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Hi, I am Shubham Sarcar. I am a student of Delhi Public School. I study in Class IV. I will tell you about my trip to Garhmukteshwar. This was my first trip without my parents and I was very excited. We had to reach school by six-thirty in the morning. I have never reached school so early. There were three teachers handling forty-five of us!

Getting there

The trip was four hours by bus. I sat with my friend Sohum. The time passed chatting and watching the scenery. When the first stop came, I was so glad that we will get down and stretch ourselves and run around. But only the teachers got down for cofee. We were given packed sandwiches and frooti to have in the bus.

Unchagaon

Finally, we had arrived at Unchagaon. We stopped in front of a stable. For a moment I thought this was where we were going to stay. Thankfully they took us to neat and clean rooms. The rooms were quite big. We stayed in room no 16. My roomies were some boys from my section. In that room the bathroom door was of frosted glass. You could see through the door! The bed was so high they could have given us a ladder to climb it. In the night we would go to the girls room and scare them. We would knock, make scary sounds and then run away. We’d keep our lights off so that the teacher wouldn’t discover us.Two or three times teacher would come and check if we had slept. When they would come, then we would run and get into our beds, swith off the lights and pretend to be asleep. Sometimes we’d fall in the process.

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It was the darkness that first met my gaze. A thick blanket that shrouded everything, including my mind, as I collected my first thoughts of this year .

It took a moment to sink in. 40 feet above ground, suspended between branches of a jamun tree in a dense 300 acre of wild and awakened by a montage of cries that you will probably never hear in the confines of your bedroom. And the only human to share this experience was my husband, sleeping . What a way to welcome the new year !

We are one of those people who like the word different and love to make it a part of our every day’s experience. A human weakness, I would say - to wear our different experience on our sleeve, feel good about it and occasionally pat our back saying that we did something ‘different’. A stereotype that redefines stereotypes.

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June ka achha mausam tha aur hamara bhateeja Ayush Ghaziabad se aaya hua tha, kahi ghoomne jane ka man tha aur din tha 1. To socha chalo bachhe ko Mysore hi ghooma do. Nai Car ki long drive bhi test karni thi, to 1 Sunday subah nikle Mysore ke liye. Is baar agenda mein tha Tipu Sultan ka Srirangampatnam, Mysore palace aur Brindavan garden. Whitefield se Mysore Road pakadne mein 1.5 ghanta lag gaya, aur 2 ghante mein ham pahuche Srirangampatnam.

Waha per 1 guide ne hamko lapet liya aur bola ki bahut kuch dikhaoonga, hamare paas samay tha kam, hamne kaha 2 jagah hi dikha do?

Pehle usne hamko dikhaya Tipu ki jail, aur uske baad dekha Tipu Sultan ka “Mrityu Sthal”, raaste mein aage chale to guide bola, wo dekho Tipu ka “Lal Mahal”? hamne kaha ki bhai kaha hein, wo bola ki ye jo toota huan khandar hein wahi “Lal Mahal” hein, hmmmmmm? Hamne kya aab kya dekhe, wo bola ki chalo Tipu ki kabr per? Waha pahuche to wo “Dargah” type thi,

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Year 2002. Month of October. Same planet, India, Kerela, Varkala but an absolutely magical world. We were on a road trip, Bangalore-Kanyakumari-Bangalore. We touched Thiruvananthapuram and were trying to navigate to Kovalam beach when I noticed boxed information in The Lonely Planet about this beach resort less traveled called Varkala. I had been to Kovalam and anything less traveled and commercialized than Kovalam would have been better so we navigated ourselves to Varkala beach. We reached the main town and from there it was another 30-minute drive through narrow and meandering lanes. We could hear the roaring call of the sea from far. We checked into a moderately priced hotel and I remember that the street was narrow, cobbled and very clean. It was almost nightfall and the roar was still on. We dumped our suitcases and rushed down the street and to our surprise, a short walk led us straight to the panoramic view.
Including us we were only 15 odd people on that long beach. No shops, hawkers, junk, beach umbrellas, vehicles, hotel lights. Call it off-season, odd time of the day, our luck or simply Varkala.
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