Category: Travel

  • A day in Baroda

    This article originally appeared on my blog http://lifeofpradeep.wordpress.com. I recovered the post using Wayback Machine.

    I have been thinking of visiting the Planetarium at Vadodar/Baroda for the past few weeks. I have either overslept or haven’t been in the mood over the past few Sundays. A power cut early today morning woke me up and didn’t allow me to sleep any longer.

    I reached Baroda a little after mid-day. An amateur astronomer and friend, Manoj Pai from Ahmedabad, had advised me to walk it up from the railway station since it was only a kilometer away. As I walked down a road (I just chose one randomly), I spotted the grand building that was the M S University. It blew me away. No photograph I took did it any justice (a repeating theme on this trip). I did not take any. I had admired the buildings that stood on the grounds and then had totally forgotten the reason for my being there. I took a right turn and reached what was a bridge. A small bridge made grand by ornate Mughal (I think) guard rooms. Below the bridge was a canal, now transformed into a nullah, an open drainage stream. A bunch of steps ran down a steady slope. They widened a little at the bottom. My mind almost got into the mode of reprimanding India’s lack of concern/respect/preservation/conservation of these beautiful structures but stopped myself.

    Crossing roads in Baroda is more tricky than in Bombay. Here, vehicles don’t slow down and the turns are graceful. Such was the chaos on the roads that I was surprised that they moved aside for a passing ambulance. I had a sumptuous meal at Aangan restaurant. Now full and armed with the location of the Planetarium, I went towards Sayaji Park.

    [The original blog post contained photos that I am not sure if I have or not. Will try to locate and recover.]

    Sankalp Bhoomi
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    On my way back in the train I saw an awesome instrument – made of a brown coconut shell and a stick. It seemed like an instrument that Kirk Kittell purchased from India when he was here earlier this year. It made an awesome monotonous and lonely music.

  • Visit to Shirdi

    The last time I had been to Shirdi was as a 9 year old. I don’t remember much about that place and when my friend Pranav mentioned that he had plans to go there, I decided to join him. This was last Sunday. The plan was to leave on Friday night, reach there on Saturday morning, have an audience at Shirdi with Sai Baba and then head to Shani Shingnapur and then return back to Mumbai on Saturday night.

    Pranav and I met at the private bus hub near Diamond Garden, Chembur to board the bus. The Dolphin Volvo bus arrived and boarded the bus and we departed at 10.45 pm. At 1.30 pm we arrived at our first stop and I woke up after trying to sleep. There were seat bugs (for want of a better name). My elbows were swollen with seat bug bite and it seemed that it was a general experience among passengers and not a particular experience with me. After a general patting down, I had a bite-less night.

    We reached Shirdi at 5.55 am and we got a room that allowed us to bathe and change for Rs. 60. It was the top of someone’s home which was being lent for a daily or for bathing purposes. Since Shirdi is a holy place, it is general practice to be bathed and fresh. The room and bathroom were clean and also had a provision for hot water. The hot water was flowing through a plastic pipe generally used for electric purposes – which concerned me a bit but I used cold water.

    Pranav led the way to the samadhi. There is as usual a very long line. The early hour and some smart maneuvering meant that we could make some time and only had to wait for about an hour and a half. The serpentine line went through a hall, down a flight of steps, up another flight of steps and suddenly we were inside the samadhi. When you reach in, the first thing that strikes you is how Hindu the place is for someone who had practised both Hinduism and Islam. Second was the amount of gold the place had for the man who believed in simplicity. We then went to some adjoining centers which were places where Sai Baba stayed, prayed, cooked etc. We then went to the shrine of a person who worked with Sai Baba and began the search for a jeep that would take us to Shani Shingnapur.

    It is an interesting experience to discuss travel plans sitting inside a temple. We planned here on whether to go to Shani Shingnapur after breakfast or not. The decision was to head to Shani Shingnapur, a temple dedicated to Shani, the god Saturn, without breakfast. Pranav had been going on about this temple since the day we decided to head to Shirdi. He told me about the idea behind wearing orange clothes and a wet body while entering the temple and had even suggested I carry my orange clothes with me. He then helpfully pointed out that the orange clothes were available there on rent.

