My North India trip II

The next day (4th May 2004) ,we were supposed to have sight seeing trip around Delhi. Since we had experienced, the previous day, what would cost us if we dare to miss schedules, every body were on their toes, getting prepared on time even earlier than when we are supposed to be. Finally we all boarded the bus and reached Red fort only to realize that one of our crew members was missing. He has already been in Delhi before and he also knew where we would move from our place of stay. Hence we all decided to roam around Red fort instead of waiting for him to reach. It did prove good. After we all came back taking photographs and having looked around Red fort, our crew member joined us back and he in fact was waiting for us reach the bus in parking. Then we all headed to Raj Ghat where father of our nation, Mr. Mohan Das Gandhi, was laid to rest. We paid homage to him and took photos there and then we reached memorials of Rajiv, Indira and Nehru and headed to house where Rajiv and Indira lived. The house was now made a memorial with things used by them and their photographs. It was really painful to see the bloodshed dress of Indira and Rajiv which they wore when they were killed. In fact Indira was killed in the very house. There was a good collection of photographs of dignitaries from various countries. The gifts sent by VIPs around the world for the marriages of Indira and Rajiv were there. Their childhood photos with Nehru and other leaders of yester year. The house opposite to that house was the residence of Former PM of India. MR. Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We just had a glimpse of it from far due to his high cover security and then continued with our sight seeing. On the way to residence were Jawahar Lal Nehru lived, we looked at embassies of various foreign countries including US, UK, Japan, France and other countries in a place called chanakyaapuri. Then we had a look at our famous Parliament, President’s palace and India gate. We reached the house which was Jawaharlal Nehru’s memorial which had a big lawn. We had our lunch at the lawn there and continued with our sight seeing.

Now we were heading to Qutab Minar. We did enjoy the beauty of it and again took photographs of it and headed to Lotus mandir. It was a beautiful place, well architected building resembling the petals of Lotus flower. It was place of worship built mainly by people of Bahai community. We spent some time there again it had beautiful lawn wide spread, we spent some time there and then we headed to Iskcon run Krishna temple, were we worshipped god and even took part in bhajan there. Tired visiting so many places in a day we returned back to our place of stay. We took rest, had our dinner and went back to bed. Our next day plan was to leave for Chandigarh, Shimla, Kullu, Manali and Rohtang pass by bus. In fact the remaining days of our journey was packed with bus journey starting and ending in Delhi from were we would again resume our train journey to Chennai and there by to Coimbatore.

We all woke up early in the morning. The (5th May 2004) day’s plan was to visit Gurukshetra on the way and reach Chandigarh by lunch time and visit rock garden there and continue the journey to Kalka, which is the foot hill of Himachal pradesh. Anyways it was a good 300KM journey by bus. We started early from Delhi crossed into Hariyana, and reached Gurukshetra around 9.30AM, we had our break fast there. There was a very big lake in Gurukshetra which tempted us all to have a swim. No body stopped us we did have a nice bath at the lake. Spent good time there with lots of fun and we headed to a near by temple and worshipped god there. From there we visited a near by village where Bhishma was believed to be lying in a bed of arrows to witness the conclusion of Gurukshetra war.
And then we came back again to Gurukshetra where a wonderful lunch was ready, we had lunch there and headed to Chandigarh. We reached Chandigarh rock garden around 5.30 and had a good look at the mammoth rock garden. It was a nice place to visit, took good photographs there and when we came out of rock garden it was around 7PM, we headed towards Kalka, the place of our night stay. On the way there was another beautiful garden called Pinjore gardens which resembled the Mysore Brindavan gardens. We looked around the garden and it had number of good toys and games the children had a good time there. Then we had our dinner just outside the gardens and headed to Kalka. We reached there around 11PM and boarded a lodge there and fell asleep.

As per our plan we were supposed to leave for Shimla the next day. Continuation in coming weeks….C u.