Hindustan Times
Such a long journey
Years ago, at a time of happy unemployment, I’d thought I’d buy an IndRail pass and journey all around the country by train.
The plan didn’t take off because:
a. Only foreigners and NRIs can buy IndRail passes. They aren’t meant for us RIs
b. I had no money anyway (I was unemployed at the time)
So that was that. But I still dream of, one day, clambering on to a train and taking off for parts unknown, just to explore.
Because this is a country so worth exploring. Every time I open my little (by now completely outdated) Bartholomew Atlas (I adore atlases) to indulge in one of my masochistic ‘let’s see where in the world I could go if I could go anywhere in the world’ exercises, I get all excited about Poland, say, or Peru or Namibia or Borneo or Zambia – and then I think, yes, most exciting, but actually, I’d rather go to Assam.
And actually, I would rather go to Assam. Or Lucknow. Sikkim. Kalimpong. Pondicherry. Cochin. Jaisalmer. Puri. Hampi. Orchha. Murud. Everywhere. And ideally, I’d like to go by road.
I haven’t done many road trips in my life. For one, I don’t have a car. For two, most of my pals do not have cars either.
But I have on occasion driven off into the sunset (though road trips generally begin by driving off into the sunrise at some disgusting pre-dawn hour) on a road trip. And I have loved every one of those long drives.
Even the one that ended because of an accident. (The car was out of action on a mountain somewhere in Himachal, and it looked for a while that we might have to hitch a lift on an apple truck, which I was most excited about. Unfortunately, a jeep arrived instead, but I almost came down that mountain in an apple truck so that’s still something to talk about.)
As a child – or rather, as a tween – I did road trips in Assam where my brother-in-law worked at the time. Those weren’t road trips really. Rather, lengthy drives to get from one place to another, because my brother-in-law was posted in a rather remote area, but they were the first long drives I’d ever had in my life (except Calcutta to Barrackpore for picnics) and I just adored them.
Once, driving home from a party late at night, my sister woke me up to show me a black panther, pacing the road just by our side, unconcerned about the car next to it. It had the most gorgeous cold green eyes, I remember. It was a really stunning sight.
Years later, when my brother-in-law had been transferred to the Dooars in north Bengal, we once drove back home through the jungle in a storm. That was a crazy ride – trees crashing down left, right and centre, the rain so heavy we couldn’t see through the windows… terrifying. When we finally got to the highway, we were so emotionally exhausted we just had to stop. And some 20 minutes later, we were highly amused when a tractor emerged from the jungle – our hosts had sent it after us, the driver explained, in case we’d needed to be pulled out of a ditch, or have a tree removed from our path, or even (horrible thought) have a tree pulled off the roof of our car.
Though I suffer from extreme vertigo (even a steep staircase can set my head spinning sometimes), I love mountain roads for some inexplicable reason. Of course, as a Calcutta girl, I’d spent lots of holidays in Darjeeling, which meant going up from and down to Siliguri by car. But a couple of years ago, I did a story on Darjeeling tea. That meant I had to visit a lot of tea gardens – and that meant taking roads that tourist traffic doesn’t know the existence of.
‘Steep’ doesn’t even begin to describe them. And frankly, it’s only by the broadest stretch of the imagination that anyone could call them ‘roads’. If you were on the outer side of the car and stupid enough to look out of the window, you looked into space – or down. And looking down, you noticed that the chassis of the jeep jutted a little beyond the edge of the ‘road’. Whereupon, if you were me, you hastily moved away from the window and stared straight ahead thereafter.
Of course, these don’t really qualify as road trips, but they’re the longest I’ve ever done. Except the one in Himachal, where we had the accident, and once to Pushkar from Delhi, with my brother-in-law.
The year I went, the new Jaipur bypass had been completed but hadn’t opened as yet. No minister had been found to inaugurate it or some such thing. But there it was – a smooth, metalled black road stretching into the distance, completely free of traffic.
It was too inviting to resist, so we took it. And drove for hours on a superb road with nothing on either side of us. Not one solitary thing.
Pushkar was lovely and mad. Such a backpackers’ paradise that all signs – hotels, shops and stalls – were in Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, French, German and English. Hindi? Well, there was just one sign that recall. It was by the lake and it sternly informed us about all the things we were not, under any circumstances, to do or there’d be dire consequences. But no one paid it any attention. All around us, people were doing everything they’d been warned not to do.
