Travel Chronicles - 3

Our next stop after Mt. Abu was Delhi. We had booked dorms at the International youth hostel. We set off to see the Akshardham Temple. Enroute we happened to pass through "Rajpath". We also saw the India Gate. The roads which we happened to pass by were really huge and there was not that much traffic either. It was quite cold though inspite of it being 2.00 pm. There was a huge rush at the temple. We had to go through some security checks before we entered the temple. The Temple complex is huge !!! The main temple building in itself is quite impressive due to its huge size and the carvings. The carvings have been done on a pink coloured marble. The carvings were quite good and I am sure lots of hard work must have gone into. But I felt that the temples in towns down south like Belur, Halebid and Somnathpur are much better and they seriously deserve more attention than what they are currently getting. There is also a food court in the temple complex which caters to the needs a cosmopolitan crowd. Down south, there is generally no food court in the temple complex and even if there happens to be one, they definitely dont serve pizzas and burgers !!!

After Akshardham, we visited one of my friends cousins house. We had to go searching for her house which took up some time. From there, we went to the nearest metro station to travel on the Delhi Metro. From there we caught the metro to Connaught Place. It was a nice experience travelling on the metro. The entire metro is on international standards, right from the station to the trains. My friends told me that it is exactly the same way as it is in Japan. There is a train almost every three-five minutes. All through the journey, there are announcements on the speaker as to which is the next station and some safety instructions. If such a thing ever comes up in Bangalore (Its high time Bangalore got one), I am sure it would be huge success. The cost of the ticket is also not that high. In Bangalore, for a journey from JP Nagar to Majestic on a BMTC bus, the ticket costs 9 rupees and it takes an hour to cover the distance. On a metro this distance can be covered easily in 15-20 minutes. You will also avoid the heavy traffic. A metro system must come into Bangalore very soon. I feel it will definitely make a difference.

That nite we boarded a train to Pathankot. Next day(28th Dec 2005) we had to report for the National Winter Himalayan Trekking Expedition at Dalhousie. This is an annual trekking expedition that is organised by the Youth Hostels Association of India (YHAI). The National Winter Himalayan Trekking Expedition at Dalhousie is for a period of six days. This was an awesome experience. Although the trek was a very easy one, I happened to meet so many people from many parts of India and made some very good friends. In our batch, there were around 16 people from Bangalore. We were a group of four. We happened to get along famously with four other people from Bangalore and one more guy from Mumbai. So we were like this group of nine and man, we had a blast!!!! It was really great meeting this set of people. One of the person we met has written a nice blog about the whole trip. Click here to read it. :D This guy has done an awesome job of writing it.. He has written about many many small but memorable incidents.