We never had any vegetarian food, so we wouldn’t know about that. Anindya and B tried all the 3-4 continental dishes, but I don’t suppose they fancied any of them for repeats. But considering that I got almost raw chicken in Dalhousie.. this was a treat. There was no mutton on the menu though.. for that you have to order beforehand and that too multiple dishes at a time.
Kasauli is a very small and sleepy town. There is really nothing to do except for taking long walks along the Upper and Lower Mall roads, admiring the hundreds of private estates and cottages (and wishing that you owned them), trying out the momos, chowmeins, aloo parathas etc. at the small restaurants that line the Mall Road and maybe buy some cheap local stuff for decoration of your home (We bought some woolen caps, daris etc. because they were cheap). The people are a relaxed lot, watching TV most of the time. I barely saw any locals buying stuff from the shops! Note though, this is the off season. It is probable (though I feel unlikely) that it converts into a commercial hill station like Manali or Shimla during the peak seasons. Oh, you can try some cheap wine too from the shops. You just have to be careful not to drink in the open. There are harsh fines (Rs. 2500/-) for this.
      |
The cantonment area in the center of the town is the *cleanest* hill station that I have ever seen. It was a joy walking on the roads with barely any people around, and everything clean, clean and clean. We made sure we never littered anywhere (nothing unusual about that ) and we took photographs of all the sign boards exhorting everyone to keep the city clean. When we took a walk further away from the cantonment, we did see some litter, but it was far too little to bother anyone too much. Though, it could perhaps be attributed to the fact that according to the 2001 census, the number of inhabitants of Kasauli was a mere 4994 (according to Wikipedia)!!
While we strolled the streets everyday, we took the room rates from some other hotels that we fancied, and had a look at their rooms. The average rates were around Rs. 2000/- to Rs. 2500/- for a day which was a little higher that I would have liked. But since there are few hotels, I’m sure they’re all booked in the peak seasons. We needed some backup options anyways if we ever decided to come back in the peak season on short notice, right?!! This part was fun. The people were friendly, and they happily showed us their rooms and gave us their contact information. It also gave us an opportunity to talk to the local people. Unfortunately, it seems that Hindi was the standard local language… I like listening to the foreign local languages that I don’t understand. And then sometimes I go hunting for cassettes (my car has a cassette player and not a CD player) with songs in the local language.
The Hotel Alasia (Reservations in Delhi: +91.11.26447971-76) was on the Mall Road, near the center of the town. The rooms had an ancient feel to it.. carpets were worn out, beds made out of old wood, but the toilets were decent. B and Anindya loved it. I’m not too crazy about the old look and feel thing. Room rates were Rs. 1950/- for Deluxe rooms and Rs. 2500/- for the Luxury Accommodation. There is an extra Luxury Tax of 10% over these rates. Off season rates would typically be half.
The Hotel Aanchal (Tele: 01792-272341 ; Mobile: 9418174823, 9254203330) was near the Kasauli Tehsil office on the other side of the town. This hotel had a little down market feel to it… but had one room which could sleep 10 people, had 2 bathrooms (albeit a little dirty), and the best part was that it had a huge terrace in front. This was a favourite with bachelors, the hotel guy explained, who couldn’t care less about the looks but needed a place to look into the sky at night and count the stars with a drink in hand
Hotel Grand Maurice (since 1862) (Tele: 01792-272074) seemed up-market, located close to the town center. While I liked the clean look of it, Anindya and B weren’t too crazy about it The Couple Suites were Rs. 3000/- while the Annex Couple Suites were Rs. 2400/-.
We saw Khushwant Singh‘s house in Kasauli and I promptly envied him. The entrance is a long narrow pathway going down down down.. and then hidden among the trees and plants is a small cottage where he could just be alone… listening to the birds and the bees perhaps?
We also think we saw Rahul Bose’s home there. The nameplate said “R. K. Bose”, which could perhaps mean his dad’s name “Rupen Kumar Bose” (I googled that), or maybe not. We asked two locals — one of them did not know who Rahul Bose was, while one said that this was indeed his house.
