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One month down the line from this trip and the travelogue still remains tucked away in the draft folder ! what a shame. perhaps it was the postaweek prompt or the urge to relive the holiday .. am back here trying to finish this one. It’ll take a little while .. but well begun is almost done in my case!
Some of us feel the need to take a trip to escape from the daily hassles of life and some to explore what’s out there that we have been missing knowing about. A little about former but essentially about latter , travel for me has always meant a journey towards discovery.
A lesson in history well learnt , a legend that still lives on , a purpose that binds an entite community and its generations together and a belief that refuses to be taken over by our modern sensibilities .I was looking for a weekend getaway for my birthday and I came back with more than a bargain.
This trip was planned almost a year back in thought if not detail at least. The husband and I were drawing up a list for the perfect weekend get away sometime around july and we came across this fantastic travelogue on the thought express at a blog that I regularly follow .
A place that we had never heard of held a mystical charm and the descriptor “land of kings” made the prospect too tempting to resist. But like few things are meant to be , it all fell in place in feb this year and I turned a year older at orchcha.
Barely 20kms from jhaansi ( an overnight journey away from delhi) this small little town was once the capital of bundelkhand. Infact the entire city is built around what was once a lavish kingdom.
On the bank of river Betwa , spread across just a couple of kms , the kingdom was passed on as a legacy from one generation to another.
Till yesterday I used to be quite convinced that a traffic signal could symbolise the most obnoxious form of confinement – that forces complete strangers to come together without a sense of purpose or direction .
They neednt be headed in the same direction or coming from the same one. A prison or hospital per se.
Their destinations maybe different and so would be their mediums , quite unlike say an elevator or an aeroplane.
Yet they are all bound by the law of the state to freeze in a moment of time , awkward or indifferent and restless to move away at the slightest nudge.
And today I experienced the all encompassing , the ever popular _ the delhi metro. Not for a joy ride , that I have taken in the past and to be honest enjoyed thanks to the ladies coach.. Nor to simply ‘experience’ with a misplaced sense of adventure something new.
The purpose was to find an alternative to driving during peak hours . And I was surprised to say the least.
With all the autos and ricks and walking I had to do to beat the last minute connectivity. Neither did it turn out to be less expensive nor quicker. Plus one would now understand why women are at the helm of all jokes when it comes to bickering and gossiping and general mayhem.
So driving to work is the way things would be hence forth and metro remains only for fun rides. Atleast I have my music and my thoughts for company even when I am inthe middle of the ‘confinement’ that I spoke about.
I did get to write a post while travelling today though without a worry in the world about traffic lights or overtaking and mindless jams and street squables. A learning for all the un-learning that I got to do for the day.
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone
Entered this travel writing contest on chillibreeze more coz I needed one more excuse to re-visit all those amazing travel destinations , I ve been dreaming about lately.
Travel writing is truly the sweetest torture.
Agree /Disagree? Tell me here
Another travelogue goes up on Rediff get ahead… :)
Please check Rediff getahead travel page for the memoirs of our trip to Mathura-Vrindavan-Agra ..here
And let me know what you think!
More soon…:)
Went through the latest cosmo edition this Sunday.
A copy of their latest shopping edition had landed on my desk this week – and I picked it up coz of various reasons – none of them being that am a cosmo – girl!
I rarely miss the travel plus , but that was my first contact with something so glam – there should be a law against it !
As I settled down with a warm cup of coffee and Alanis crooning ‘head over feet’ – I gorged the 230 Pages dedicated to the noble (?) cause of ‘shopping and more’ at the FIVE cities I love – Pune , Delhi , Mumbai , Jaipur and Chandigarh .
Needless to say, I couldn’t help but compare the catalogued places to shop-eat-make merry with my mental notes and that’s when I wrote about it !( inspiration comes easy in this part of the world)
It was a nice walk down the memory lane , as I flipped through the pages and looked for cues to revisit those moments that I ve at some point of time spent there!
Purple Rice (Chd) , Ta-blu(Jpr) , Big Chill(Del) , Salt water grill(Mum) – some sumptuous brunches and cozy dinners . Some serious damage to my bank account at Anokhi , Fabindia – could I ever get tired of buying yet more kurtas from there?
Though I’ll be an emotional fool when I say I missed not catching a Zamus in Pune , Café Rock in jaipur or a Pind Baluchi in Delhi , but then again – how many of the gazillions of places to eat could we really feature in so many pages?
But a miss out of Oxford in the books section in Delhi would be a serious one – and so would be some typos ( one Can not call Kayani’s in Pune – Kalyani !)
But what is really holding me back from stacking this one up in my collectibles is the fact that more than serious reading pleasure , it ‘s stark commercial undertones leave me unsettled. When I really have to flip through pages and pages of paid advertising to really look for something that more than meets the eye , is that really worthwhile?
Its almost like – Just when you are out on your feet, exploring a new city – checking out the magical display windows , the patterns and the colours all adding up to a lovely day shopping out …..and there it is – a huge bill board or a hoarding. Its to put it crudely – the TVC that we all hate so much right before the crucial last over’s getting bowled in the tie breaker between India and Pakistan – if you know what I mean!
The pics, the charming layouts, the divine pearl-of-wisdom all seem fine but then I guess gone are the days of some serious fun-reading. Agreed that it’s the monies that are driving the issues that hit the stands for the very able cosmo team as it would in any other commercial set up (being a marketing professional myself).
Just one question, where do we really draw a line to defend the power of the written word?
Well that’s the first of the many reviews that I plan to write about any thing and everything
Tell me how it was? No hard-selling this is.
