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New places make you miss home and you often find yourself in the things-we-used-to-do memory thread. Since I moved to London, my pinings for Gol-Gappas made me try out ready to make golgappas at home and  those for Leh and Madhmaheswar made me make an essential trip to india. There are two schools of thoughts about going to Leh by road-there are some who say it is serious business and some others who say it is very serious. So I couldn’t convince anyone to undertake this 5 days leave +2+2 weekends, which is also touch and go,  along with me. So when Maithani, garhwali-bhula (bro) of the dodital/roopkund fame, pinged me online about his Madhmaheswar plans, I put all my energies in catching this plan. I almost caught the plan by landing in delhi on the friday decided. What I did detrimental to the plan was to go to Bercos. Bercos garden in Noida is the maker and breaker of plans, 3 hours in Bercos and I ended up making another plan with 2 other friends who were my original trekking buddies of yore, VG and SRD. They were hell bent on doing a roopkund kind of trek, without sleeping bags or tent- that was bercos speaking through them. Description of the ordeals I had faced in july last year at Roopkund were to no avail, but I was still prepared in my head to convince them to go to madhmaheswar midway on the drive. Delhi development authority flats lottery came to the rescue, mandating their return by Tuesday. Maithani started for the same destination at 9:30 pm with his bunch of friends on friday and we started 4 hours later.

Road route: Noida-Ghaziabad-Meerut-Mawana-Bijnor-Najibabad-Kotdwar-Pauri-Srinagar-Rudraprayag-Augustmuni-Tilwara-Okhimath-Uniana.

Trek route : Uniana-5-Ransi-6-Gaundhar-2-bantoli-2-Khadara-3-naanu-3-Kunnchatti-2-Madhmaheswar-1.5-BudhaMadhu
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On a chilly January morning of 1998 in Delhi, Vikram, a friend and co-worker, announced his plan to go to the shrine of Ma Vaishno Devi. The shrine is in the state of Jammu & Kashmir and you need to hike about 12-14 odd KMs to do the darshan. Couple of us who were witness to his announcement, were not very amused since we found ourselves severely religiously-challenged. We knew that unlike many Delhi-ites who visit Ma Vaishno Devi as an adventure-religious break, Vikram is visiting for pure belief reasons.

As part of his announcement we also learned that he is going all by himself. This was something which did not go well with another friend, Arvinder Sardaar Singh, and he volunteered his and mine participation to the great journey. Somehow Sardaar didn’t take this (going solo) as a right thing to do and since he needed good company, he pulled me in. As evident, I had no contribution in the decision which involved me managing a last minute rail reservation and a leg breaking bus journey on the way back. so much for brotherhood, we all found ourselves on a ill-lit Old Delhi Railway station trying to search our names on the reservation chart. It was to be ‘Pooja Express’ and we were booked from Delhi till Jammu Tawi.
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Thanks for all the praise showered on the Jagannath Puri Series.

As promised, I am back with the latest in the remainder write ups on Chilika, Konark, Bhubaneswar (Lingaraj Temple, Nadan Kanan Park), Pipli and Dhauli. In the current part, however, I will cover only the Chilika lake.

A postcard from Chilika

About Chilika
As many of us might already know, Chilika is a lagoon, popularly known as the biggest Brackish water lake of Asia. It is a habitat to some biodiversity, the Dolphins and a wide variety of migratory birds being the major components. It is spread over 1100Sq. Km comprising of wetlands and shallow water, depth of which is dependent on the tide condition. There are many islands within the lagoon with their own attractions/spots, with the Kalijai being the most revered temple with its own legend. No, I am not going into the details:-), though Mrs Mohapatra had given us some tips.
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Hello Ghumakkars,

The following post is based on a post originally made by me to a closed Yahoogroup. I am posting this here as I could not resist the temptation of sharing an exhilirating train ride in monsoon here, based on the response that Karthik’s Train Journey to Thiruvalla got. This post does not contain any visual photographs. Hope you will like reading it through.

We had gone to Lucknow-our Home Station and had booked our return trip on the hallowed 5609 Abadh Assam express. We chose this train as we wanted to be home by Sunday(17.08.08) night as we did not want the kids to miss their schools as none of the overnight trains can give an assured timely arrival at Ghaziabad, our adopted Station. And there is no day train from LKO to GZB on Sundays except for Gomati and SwarnShatabdi, but then sitting in a confined space for 6 to 9 hours is tiring, especially so for ladies and kids.
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