All the cafes at Pushkar, even the tiniest ones, had Mediterranean menus. And while the rest of the country has chai stalls, Pushkar has cappuccino stalls. There was not a chaiwalla in sight.
So it was fun. But the best part of the trip was the ride back.
We took the unused bypass again. It was afternoon this time, verging on evening. The sun was low on the horizon, the sky was huge, the sand on either side of the road was heaped up in dunes and glowed a thousand different shades of gold and black (because of the shadows) in the light of the sinking sun.
And the road stretched in front of us, leading apparently to eternity, looking like a gleaming black stripe on the fur of some gigantic cat.
It was surreal. I felt as though I was in some sci-fi book. It did not look or feel earthly at all.
That was in early 2005. I’m sure the road is in regular use now, that buildings have sprung up beside it, that the small-scale economy around it is booming.
But I will never forget what it looked like then. And I so want to do road trips.
(6 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Kushal Rani Gulab on Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Filed under Mumbai · Tagged happy unemployment, hindustan times, Lucknow. Sikkim. Kalimpong. Pondicherry. Cochin. Jaisalmer. Puri. Hampi. Orchha. Murud. Everywhere., news
Hi. I read a few of your other posts and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links?
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I feel the same way about train trips.. thanks to the cross country travelling we did when dad was transferred from one end of the country to another… they used to last days.. and I don’t know how my parents emerged sane at the end of the journey with 5 kids and one dog…
I remember the time we were all tiny tots and one man pretending to be blind came into our coupe and picked up our cane food basket and dad wasn’t there so we all started screaming.. and my sis threw her hawaii chappal at the guy… Another time… my older sister and I (we must have been 7 and 5) jumped off the platform (I think it was in Allahabad) and crossed the tracks to get to the other side. Both of us tripped and fell on the tracks… Mom was so mad at us… I think not so much because we could have got killed but because we were covered in shit and she had to scrub us down in the waiting room…
Then another time……
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Kushal Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Cols, I feel SO sorry for your parents, you can NOT imagine.
Pat your mother on the back for me.
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Lovey post Kushal! I remember several too. The night train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer. We could not get reservation and travelled unreserved (parents and sis and me - we were in class 1 and 4 I think) along with hordes of pilgrims going to the Ramdeora fair, incl a young, very sick TB patient. He had to get off midway as was too unwell.
And early morning when the train was empty and racing through the desert our companions were a snake-charmer and his 2 year old daughter. Dad was chatting up with the man and got his life-story out, incl the fact that his wife had died recently. Ma of course promptly took off my sister’s sweater and gave it to the child along with some other stuff.
And then we could see the sun glinting off the Jaisalmer fort in the distance! Awesome.
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Kushal Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Oooh, that sounds LOVELY, TSinha. Am trying to imagine an almost empty unreserved coach and failing utterly. And I want to go to Jodhpur and Jaisalmer.
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But theres a lot to explore in our country, sometimes I feel foreigners have seen much more than we ever have!
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Kushal Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Thanks Sana, I would really love to do a long one. Like a couple I know, who drove from Bombay to Kerala, and another couple who frequently take off in their car for weeks.
I’ve never been to Manali, but I can imagine what the roads are like. Curly-wurly would describe them well.
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Lovely post!! Even i get these insane urges to travel. I go into a “The world can got to hell but I’m going to travel” mode.. Even the boyfriend is scared of it. Do have a look my blog post on this subject
http://ravingsofthepsychoticpsychic.blogspot.com/2007/10/autumn-cravings.html
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Kushal Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Thanks, Masha. Read your post - did you write it in one gush of breath, or what? Yep, every now and then I get this urge to just pack up and go - and then think, uh oh. Housing loan. And stay right here.
Anyway, India is cheaper. And exciting. Grin.
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masha Reply:
November 30th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
As a matter of fact I did write it in a gush of breath!! Hehehe!
I was feeling particularly itchy after being bitten by the travel bug and this was therapy (of sorts..)
Funny thing is.. Right after I had written that post I had to leave for Istanbul on a college trip.. Talk of dreams coming true!!!
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Kushal Reply:
November 30th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Istanbul. Ooooh. It’s on my list.
Jan 26th can easily by converted to a long weekend. some very interesting roads leading away from bombay beckon
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Kushal Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Speak for yourself, Salil. I have production.
