Day Four - Darjeeling/Gangtok

We woke up early morning and we outside the temp was 3 deg and got into our car and took off at 5:15 for tiger hill , we reached there in about 20 min , the vehicle drops u almost at the top of the hill. this is the place which affords u a brillinat view of kanchenjunga and also on a clear day a glimpse of Mt Everest ! But we were not lucky , it was a partially clouded day and we went up the hill and got into the observatory which was fast filling up with ppl. there rows n rows of chairs and glass panes arnd us thru which we were to observe the sunrise .


As time started progressing ppl started gettin restless and were bedoming a huge nuisance , outside it was real cold so we decided to stay inside the observatory where we could sip tea/coffee which were provided inside. As the first straks of light appeared on horizon ppl started standing up n clicking pictures ( God knows what they got ! ) and we decided to move out of the the observatory into the open after gettin our first glance of the rising sun.






What a spectacular sight it was ! then I heard a old gentleman telling everyone that Sun is not hat we should be looking it , we should actually be looking at the other direction Where Kanchenjunga will recieve its first sunlight of the day. We cam out and started cliking pics of sunlight and patiently waited looking at the op direction and then saw the marvelous sight of a huge mountain slowly coming into view in between the clouds , the first rays of sun falling on the whitish mountain and the resultant effect was unbelievable and just cannot be described in words ... After enjoying the sunrise and watching the entire valley slowly emrging out of darkness to a brnad new day , we started from tiger hill to the next point which was Ghoom monastery, followed by something called Bastasia loop which was a memorial. But these two turned out to be a big dissapointment as there was nothinh worth wacthing there. We returned back to our hotel some time after 8 , then got ready and went to the Mall and strolled around looking for some good restaurant and had a really yummy breakfast and then packed our bags and proceeded to the Jeep stand. We had made a big mistake in not planning this part of the travel properly , we had just enquired where the jeep stand was and had assumed that we would get a vehicle at all times. It turned out that they had only hourly service after 10 , so had to wait for a long time and finally got a jeep for Gangtok at 11 AM.






The journey was supposed to take close to 4 hours.


And we had braced ourselves for a tortorous trip as it was in a jeep. But it turned out to be quite an experience. The views were simply awesome , we passed through a few tea gardens and a lot of places where 'Terrace farming' was practiced.






The total journey itself was gr8 as the road to Gangtok was through hills and after a point we came across Teesta river and after that the entire journey the road and the river ran alongside and there lot of scenic views



There is also white water rafting on Teesta river which was attracting quite a big crowd. There was a place on the way where there were numerous resorts which offered rafting experience.






.Finally reached Gangtok which was also a city on hills at 4 and managed to locate out hotel Shilton Lodge(once again had found out about it through internet). The rooms were pretty good and very affordable .We had reached the place late afternoon around 3:30 and after checking in , asked the guy at the hotel about the places we can visit. To our dismay we were told that we wont able to visit any of the places we had planned as it was too late and places inside the city were all sunrise view points which were not worth it during evenings. So we went out dissappointed and hungry and decided to have a late lunch at a restaurant nearby , which had a band performing during nights. We had gone in arnd 4 and the band was somewhere inside practising for their performance later that night and after a point it was really irritating and they took a huge amount of time to bring the food , after waiting for 30 min we were angry tired and totallyclueless as to what to do. Everything seemed hopeless the mood in the camp was totally down. We were about to walk out of the place , then the food arrived ! I have never such good chinese food ever before in 10 min we had finished our late lunch and trooped out into the main market place. Which it turned out was very small just a couple streets ! For a capital city Gangtok is very very small. But still it was a pleasant expericence , we walked around looking for some trinkets. The weather was also very pleasant must have been 15- 20 degrees , a huge departure from Darjeeling where it was below 10 in the afternoon itself.

We headed straight to the tourist info centre ru Sikkim govt. unfortunately for us , by the time we made it the place was closed , it was around 5PM. Here also people shut shop much earlier , most shops close by 7:30. Then we started walking around the central area called MG Marg which had shops on wither side and was a busy street. We spotted a lot of Travel agencies and decided to ask a few of them the rates for sightseeing and then decide what to do the next day. The first place we entered , the guy gave us the normal tour package where you with a group of 10-15 which wud be economical but crowded and also suggested that we could hire a cab on our own ( Maruti Van) since there were 3 of us , it would be comfortable and not so hard on pocket for us. The places covered would be Tsango lake which was 40 Km from Gangtok but close to 2 hrs on road and a place called Baba Mandir which he assured me was wonderful. We also wanted cover a couple of other view points ( in this part of the country view points r meant to view the sunrise) and the cost came about 1500 for the vehicle. But he said all permits for Nathula Pass were finished so we cant visit that place. Nathula is on Indo-China border on the famous 'silk route' . You need to get prior permit to visit the place and visit is possible only on Tuesday, Thursday, Sat and Sunday. We had landed there on Saturday evening , which he said was a bit too late for permit. When we asked if it is possible somehow to procure a permit , he said that the no: of visitors on any day is limited to a certain number and he had run out of his quota , but told us that we can try with any other operator and if we were lucky (since it was pretty late) we might get , so we tried our luck at another 3-4 places each one told us the same thing , No Nathula permit. Finally we came back to the first guy and booked for trip to Tsango lake and also for early morning sightseeing in Gangtok. Tot cost was 1500.
One good thing about this place is that they treat the tourists really well , Govt stipulates a standard rate for these sightseeing trips and do a constant checking to ensure that those rates are maintained.

