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One must be lunatic or possess tremendous craze to explore hills to take such attempt which I took few weeks back. Exploring Chail had nothing new but feeling it all alone away from hustle of busy life had a completely new and amazing experience.

Chail, situated at the height of 2250meters from sea level, at the midst of Shivalik ranges, offering fabulous view of Himalayan ranges. Chail is one of the finest hill stations of Himachal Pradesh for ghumakkars like us. Cool breezy summer and chilling snowing winters. Chail is the habitat for wide range of wild life and it still holds the natural beauty of mountain and little less commercialized like Shimla.

No plan was the plan for exploring this place, which still holds the pride of having the world’s highest cricket pitch. Since morning, four of us ghumakkars were making plans to spend this weekend in some hill station, Narkanda (70Km from Shimla) was one of the options we were discussing. Unfortunately, by the end of evening of that Friday, three of them declined, and that was the moment and calls from mountain which made me to take this lunatic attempt. At 12 midnight I started from
Delhi, driving all alone, singing (more…)

Jaipur, the Pink City. Its at an arm’s distance from Delhi courtesy wide-n-quick NH8 and the toll road, even though it charges a bomb (Rs 90 + Rs 30) each way but is worth each tar of it. It can be reached in about 5 hours of drive from Delhi. By now I must be sounding like a Delhi-ite who goes to Jaipur every weekend. Well, an average Delhite doesn’t, to know more, read “Why Delhi Loves Mussoorie …..” but I have been to Jaipur many times. No travel experience site is worth its salt if it doesn’t mention Jaipur, so I decided to remember what I could remember at my age and share with you. My reason of visiting Jaipur multiple times were many, the primary being that its home town of a close friend, Avinash.

Jaipur is 260 KM South-West of Delhi and is on Delhi-Mumbai NH8. There are trains like Pink City Express but you would better do by driving there or hiring a car. If you plan to use public transport then catch RSRTC (Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation) buses from Bikaner House, near India Gate, Delhi. From other towns/cities, post a query at our forum and I am hoping that someone will get you a good answer. There are all kinds of buses with Volvo being the best one. It charges Rs 400+ but its very comfortable, you can also take Silver Line which costs about half of it and is pretty good. Buses usually stop at Midway (Behror) for snacks-break and you get decent food there. You can find more info on this at http://www.rsrtc.org/

Ok, now where to stay in Jaipur. I have stayed at Hotel Ashish which is a fairly decent Budget Hotel. Its very close to Bus Stand and Railway Station, fairly popular so you should be able to locate it. I am not able to find nos but I can possibly dig that and get that to you when you need. Nice staff, good food, clean rooms, its not a big hotel, so no big reception or dining area but pretty comfy for the price. I guess you can get a double AC room for less then 1K with complementary breakfast. At other times, I have stayed at Avinash’s place, Hotel Umaid Bhavan or Palace, Dak Bunglow and one other government place which was pretty scary.

What to do.
1. City Palace – Its in the heart, close to MI road, just beyond Bapu Market (or before, don’t remember). An old (more…)

It was fourth day of our W.Sikkim trip in May 2007. First three days were well spent at Pelling and around. We reached Yuksom by 3^rd day evening and visited coronation Stone there (about which I have written in my previous post). We awoke early morning and went out in balcony hoping to get a view of Mt Kabur; it was not visible due to clouds. There was a distinct voice of water gushing down. Faraway there was a big stream flowing down. It was looking very small from our balcony but was definitely a delight for ears. Weather was still cloudy and rainy. May be we would not be able to trek today. But it started to clear and we were out in the Hotel Tashigang’s garden for our breakfast – “Aloo kaa Parantha Sans Pyaaz” with juice. We did not order for milk as they had only powdered milk. It was the same at Pelling. Tourism has increased manifolds but people there simply grow only for their needs. Most of the houses had cows/goats, yet we could not get fresh milk either at Pelling or Yuksom. It is true for fruits too. Every house has a banana tree, but we couldn’t get a single fruit in market. It is something strange. Anyway we were not bothered as we were carrying enough supply of dry fruits and vitamin fortified food for Rachit.

As told earlier in my previous post, Yuksom is the place where three lamas met to enthrone first king of Sikkim. There are only three things to be done at Yuksom – Trekking, trekking and trekking. Aptly we did not find any Indian family visiting Yuksom. They were either bachelors or foreigners.

I would better call that day’s trek as “Dubdi Monastery trek”. Suman, our guide for the day, told us that first we would walk up to the Dubdi monastery which was a steep 2 Km uphill walk from hotel and then we would return by circuiting around two villages nestled amidst dense forest.

Initially we crossed a river, passed through some water driven prayer wheels and started to climb up. Suman was telling us about vegetation around us.

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Recently, our Taj Mahal got into the new seven wonders of the world, and I am sure it was the single most voted entry (ok, maybe after the Great Wall)

The last I visited Taj was in January, but the last look I had at it was a couple of weeks ago, at Trafalgar Square! Let me recount both instances for you, and since I have now learnt to upload pictures on ghumakkar, I have uploaded some, here as well as my last post!

This jan we had decided to make a really frugal trip over the weekend, so we decided to take the Haryana roadways bus to Agra. Now these start at a place called Sarai kale khan in Delhi, a place that by western sensibilities of today can be termed exotic, but I would stick to calling it, more appropriately, filthy. As we got into the rickety bus, the adventure began, which soon reached a climax when my friend picked a fight with the vendor on the midway tea stall over him overcharging on everything, and made a video on his mobile to report the cheating, as a mob gathered around. Even as it got settled and we were on our way in no time, we still pulled into Agra only late afternoon, almost a 5.5 hour journey.

The journey to see the replica of the Taj in London was much less dramatic… (more…)