    Pranav described the experience in the jeep best by comparing it with NASCAR. We joked that the drivers were more of an expert in reminding people about God than a priest in the temple. Pranav got the jolt of his life when the jeep passed in front of the temple. People wearing ordinary clothes were walking into the temple. A passenger in the front seat seemed equally jolted and asked about it to the driver. The driver explained that the Government thought it was a waste of time for devotees to be following rituals and decided to do away with it. So it was that we visited the temple without Pranav’s “orange clothes and wet body”.

    The temple here is much simpler. The God is represented by a black rock on which devotees offer mustard oil which is poured on the rock. Some brought small plastic packets of oil, some small plastic bottles of oil and some even brought a cannister of oil! At the exit, we found a medical camp being conducted by the doctors from Ahmednagar Govt. Civil Hospital. This was my first round of blood donation. After a round of weight checks and jotting down personal details I was asked to press a “Squeeze-me” ball for about 5 mins to drive out a packet of blood. For my squeezing, I got a certificate, a unique identification number and a medal.

    I felt a bit tired on the way back where I and Pranav had to be squeezed in with an older gentleman from Kolkata. On return to Shirdi, we had lunch (a much needed one) and took our bus back to Mumbai. This bus too suffered with lack of passengers. Efforts to revive passenger count by waiting for a hour and a half at Nashik failed and so the bus left following an internal revolt by passengers. We reached Mumbai an hour later than we would have.

  • The Adventurous Untour

    I was thinking of doing an untour for a very long time and finally got a chance to do it between January 4 and January 16 2009. This was perhaps the most unorganised trip that I have ever taken. A step ahead of what I did this time could possibly be a group untour where the group decided where to go together. That would be really cool to do. And, cooler still would be if the group is a bunch of strangers! Any takers? This would really amplify the concept of an untour.

    Anyway, only two things became certain about four days before the trip. The starting date was to be January 4 and was to be a train to Secunderabad. The last date was to be January 14 and was to be the train back to Mumbai. With these boundaries set, I set out to Secunderabad on January 4. I decided not to push my luck too much and agreed to stay with relatives and friends during the duration of the tour – money saved, parents happy. :)

    The train to Secunderabad took me on a  journey via Aurangabad. After Secunderabad, I hung out with Raghunandan in Hyderabad and had a glimpse into his hectic life. It is perhaps the most unorganised life that I have seen anyone lead. I went on a day long Hyderabad tour on a bus, the idea was to have an idea to say something that I did during this trip other than talk about and discuss about space – a sore point with my parents earlier and something I don’t bring up too often now. Anyway, I got a sub-10-degree-celsius-night sky observation junkett thanks to Raghunandan’s friends – Vaibhav and Partha on their cool 8-inch reflector scope. This was perhaps the highlight of the Hyderabad chapter of my trip.

    I then moved onto Vellore on a private bus (Kesineni, for the details people). Got down at Vellore in the early morning and moved into a TNSTC bus to Katpadi. From there I took a rickshaw to Vellore Institute of Technology. I spent three days there meeting the teams that work to run the SEDS chapter there(disclosure: I’m the President of SEDS, India), caught the updates on the conference and perhaps for the first time met three members of my Exec Comm face to face. It was a great experience none the less. Here too, thanks to a guy, I found out about a direct bus from Vellore to Trivandrum. We went out and booked a ticket for the 741 kms to Trivandrum.

    This part of the journey was largely spoiled by the fact that my stomach was upset with me. For perhaps the first time, I sat with out eating anything solid for about 24 hours. I broke that fast with a good lunch in the afternoon – home cooked food at Varkala. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I came to Trivandrum Central and saw the famous Baker-style Indian Coffee House. I didn’t take a pic because my stomach was urging me to get home quickly. I took a bus from there to Varkala and covered the 41 kms distance.

    A small side adventure on the way back to Mumbai on the large 2048 kms journey back home. I had a small tweetup with @kg86, who’s with the Navy and who rode all the way from his base at Willingdon Island, Cochin to Ernakulam Stn as I passed through. Thank you, man, it was awesome meeting you there.

    The most important point of this untour was whether this is possible in India or not. If you’re adventurous enough, anything is possible. I really hope someone tries an all strangers untour of some region of India as suggested in the first paragraph and share their experiences on a blog.