Shubham, Author at Ghumakkar - Inspiring travel experiences.

My trip to Garh Mukteshwar

By Shubham

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.

In Unchagaon, there was a big garden in which there were lots of lounge chairs. Sitting on them was real fun. I wish I had one of these in our balcony back home. There was small shed in which there were balls, bats, rackets etc. We were very careful with the equipment, because if we broke anything we’d have to pay for it. Sehej is going to pay for a bat. There were two terraces. From one we could see a beautiful lake. On the other side we could see a village.

Walking The Royal Mile

By Shubham

Each floor had a different theme of illusions. I liked the floor with 3D illusions the best. There were a lot of interactive illusions as well. And the best part? They encouraged you to touch everything! The Mirror Maze was also fun. My mom kept walking into the mirrors, and I finally had to go in and help her get out.

Scotland – Touring Edinburgh Castle

By Shubham

We were told that the Queen was coming to Edinburgh the next day, and the Palace was being spruced up. Since this was our last day in Edinburgh, we would be missing that (not that she was inviting us to tea or anything like that). We would, at best, have got to see her motorcade.

Trip to Scotland – Touring Edinburgh

By Shubham

There were a series of galleries on either side of the Grand Gallery, housing exhibits of world culture and history. The ‘Discoveries’ section had clocks of various shapes and sizes. The show stopper was The Millennium Clock – it was in the form of a medieval cathedral, standing just over ten meters high, with open sides so that we could see the machinery. It is supposed to be a summary of the best and worst of the twentieth century. The clock is intricately animated and has four sections, each signifying something. You could go a floor above to see the top.

Trip to Scotland

By Shubham

It was nice and quaint, and very, very green. About half an hour into the journey I realized that it seemed almost criminal (for lack of a better word) to not listen to the Beatles on a train-ride across England, and so I kept down the book and whipped out my headphones, and generally just peered out the window watching the green world pass me by.

Taste of London

By Shubham

A lot of people wanted food from this restaurant, and so it took me a good 20 minutes to get out of there with food in my hands, and those 20 minutes were for this microscopically tiny plate of little strands of crispy-fried pork. It was like a golden fried piece of heaven. It had been deep-fried, thus the bacon had gotten crumpled up, but the flavour of the bacon had been retained. There was an almost silky, foreign taste of the oil used. It wasn’t anything in particular. My first guess was olive oil, but it was somehow tangier than that, with a hint of almost a peppery taste in it. One more plus point was that this one wasn’t too salty at all, which is generally the problem with bacon – usually the salt overrides the taste of the bacon. This was, as previously stated, like a crisp-fried piece of heaven.

London 2012 – Getting there

By Shubham

We went in and did the usual hoolah of checking in and immigration etc., and headed for the duty-free/lounges. My dad waited patiently while mom and I took a look around the duty-free, and finding nothing to our liking, commenced to the lounge. It was the same lounge and, of course, nothing had changed since last year – the couches, the low impossible-to-eat-off little coffee tables, the lights, everything was the same. The food was kept on a granite table with L-shaped counters around it. They had patties, sausages etc for starters, and rice, Mexican chicken gravy and different curries for people wanting a full-er meal. I first went to the patties, which were kept in that microwave-y, revolve-y thingies. I took one and got back to the couch we were sitting on and picked up the day’s Daily Mail, and spent the next 10-15 minutes savouring ‘delicacies’ (okay, it was just a patty, but still) and reading about what’s going on in the country hosting us for the next 14 days or so. I then went on to get myself the other things – I got myself sausages and sat down to eat, and in my mind thought, ‘wow, pretty delicious’, but the truth was, I was gonna learn what delicious sausages really are. I decided not to pig out anymore on the food on land and fill myself only once in air, and so for the rest of the time all I did was drink various kinds of juices, call all my friends to say bye and generally watch the news and listen to music, thinking of all the delicious cuisine I was going to savour soon.

Portsmouth & Spinnaker Tower – Day 15

By Shubham

Today was our 15th and second-last day in England. Our plan for the day was to be at the beach in the morning, then go to see the Spinnaker Tower in Gunwharf Quay in the afternoon, and finally take our Coach back to London (we’re in Portsmouth, remember?)

Portsmouth Ahoy! – Day 13 & 14

By Shubham

Our 14th day in London was much more fun – for me. Our plan was to go to this town called Portsmouth. It is a waterfront city, with a lot of fun stuff to do, like arcades, amusement parks, and the most important of all, beachesJ. It is also the birthplace of Charles Dickens. Mausi Ji has a house there, and so we were going for an over-night trip.

Southend-on-Sea Visit – Day 12

By Shubham

We could see the water shimmering white, much closer to the beach now. The beach had started looking a rich shade of yellow, and we could see those cute little typical English houses in the background, beyond the beach. Anyhow, we reached the little pier all excited, hoping for some coffee or food stalls. However, the pier was just that – a pier. It was a wooden structure, with a huge-ish area to walk about in and a few benches to sit on. The view was quite lovely, and there was something about standing in the middle of the water, with the wind in your face and the sun shining above. The water tide had come in quite a bit and I wanted to get back to the beach. The next train was due half an hour later, and so I decided to make the most of it.

Let’s Walk everywhere – Day 10 & 11

By Shubham

Today was our tenth day here in London, and our plan for today was, er… nothing. We were basically going to sleep and rest for the first half of the day, then we would go to The Garden Café for a quick bite, and then for the second half we would come home and sleep and rest a bit more.
We decided to play a little game of taking pictures of the signboards that came on the way.

A Quiet Day in Romford – Day 9

By Shubham

Today was our 9th day in London, and my mother had planned for us another ‘fun’ day at the mall. The logic was simple – it was raining, we had to be indoors, so we might as well be indoors outside. We were to go to The Brewery first, and then The Liberty Mall, both located within close proximity of each other, in Romford. Romford is one of the major commercial centres in the London suburbs.