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Your Jaipur trip sounds fantastic..crazy!! but what is amazing is your ‘black panther’ journey. and you say you have not done trips!
‘Col’..her memories remind me of mine, tho i was the one with two kids, one husband, one dog, metre guage train (anyone done that??!!) then waiting for hours on a platform to change to broad guage…in retrospect marvellous, at that time grime all over, running to platform taps to get water (water in train over)..two day trips and more..
your blog is lovely and i enjoyed it!
but, and i am known to be good at foretelling, so i know you will take off and have a great time. Here’s to that!,,,,,
And hey, i too wanted an Indrail.
There is just so, so so much to see in India. Picnicked by the Beas river, and have collected stones, how i love them. Keep dreaming..all will come true..
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ok, some !
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Sounds fun. While young, we did use to look forward to long train trips, usually from Delhi to somewhere in Bihar where our relatives lived (still do). We revelled in putting our heads out of the windows to catch the wind, and were pulled up as the soot (it was coal engines then) got into our hair. The ‘toy train’ from Kalka to Shimla was a beauty too (the first time I learnt at Shimla that a whole train engine can be driven to a contraption and literally ‘turned around’ to face the other way).
The last enjoyable train trips I remember doing were back upto mid-90s, probably from Delhi to Bikaner on metre guage tracks, when the sand got into your hair and everywhere else no matter how tightly you shut the compartment doors and windows, so we just opened them and let the sand fly in and out! (it became different after the Rajasthan canal came, with shrubs growing in many parts of desert & preventing the sand from flying around to an extent). And the camel-milk made tea at stations near Bikaner - superb. Later, we covered the Bikaner-Jaisalmer circuit by road, passing through Pokhran (from where we brought back ‘red clay’, courtesy the nuclear test). The clear night view on the road, with shining starts and no building around for miles, was something to cherish, as was the ‘luxurious’ palace hotel (not one of the branded ones) at Jaisalmer where we of course also went to the fort (’sonar kella’).
Sadly, most of my train journeys in this millennium were work related and done at night, leaving almost no scope for enjoying. But I did a short, personal one between Hyderabad and Vizag last year, and the view of the terrain as you approach (or come out of) Vizag is quite breathtaking.
As for hill roads, yes, they can be quite a surprise. I had to roam the hills some, for about two years. What they call roads can sometimes be hardly better than a dirt track, with perhaps some small stones uniformly spread to provide some traction. But going on such roads did cure me of the nausea I used to feel earlier. And eating in mountain villages seems to have hardened by stomach against any upsets. etc.! (a bonus)
And yes, the road trip to Manali is deservingly beautiful. But the best part for us (I and wife) was the hot chapatis and daal eaten at a roadside eatery on the way back late at night - famished as we were, it tasted like 5-star fare!
On another note, lack of time is probably not the only reason why many people run abroad instead of exploring the country (or even avoid road journeys). Lack of tourist friendliness may be another reason - at many places you’d find local shopkeepers/hotels etc. looking at tourists as ‘easy money’ (which may be true at many places abroad too, but pinches more for us ‘natives’.
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Hi Kushal,
A very interesting blog. it remind me of one of my latest trips.
let me recap here , what all we did.
We decided to go on a 4 night 5 day - religious *** sightseeing trip.
“We” included 5 ladies — me, my mom, my mom’s sister, my aunts daughter and my cousin’s mom-in-law.
the itinerary was :
Delhi to Udaipur by overnight train.
Taxi was booked from Udaipur till Kota. Take return train from kota to delhi.
So, we boarded our taxi from Udaipur station, went to our hotel and then did sightseeing for one day.
Next day we went to Chittor– spent 1 days there and visited few jain religious places and did local sightseeing.
Next day went to Kota- stayed for 2 days and again visited few jain religious places and did local sightseeing.
I cannot even begin to tell you how lovely the trip was and how much fun we had. My brother-in-law was so scared of our “ladies only trip” that he sent along a guard ( the inside news is that the guard was there to help his mother in walking and carry her handbag!!). So, we had a guard and our taxi driver escorting us!!!
I had done all the bookings and planned the trip.
It was once in a lifetime kind of trip, when my various relatives came to know about it, everybody was very surprised!! Now, I have a waiting list of my female relatives, who all want to go on such trip, whenever I organize one again!!!
What fun!!!
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