We had dinner at a hotel in MG Marg which served North Indian food , there were a lot of good hotels there and returned back to hotel to sleep early , the whole city sleeps by 10 ! We had planned our Sikkim sightseeing from 5:30 next morning.

Day three- Darjeeling

Train from Kolkata to Siliguri took exactly 12 hrs and we reached @ 7:45 in the morning

We had 2 options from Siliguri to reach Darjeeling , one was the 'toy train' which winds its way up the hills to Darjeeling , the jourey takes 8 hrs but is said to be really amazing. but we had to choose option 2 , travel via Hill cart Road along railway linecoz it takes only 3 1/2 hrs. With a cramped schedule like ours we dint have any choice moreover after an overnight train journey we were not really comfortable with idea of spending another 9 hrs in train.

On arrival tourists like us were chased by a swarm of agents who promised to find us exciting travel packages/ hotel booking. Finally we went with one guy who arranged the trip to Darjeeling for us and got us our bus tickets for the return joureny to Kolkata. Actually all we had to do was to step out of Siliguri station and right outside there is bus stand where u can book tickets and there are lot of private jeeps waiting outside which will take u to Darjeeling/Gangtok

The ride to Darjeeling was Rs.70 per head. The roads were winding and the views were fantastic and by afternoon we reached Darjeeling. Throughout the journey along with the roads you can see the tracks of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway line along the winding roads , how they manage to travel along such curves has to be seen to be believed.

We had booked a room at hotel Sunflower (got it through net) and the room was really good and worth the 1500 price tag. The temperature was 12 deg when we arrived in the afternoon. The town is at 7000 ft We decided to visit the Himalayan zoo and Himalayan Mountaineering institute in the afternoon/evening.

Dusk falls pretty soon in this part of the country and most places get closed by 6. so we spent the evenings walking along the streets looking for some trinkets. Bought some Tea which Darjeeling is famous for and some shawls for parents , cap and gloves to beat the cold climate. The temperature fell to 4.5 deg in the evening and later to 3.5 deg later in the night. The place had a colonial hangover and was full of cafes and cake shops and eateries each one seemed to be better than the other, all in all it was a wonderful day.
We arranged for a land rover to pick us up early morning next day for visit to Tiger hill.
4 wheelers are the only mode of transport in the steep sloping streets in the town . There are local taxis and jeeps which connect the town with neighbouring towns. It was prety cold that night , but we had room heaters so it was really cozy n comfortable, for the next day we had planned for Tiger Hill and 2 other places early in the morning and then come back and start for Gangtok for the next leg of the trip ...

Trip-Day two - time travel

As we ventured out into the streets of Calcutta we started doubting if we travelled from Bangalore on an Airplane or was it a time machine ? (!) ... The roads , the buildings and the buses , trams and cabs seemed to suggest that we seemed to travelled back some 15- 20 years ... The city of Calcutta seemed to be what i remember of cities of late 80s ... Though we had an idea that this city is totally diferent from other cities of India and that it does retain the old world feel , adjusting to the city took some time. The city is called the cultural capital of India and has the legacy of Raj ( being the former captial city fo the country) . So we decided to check out the Victoria memorial and the museum first. The Chandni chowk metro station was pretty near to our hotel , so we decided to travel by the metro . Though we dint really like the cabs , buses and the congested roads , the metro changed our impression about the transport facilities in Kolkata. It really is a cheap, fast and effective means of transportation and i guess is one of the best in the country. The underground metro stations had maps indicating stations covered and train timings and was really hassle free travel for us.


We visited the Victorai memorial which was built as memorial for Queen Victoria who the empress of India in early decades of last century. It is made of white marble and is pretty well maintained and though it was a British Building at first glimpse it reminded me of Taj Mahal. Like Taj , this was also surrounded by sprawling gardens on all sides . Inside this there is a musuem which has a huge display of potraits/photographs from British era till Indian independence. The building is surrounded by gardens and a couple of big pools. After a couple of hours we trooped out to have a look at modern Calcutta.


Then we had our first glimpse of a tram ! The tram is a really unique mode of transport and tram lines run along the major roads and how all these vehicles on road , pedestrains and trams manage to co exist on same road is something really amazing !