After we settled in in the Hotel (Rooms 5 and 6 ; Room 5 has a small private balcony of it’s own and is next to the kitchen), we took a walk on the Upper Mall Road ( I think) in the evening. There we met a Sardarji who happened to have parked his car on the side and was admiring the sunset with his friend, while his wife stayed in the car smsing(?). It turned out that he was drunk and was sipping vodka from a glass, which incidentally is illegal in Kasauli (and maybe in other places also). As it usually happens with Anindya around, the Sardarji started talking to us and we learned he was from Delhi too and was going to check in into our Hotel later in the evening. He seemed a jolly old fellow and he told us he’d just celebrated his 50th birthday the day before. After wishing him Happy Birthday’s and all, we were off to explore Kasauli further. When we came back to the Hotel, we met the Sardarji again at the dinner table outside. Since our room (No. 6) was just in front of the table, we couldn’t avoid him… and he was visibly more drunk than before… His wife was obviously not interested in chit-chatting with us. She started playing with her two phones as soon as we started talking to the Sardarji, making it pretty clear that she wanted nothing to do with us Or nothing to do with the Sardarji I believe, because she was visibly upset having to tolerate a drunk old man for a husband Later that night, while we played cards (Minimum only) in our room, the Sardarji sat in the cold outside getting drunk even further and calling out to (non-existent ?) people and making an ass of himself. The wife was nowhere around… and I wouldn’t blame her… I wonder why would a person stick around to a guy like that… I mean, you come on a vacation and spend it getting drunk and talking to ghosts! B would have dumped me then and there if I tried anything like that The Sardarji continued his late night routine the next day too and we chose to ignore him totally
Among all the houses that we saw in Kasauli, the absolute best and most gorgeous house (or group of houses) that I have ever seen was the one we encountered while walking to Manki Point early in the morning on Saturday.
Warning signboard just before entering Manki Point, Kasauli
Manki Point is supposedly the highest point in Kasauli. We got up at 5:45 AM to see the sunrise beyond the mountains. It was almost daybreak… and we started walking towards Manki Point (beyond which I believe the Earth just disappears, because it’s a dead-end and is locked and guarded by the Army. No phones, cameras, calculators(!) etc. are allowed inside.). As soon as we exited the Hotel, we were greeted by an enthusiastic dog who thought he had found a friend in us and tried to kiss us and lick our faces When it realized it’s mistake, it gamboled away looking for another friend. One thing about stray dogs in Kasauli was that they looked healthy and well-fed. Wonder who feeds them, especially when no litter lies on the streets…
On the way, we found a spot marked as Sunrise Point. We waited patiently for the Sun to come out…. it kept getting lighter and lighter, but the Sun seemed to be hiding behind the mountains and the clouds. So we gave up and started walking towards Manki Point keeping an eye out for the errant Sun. The walk upto Manki Point must have been about 3 kms. from the Hotel. We saw some more tourists who had braved the cold to take a walk. Some bikers were up and about, driving up and down (and hence meeting us twice) for no understandable reason. We met barely a couple of local people on that walk.
The gorgeous cottages just before Manki Point, Kasauli
Just before Manki Point (approx. 50 m. before), we saw absolutely the most delightful getaway in Kasauli. Multiple modern houses stood facing the rising Sun, the ray of the Sun streaming through the sliding glass doors and windows and falling on the wooden floors. These small houses were painted yellow.. the roofs slanting and coloured red. And all around these houses was a quaint little pathway taking you from one house to the other and surrounded by a lovely garden. The green of the garden, the yellow of the exterior walls and the red of the roofs and the morning Sun falling on them made a breathtaking scene… we stood there admiring these houses for a long time. There was no identification upfront. We kept hoping that this would be a Hotel where we could stay the next time. We found a guard sitting at the entrance to the property and Anindya went over and asked him who owned the place. (If you have not noticed, whenever any talking needs to be done with people, I push Anindya in front.. or rather I take a carefully planned step back ) The guard told us that the property was owned by a group of friends who came and stayed once in a while. Man, do I envy these people… they not only have like-minded friends, but are equally rich enough to have built this retreat for themselves. I can barely think of any friends who would want to invest in a secluded getaway like this.. maybe one or two.. and then the lack of money would stall progress on the project 
Normally, I never feel the need for money… I make do with what I have (albeit not very pragmatically). But that moment, I stood and yearned for some way to earn the kind of money to own a place like this. I started taking a few photographs when the guard at the Manki Point post shouted out to us — …Oi.. photo nahin lena……. Pisspots I tell you, these Army people… this place wasn’t even under their command, but who’d try to reason with dumb headed Army people who are trained to blindly follow orders. No offence meant… but that attitude would work perfectly fine in a war, but I don’t think it gels particularly well with civilians.
