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When I was in Ludhiana, one day I received a call from my friend Gunjan to plan a single day trip to any nearby place. Choosing a single day trip is really difficult, if you are not in mountainous region or not so close to any historical place. Luckily, being in Delhi we have some options like Agra, Mussoorrie or Amritsar out of Delhi. So, this time we decided a single day trip to Amritsar and Wagah Border. She left from Delhi by Chhattisgarh Express and I boarded the train in Ludhiana. Around 5.30 AM, we were in Amritsar. There are some buses available at Amritsar junction. You can board them and take the trip to The Golden Temple free of cost, but we didn’t have any idea of the timings. So we left to the temple by a rickshaw and within 20 minutes we are at the Golden Temple, also known as Harmandir Sahib.

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After reading lots of blogs on ghumakkar. finally i decided to go to amritsar this time by road…. so me and aman got our swift ready for the trip and left on 28th feb. we started the journey at 7 am.  mukarba chowk more popularly known simply as byepass is not too far from my place in moti nagar which is in west delhi….

Some stretches of road till sonipat are still under construction but after sonipat it was smooth drive.. we effortlessly touched 120-130. best part came at panipat where a toll road is constructed which goes over the city. this toll road is truly world class. it runs for around 10 kms and the toll is 20 rs. we drove for around 250 kms non stop and stopped for some breakfast. had a huge aloo parantha with dollops of butter and tea..

after having our hunger pangs cured we decided to move on… going was good and we’d covered 250 kms in little less than 4 hrs..but immediately after starting we faced heavy traffic in mandi gobindgarh which is a major hub for steel rolling industry and after that the usual culprit for our delay awaited us.. LUDHIANA… it took us 45 minutes to get out of ludhiana and we did’nt even enter the city…

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Office arranged picnics are usually not very exciting for they tend to keep things which make sense to a large no of people and that sort of sometime take the spunk out. This happens when you grow large and you need to remain sensitive towards a varied pool of inspirations. Interestingly our group at Adobe India is still not very large and we get to choose where we want to go, at least at a group level and we chose ‘Kikar Lodge‘ – a welcome heritage property. After fixing thing through an old friend Manav (of Getaway Jungle Camp fame), we were all set to go. Some of us chose Train and I guess that came out to be a better decision.

Day 1 – Nov 11 2006

We started early morning, took Delhi-Kalka Shatabdi Express which starts at 7ish in the morning and drops you at Chd in about 4+ hours. These hours were well spent courtesy good seats, regular supply of snacks and aided by a large contingent of kids of a convent school who were going to Chandigarh for some sight-seeing excursion.

From Chandigarh, we took taxis (private Scorpio, Qualis) to head towards Ropar and then to this place called Kikar Lodge. Its about 100 KMs from Chandigarh and takes about 2 hours. This property is essentially a luxury resort (more…)

Quick Drive to Amritsar

Amritsar, more correctly called, Ambarsar is located close to 500 Km from Delhi, capital of India and the biggest reason to visit Amritsar is to get blessing at ‘The Golden Temple‘, the most revered Sikh shrine in the whole world.

Me, my wife (Smita) and Pihu (our little daughter) along with Smita’s parent visited this city on a sleepy weekend in October, 2005. We knew that the road, NH1, is fantastic and we should be able to get a average of 60 Km an hour and if we start early morning, we should reach a little beyond lunch.

Day 1 – Oct 15 2005
Pihu was a little over four months and the dad has crossed 65, I guess. I was struggling to be young and with more then 500 KM to drive without any big break, I was all set. I knew very well that Scorpio would obey and respect my desires and was pretty excited to go as much close to Indian border.

We started early around 6 and were zipping (more…)