After we came out, we cut across the Maidan which is supposed to be largest urban park in Kolkata , the Eden Gardens , Victoria Memorial , the turf club and polo club are located on its fringes. We then strolled through busy streets of kolkata for an hour after lunch. Then decided to check out the Kalighat , it is believed that kolkata derieves its name from it. Kalighat is where the famous Kali temple is located. But our timing was very bad , by the time we reached the temple had closed. But what was shocking was how the whole place was maintained , the place is full of touts out to squeeze money. Less said about it the better, this is one place to AVOID for casual tourists ie who are'nt really religiously inclined. Place is full of beggars and other assorted pujaris and their helpers out to snatch money under some pretext or other . The worst part is that all of of them are together in this and they have a unique model by you are forced to pay all of them. When you enter you are asked to leave your footwear in a shop ( there was no footwear stand outside temple) and hence you ahve to buy something from the shopkeeper and need to tip the guy who suggested the shop to you and so on ... The experience of visiting a temple is totally spoiled when you come across such elements . The temple visit turned out to be a really bad experience and we decided not to visit any temples in this part of the country.

We returned back to our hotel and in the evening visited the Howrah bridge ( Rabindra setu) and took a boat ride across Hoogly river.
Later in the evening we checked out of the hotel and moved to Sialdah station to catch the train to Siliguri. The journey was supposed to take 12 hrs. Another major problem we faced was lack of Restaurants at Railway station and surprsingly no one was selling food stuff.

Trip- Day one

Day one

For the last 2 years i have been going on road-trips with my cousins once in an year.
This time , me and 2 cousins of mine , Aswin n Sridar had planned an outing somwhere in Dec . By sheer chance i saw an article about sikkim and we decided that this is the place we are heading this winter. None of us had any idea what to expect or any friends at these places we were planning to visit. Thanks to internet we managed to gather adequate info about the places to visit , some do's and don'ts etc to make a rough plan. So this was the initial plan Bangalore-> Kolkatta->Siliguri->Darjeeling->Gangtok->Siliguri->Kolkatta->Bangalore

So finally we are off today on 20th Dec afternoon , the flight was supposed to be in the evening 5:05 pm , but it turned out that the flight was actually at 5:50 PM , anyways we reached the airport at 3:30 itself. All the while I had flown only with Indian Airlines and occasionally on Jet , this was my first flight on low cost carrier , we were flying in SpiceJet.

The flight was via Hyderabad and finally we reached Kolkatta at 9:40 PM , after retrieving our luggage and standing in a long Q for pre-paid taxi we finally got to our hotel (researched thru net) . It was at a place called Ganesh Chandra Avenue , we booked coz name seemed nice -> hotel Broadway. Also the location was near a Metro station(Chandini Chowk) and near the Sialdah Railway station also. It turned out to be pretty neat choice , the rent was moderate , the rooms were decent enuf . The city was full of cabs and buses , very less no: of Autos which we see here in Bangalore. Also when we looked around that night it seemed we had boarded a time machine and had landed back in 80's . That was our first impression of the city.
Most restaurants had closed by the time we reached our hotel and we had roam around for an hour around the city before we found one ! What a start !!!
Plan for tomorrow - Trip around "the city of Joy"

Sikkim Trip !

Three of us ( me and 2 cousins of mine) went on a week long trip to Sikkim n Darjeeling this Winter !

Before we embarked on this trip , we had no idea of what to expect the idea seemed exotic so we thoght lets give it a shot.
All the info about the place , planning was done wholly based on info collected from net.
Internet has info about everything , all u need to bring to table is desire to explore places.
Nowadays wih the advent of low cost airlines , air travel has become pretty affordable and has made possible vacations to places in different corners of our country in limited time that we have.
These days you get a lot of books/sites about holiday destinations and most of the logistics are well covered.

I thought of blogging our trip , so that it provides some helpful info for ppl planning similar tripsand hopefully wud encourage ppl who have been planning to do something like this to finally do it.

We were what cud be classfied as budget travellers , luxury/best facilities was not the main criterion for us , but we were not always looking at the cheapest alternative either. All we had in mind was good comfortable holiday without being an expensive one.
We had decided on the hotels where we would stay in advance ,but we did not book them ie make any advance payment. We had telephoned and told them that we would be requiring rooms , since it was not the peak season that arrangement worked everywhere.

Flight and train tickets were the only ones we booked and all the rest were decided then and there ...

We left from Bangalore on 20th and came back on 26th Dec

the travel route was Bangalore -> Kolkatta -> Siliguri -> Darjeeling -> Gangtok-> Siliguri-> Kolkatta-> Bangalore.

Belling the Cat !

