Journey ahead! ....

I still can't believe that I am back from one of the most wonderful and memorable journeys of my life (yet!)

It all started a couple of years ago, when I heard about a trip that a few of my community people (Chitrapur Saraswats) had undertaken, under the illuminated guidance of our swamiji, Shri Sadyojat Shankarashram Swamiji. The trip was to Kailash and Manasarovar, a trip full of spiritual significance, as this place is supposed to be the dwelling place of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati.

I was amazed when I heard that our swamiji had undertaken the whole journey, through freezing temperature, clothed in nothing more than his thin saffron robes. All the others on the trip were looking like Polar bears, all swaddled up in sweaters, mufflers, woolen gloves, etc.

I was fascinated by the photos in the book about this particular trip, written by Nitish Bharadwaj (the guy who played Lord Krishna in Mahabharat) and his wife. The photos looked surreal, and I wished I could have been part of this expedition.

Since then, I've had a huge fascination for the Himalayas. However, I never imagined that I'd actually go there so soon...

My very good friend Naren recently casually mentioned that maybe we should plan a trip to Leh. I had seen a travel clip about Leh a few years ago, in the popular tv discovery series "Surabhi".
When he said that we could probably make the whole trip in 9-10 days, I was hooked. Though it initially started as just a casual thought, I pestered Naren (who didn't need much pestering anyway) and we started browsing the net, looking for details on the costs, and the hows and the ifs.

Quickly we found out that travelling by flight was extremely expensive, as only Indian Airlines and Sahara were operating flights directly to/from Leh. We had just about decided that we'd have to travel both ways by Bus (From Delhi to Leh, and back), when we found out that by some divine touch, Air Deccan (bless this airlines) had inaugurated the first of it's flights from Delhi To Leh. We immediately booked the flight for the 3 of us (Naren, Ravikiran, and I) at a song of 1900/-

The whole planning was done by Naren (he should be a operations manager, the ease with which he plans and executes things). The trip was planned from July 14th 2007 upto July 22nd. Now the wait started....

All the while, waiting for the impending trip was rather unbearable. I resorted to Google, pasting wallpapers of the mountains, and visiting sites on Leh and other close-by places. Then, just weeks before our trip, I found that my next-door cubicle mate Vishweswaran was also traveling to the same place by Bullet bikes. He was due back by July 9th, which gave us an excellent opportunity to ask him all the updated details regarding travel, expenses, and the climate.

He came back from Leh, sunburnt! I never imagined it to be possible for an Indian to be sunburnt. I always thought only foreigners i.e., whites had this problem. He warned me to take sunscreen along, as most of his biker friends had got horrible sunburns.

More on this trip in the next blog...

Long time no blog

Well, well well! It's been a really long time since I blogged (not that I was a prolific blogger anyway). Today I thought I'd just take a look at my earlier blogs, and found that Google has taken over blogspot. You can guess how long I was away by that statement. :-)

The reason I thought of re-visiting my blog site was that I have recently completed a 9 day trip of beautiful mountain country, in the desolate and awe-inspiring Ladakh.

My next post will be on this trip, along with some superb photos that we were lucky to capture....