Just About Everything

In this post, I continue with my earlier post on Tonk. Here is where we went to after Tonk.We reached New Delhi in the morning, rested through the day and got ready for another trip. We set off the same day. An overnight train from New Delhi and we reach Amritsar (Punjab) in the morning. In the train we found out that there a bandh was declared in Amritsar the next day. We were very disappointed but we kept hoping that it will turn out to be a normal day. It did not begin very normally though :( The train stopped at "Beas", which is one stop before Amritsar. We were told that the train would not go any further before 12 PM; agitators had blocked the railway lines. We quickly contacted our car driver who was supposed to pick us up from Amritsar station, and arranged for him to pick us up from Beas instead. We quite enjoyed the drive from Beas to Amritsar. It was nice and cool and the roads were good. We reached Amritsar within 45 mins. Thankfully, Amritsar did not look complet...

I am sharing the tiger video taken at Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, India. You can check out Ranthambore trip details in my earlier blog entry. I have uploaded this tiger video at YouTube too. I am embedding the link here. For some reason I could not upload the video directly from my blog.

Our next destination was Tonk . Visiting Tonk was an impromptu decision, 'cause we had some time in hand after the day two's morning safari, our train was at 9.30 that night, we had the whole day at our disposal. Tonk is around 86 kms from Ranthambore and 96 kms from Jaipur.We figured that it would take us around 1and a half to 2 hrs to reach Tonk, we could tour the town form 3-4 hours and still be able to catch our train at night. We hired a car, packed up and checked out from the hotel. Tonk may not be the most popular tourist destination. It is dusty, crowded, but it is culturally and architecturally very rich. The magnificent mansions date back to the Mughal era. I had heard of Tonk before, but only in the passing I never guessed that this little town could house such beautiful gems. No wonder its is known as the "Lucknow of Rajasthan". Tonk was an absolute delight. Some of the monuments we saw were Jama Masjid, Sunheri Kothi, Tonk library, Arabic and Persian Inst...

I just got back from a rather hectic but wonderful trip! We had a very packed schedule; we wanted to pack in as much as possible in a week. We were traveling almost every night! Our first stop was Delhi. North India is much more easily accessible from Delhi, in the sense that the distances are less, overnight journeys by train can get you to Rajasthan and Punjab easily. We saved a lot of time that way. Our first destination was Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Ranthambore National Park is in Sawai Madhopur District of Rajasthan state. By road One can get to Jaipur within less than 4 hours, the usual route is from Jaipur to Tonk and then Sawai Madhopur. The distance by rail from Delhi is around 362 kms. We boarded an overnight train to Sawai Madhopur. The park is at the junction of the Aravalli and Vindhya hill range. It covers an area of Approximately 400 sq Km. Rantambore was a wildlife sanctuary in 1957 and 1974. It earned the status of a National park in 1981. We had organise...

In Bhowanipur we met up with our friend and after a refreshing cup of tea, off we went visiting a few more banedi baris Our first stop was Girish Mukherjee bari . It was aroung 7.30pm when we reached Girish bari. My friend who is a resident of Bhowanipur knows the family. Thanks to him, I got to see another Durga idol in a beautiful old house. When we reached there, there was a family gathering in the coutyard and a game was in progress, the whole family had got together and they were playing group games, mainly quizzing etc. The whole ambience exuded warmth and a happy feeling. Girish Mukherjee bari Mallik Bari Next stop and the last banedi bari that I visited this durga puja was Mallik bari. Last Durga pujas I barely could find my way in, it was so crowned. Mainly because Tollywood actor Koel Mallik is a daughter of this family and she was visiting. This time when we reached, she was not there, so there wasn't much crowd. I could take a lots of photographs of the house and Goddes...

We went on a tour in one of the West Bengal tourist buses on Saptami(Saptami is the first day of Durga puja) on October 14th. This trip is the "Sanatani trip". If you are interested in visiting some beautiful old houses of Kolkata, I would recommend this trip. We had a very good guide for our trip, he had a lot of information on the history of all of these barir puja that we were going to. Kolkata's creativity reaches its peak during Durga pujas. I am very enthusiastic about taking a tour and checking out the wonderfully artisitic pandals. It feels so sad that pujas are over:( This puja parikrama was however not for the pandals, I wanted to visit and get the essence of Durga puja celebrations at the Banedi baris of Kolkata. West bengal tourism was organising such a tour. I booked my ticket almost a month and a half before and still could not get tickets for the morning trip:( I did manage to get tickets for the aftrenoon bus. On Satami, we set off around 2.30pm from Netaj...

Was watching a Bond film today...Star movie has been playing a lot of Bond films recently and I quite enjoy watching them... Today while watching one of many Bond films, a thought struck me...how about a black James Bond? Will there be a day when we see a dashing tall, dark, and handsome James Bond such as Denzel Washington...perhaps? Just hoping that it happens some day soon. Will be great.

Here are some pics that I captured on my mobile... none of these are great pics (the quality is not so good) but I they came as a very pleasant surprise! Could not resist sharing these pictures. These are a few of my favourite things.... A beautiful butterfly ... My Mango bonsai plant is now full of mangoes (this time of the year!) One of my cactus plants gifted me a beautiful flower on my birthday And a rainbow set my spirits high last week...