At last the day arrived and off i went with to crack the exam along with 2 Lac others , phew !
CAT is one exam which has kept everyone guess ing and in the last few years stumped everyone . Earlier pre2003 it was the no:of questions/no:of sections which kept varying , then in '04 we had differential marking , last year no:0f Q came down. So all of us were waiting for the surprise as expected !
Well this year it was no different , as expected there was something different 4 marks for a Q and -1 for wrong ans , 25 Q in a section , 75 Q in all :-(
Took the English section first as usual as that is where i always 'score' and build up tall percentile scores ! It was not a walk in the park as i had hoped , rather it seemed like a night at a casino , had to gamble and gamble a lot as most of the questions had atleast 2 answers which seemed ok. Soon i got into the thick of things and ended up answering all the Questions in the section...
Never taken so much risk before , 5 options for each Q made it real toughie , just keepin my fingers crossed andhopin my insticts pull me through again !
DI&Logical was the best section , questions seemed workoutable and the section was pure delight.
Quants were always my weakest area and today was no different the limitaion in no:of is something which seemed to go against me , as my strength is speed over accuracy ! But the Quant section was not toughie as expected , there were lots of crackable questions and some required a little bit of application to crack them but was an overall good package and ppl who were 'decent' in math would have done real well. As for me clearing 25% was the target this time as IIMs have announced 25% in each section as minimum , last year i had just managed to scrape through , need to get lucky again !

Mind your Language !

Language seems to be the new 'hot' word here now , and has knocked off reservation , corruption et all from the headlines ! But unfortunately its in the news for wrong reasons .

Come to think of it language is actually a means for communication which basically enables people to 'talk' and 'understand' and interact better with each other leading to improvemnet in the way we live.

But instead of enhancing realtionships and bring people closer , language , now seems to be a barrier which drawing people apart.

For ages , there was this debate about English vs Regional languages , the debate was fuelled by politicans who insisted that English langauge would contaminate and destory local languages and what not. They were instumental in bringing in various legislations to ensure that kids in Govt school are taught in mother tongue rather than English. But it is entirely different matter that children of these leaders attended private English medium schools ! Over the time the movement slowly eroded as people started realising that English is the passport to good future and you had to learn it ,whether u like it or hate it.
Evenstates like Bengal have gone soft on anti-English movement.
But suddenly now in South , the same movement has reared its ugly head again ! First it was PMK in TN with its oppostion to english names in tamil movies ! recently after coming to power the govt announced waiver of tax for films with tamil names ! I dunno by simply naming the films in tamil will these gaurdians of culture save the culture esp with kind of films being made these days !

In Karnataka there was huge outcry against Govt's ill advised move to close down schools which were teaching English , this was at a place known as It capital of the country and the global outsourcing hub which has a huge BPO industry where knowledge of English has opened a whole new successful world to millions of young graduates , ironically the word Bangalored will soon apply Bangalore itself if such people had their way and access to English education is cut off.

When states were formed , it was done on basis on language , the idea was to bring people of same language 'together' and all such states together to form a country called India.
But language instead of uniting people have turned into a force for dividing people , in Maharashtra it started with cries of of mumbai for marathis and through out south , you can notice that people who dont speak the local language always get the rough end of the stick.

When world over countries are encouraging ppl to learn English and get more in the IT/BPO pie here we are still fighting over wether we need to learn English or not !
When these ppl learn that we need to stop fighting over the share in the pie and rather look at increasing the size of the pie

Well the reason for me raving and ranting about this particular issue is that today happens to be a Karnataka Bandh , being from Kerala , the word Bandh is quite commonplace thing , so I took adequate precaution to ensure that I dont starve and would be able to spend the 'holiday' peacefully , but what i didnt anticipate was cable tv operators joining the bandh and shutting down all other channels except Kannada Channels all over Bangalore.
Now what could be the logic behind this ? Im totally at loss ? When the same thing happened after death of Dr.Rajkumar , I could understand it was mourning period for state , so all entertainment channels were blocked. But why today , why block all entertainment channels in other languages ? Why let Kannada movies/music channel play ? If they wanted ppl to understand their cause ( it is some border dispute , again language related) then they should have blocked all entertainment channles, allowing only news channel ( which incidentally has become a major source of entertainment ! ) ...
this is something i never get , why partiality towards outsiders , only localites get to enjoy this day off , espeicially in a city which prides itself as a Cosmopolitan city . This is not the first time we saw other language channels/movies targetted , last time there was ban on non-kannada films and what was really sad was that a lot of people were supporting it .All in all the level of tolerance is sometimes scary !

PS: Heard that Shekar Kapur is planning to make a movie set in future India , which deals with wars happening over water which wud be scarce commodity then , the movie was supposed to be called 'Paani' . I guess he could actually make a movie on wars based on language which might happen if such incidents continue , guess the movie on language wars might be called 'Basha' ( but oops there is already a Rajnikant movie by that name ! )