Standing on the shores he said,
‘O Great Sea! Ye conveyed me across the eons, from nothingness to fullness, across the origin of all that is – you are my vessel to the Eternity’.
It was a plan – conceived (craftily) & debated (doggedly) & executed (expeditiously) at the shortest notice. During the summer holidays, while we suffered a humid and torrid Cal [i.e. Kolkata, the erstwhile Calcutta; thank God the politicians changed Calcutta to Kolkata, but there was no such repulsive diktat for changing ‘Cal’ to’ Kol’ – so we may go on using ‘Cal’, leaving it to Debosh’s next generation to figure out why Kolkata is fondly termed CAL by old timers], Adityo offered an exciting opening in the otherwise drab setting – a weekend (or whatever was left of it on a Saturday afternoon) trip in his affable Santro. The list of volunteers quickly added up to 05 viz, Debosh, Sharmi, Adityo, their Mother and self, all rearing to go.
I thought of completing Part 3 sometime later on, but the pull of the fellow Ghumukkar’s has made me continue even before I scheduled to write. Again thanks for all your comments. Remarks from seniors like Ram Sir and Nandanji has made my page look complete. I am writing for the first time to any blog, but the response and the love I am getting, I think I should start converting many of my travel memories into words.
Let’s move on to the last phase of the journey.
Day 2: Varanasi to Kolkata: 6th Feb 2010
The day was memorable for us as we are about to complete our last leg of the journey. And also to cover the unknown factor called “Bihar” and “Jharkhand”. We were too tired and the excitement was not enough to wake us on that day. We had no option but to rely on our friendly alarm clock. We scheduled to leave Varanasi by 5:00 am, but due to “known” reasons we had to wait for another 30 mins. After getting the direction from the caretaker of Rahi Guest house we headed for the road. The direction … on coming out of Rahi guest house you head towards the Railway station, on reaching it you take a right and take an oath to not to look here and there but to go straight. Another word of advice, I forgot to mention in my last blog, is that, if you ask for direction to any fellow Varanasian, they might say “Sidhe jaia then right and blah and blah” – here “sidhe” means the road on your side, even if it goes 90 degrees left then also it will be considered “sidhe” within the direction, – something which I learned the “hard” way. Coming to the plot, we made our car drink enough alcohol (err I mean Petrol) to last the unknown last phase.
Bar for Cars
Day 1: Delhi to Varanasi: 5th Feb 2010 (793 km)
The journey continues…
Thanks for all the comments. And thanks for recharging my batteries.
Part 1 was all about our raw excitement. With Part 2, we will try to describe the journey with a little bit of extended information which will help the readers to digest the journey as well as help them to note down details, if they think of trying the same (I mean driving to Kolkata) by themselves.
Now where are we …err… we have just hit the road. Its 5:15 am, and we need to stop for filling – both the tank as well as our purse (P&P – Petrol&Purse!). It was still dark outside when we crossed Ballabgarh (Haryana) – the Trip meter showed 15.2 kms. Again, out of the shear excitement, totally forgot to mention the name of the partners involved in this eventful journey.
Me the Navigator