We walked back to the Hotel… taking a long last look at the hills of Kasauli. The day to leave had come… we had some breakfast at the Hotel, and then packed our bags. We decided not to take any taxis on our way back.. all transport must be local and cheap modes of transport (Recession ka zamaana hai bhai ). So we walked to the bus stop in Kasauli.. to get on board a bus to Dharampur. It was a 15-20 minutes wait before we got a bus to Dharampur. Tickets were Rs. 10/- apiece. There’s a thing about these local buses… they drive FAST, real fast. They’re so used to the turns and the winding roads that the drivers just zoom ahead applying just the right amount of brakes and clutch to get to the destination. Reminds me of what I’d do if I played Need for Speed or MidTown Madness for a long time They also seem to know so many people around the mountain… every few minutes someone would wave at them from the side of the road and they would wave back with one hand on the steering wheel, not slowing down for even a fraction of a second. Contrast that to so many of us who live in our multi-storied buildings in the big cities for years without knowing our neighbours…
I don’t think it took more than half an hour for us to reach Dharampur. That is when I noticed the toy train tracks. So it would be possible to use the Kalka-Shimla toy trains to reach Dharampur. We could have taken a toy train to Kalka and then looked for a bus to Delhi, but we chose to get aboard the first bus to Delhi or Chandigarh from Dharampur. The first bus we sighted was a Volvo bus to Delhi. While I got ready to sprint towards it, I was stopped by my travel mates… a Volvo bus was not a local and cheap mode of transport that we had decided upon, so it was out of consideration So we continued to wait… munching some wonderful green sweet peas and Anindya looking longingly at a wine shop. The prices of liquor are quite cheap compared to the prices in Delhi or Mumbai. We would have waited for about half an hour I guess when we got a bus to Chandigarh. We did not get seats right away. We paid for our tickets (Rs. 42/- apiece) and sat down on the floor near the back door and entertained the other travelers by our stupid antics Anindya is a specialist when it comes to acting the fool (unlike me ).
It took about 2 and a half hours (approx.) to reach Chandigarh. (The driver took a 20-30 minute break in between for lunch.) We found out the hard way that Chandigarh has two bus terminus’s — ISBT-I (in Sector-17) and ISBT-II (in Sector-43). The faster thing would have been to get down at a place commonly known as the “Tribune Chowk” (There’s a huge building marked “The Tribune” in a corner) and get on a bus to Delhi from there. But we stayed put in the bus which took us to ISBT-II. Buses to Delhi ply from ISBT-I only. So we boarded a local bus for ISBT-I which was about 15-20 minutes away. The GPS on Anindya’s Blackberry was very useful throughout the trip. We could see Sector-17 approaching on the phone.. and we almost forgot to look outside!!
It didn’t take long to find a bus to Delhi from ISBT-I, Chandigarh. And the bus started in about 10 minutes time… about 3:00 PM. The driver seems a little kharoos or maybe he wasn’t comfortable talking in Hindi. We managed to get the front 3 seats next to the driver… the single meant for the conductor and the twin seats behind it and off we went. Sitting in front gives you the feeling that you’re driving the bus… you can anticipate turns, you feel the thrill of overtaking other buses and trucks… you can see everyone in front… the guy on the bike balancing huge boxes tied to his pillion, the poor families travelling in a truck, all huddled up with blank faces, the bull riding on a truck going to be sold or slaughtered perhaps, the tiny Zen dangerously overtaking us from the left side, the slow buses and trucks not allowing us to overtake, zooming through the Exempt Lane of a Toll Plaza… The driver might have been kharoos, but was he fast…! He drove the bus as you would drive a small zippy car…. and we reached ISBT (Kashmere Gate), Delhi by 8:00 PM. Getting home from the ISBT took another hour and a half and that brought us back to the real world … the world that I have to live every day..
Kasauli is definitely a place to go back to, especially if you want peace and quiet. And you like to walk alone without bumping into other humans. At least that is how it was in this time of the year, and I’ll surely go back again.. hopefully the next time driving my car.. Yay!
[Credits: All photos taken with Anindya's camera, a Sony DSC-W130]
| Originally posted at: http://merimarzi.wordpress.com/ |
18 Mar
Demise of the Kasauli travelogue
The Kasauli travelogue that used to be here till last night has had a very short life and has been deleted by mistake…. Luckily I managed to retrieve the content from the browser cache. (To view the browser cache in Firefox, type “about: cache” in the address bar of the browser.)
The post will hopefully be reconstructed and reformatted by tonight…
