OK.TA.TA. BYE BYE

A mail about this contest dropped into my inbox today. You are supposed to travel through India for 15 days and document you expereinces. I have always wanted to do this since I left college, and all my "close" and "trustworthy" friends (read: Supriyo and Madhur) kept ditching me on this. I had planned to hitch rides from truckwallas and buswallas and maybe hop onto the train for certain legs of the journey. Starting from Kanpur, I would go on to Amritsar or Peshawar depending on whether I had the required visas. Then it would be a visit to Rishikesh via Delhi. From there on I would have moved on to the heart of India, to MP, places like Bhopal, Indore that I have only childhood memories of. After exploring the forts of MP I would again hit NH 1 and head on eastwards towards Calcutta. Would laze off there for a few days, relishing the great Bengali cusine and then move on to Silliguri, and then further on to the North East for a week. But more that visiting these destination I was interested in talking to these people, putting up in one of those roadside dhabas, travelling in the truck with music blaring on the radio. As I write this I can almost visualize the sounds and the smells. I am looking forward to someone joining me, if you are game and jobless let me know :-)

I had planned another escapade with my roommate Rishabh, we had coaxed a fisherman to accompany us on the boat from Kanpur to Allahabad on the Ganges. The journey would have taken 4 days and 3 nights. Have u ever been on a river in the night? Its an amazing experience. Total darkness all around, and you are surrounded by water. The land is far enough for you to swim and reach and in the darnkness it becomes almost impossible to locate the shore. It has an eerie kind of enchantment. Anyways all arrangements were made and a day before we were supposed to leave Rishabh mother found out about it, and me acting like the nice guy as I always do, talked Rish out of the plan :-(

Some how I have this fascinstion for the Ganges, I lived for a couple of years in Calcutta when I was a kid, then I moved on to Patna, and then finally to Kanpur. I have stayed on the banks of the Ganga for almost half of my lifetime and for some reason I tend to keep moving closer to the source. Sometime in the future I would like to settle down in Rishikesh if there is anything like settling down for me ;-) Another things I liked about the All India Trip was the fact that I would intercept Ganges at so many places. The river meanering away in the distance dotted with small fishing boats. The sun setting on the horizon, painting the entire sky with a golden hue and reaching out into the river to quench its thirst. And once it has satiated itself darnkness breaking out. The dark sky daubed with orange puffs of clouds. The chants of the temples wafting on the river and countless diyaas starting their fleeing journey on the waves of the river...

Devī Sureśvarī Bhagavatī Gange,

Tribhuvanatārinī taralatarange,
Śankaramaulī vihārinī vīmale,
Mamamatirāstām tavapada kamale.

Disclaimer: The author is in no way affiliated to oktatabyebye.com or the contest