Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A prologue for a Travelouge

What makes the train journeys in India so special.? Is it the people we meet or the rustic countryside that swiftly passes through your window.? Is it that little beggar boy who sings in a metallic voice or that American traveller with a mineral water bottle, a dirty backpack and a big travel book.? If you have not travelled in second class compartment in a train in India, You are really missing something.

I feel that trains are subtle microcosms of the diversified yet strangely united country of India. Well, I travelled alone this year. Many Indians don`t do that really. I took a backpack with some books, a couple of tardy jeans, few economy class T-shirts , some underwear and a Olympus camera. With this minimal luggage, and with the assurance that mineral water bottles will be available all over India, I travelled around 7000kms during this vacation. Sounds a bit Forrest Gump'y, but as know 'Travelling alone is like a box of chocolates'..

October is a month, when the rain gods had gone back to slumber and leave a little time before they cover themselves with blanket for the cold Decembers. But the fog never gives up, as they keep kissing the landscape even after sunrays made the eastern sky ablaze. The mornings in north India is the most photogenic landscapes one can see on earth.
As the evening draws a curtain, and as the womenfolk cook the rotis with the stove fuelled by the cow dung that they had collected the morning before, another kind of fog covers the land.
But these are pictures only of landscapes in the countryside.

I have always felt that globalization had made our cities flat. They wear a same look all over India. It was beyond those buzzing cities and the crowded bazaars lies the real places where one can find solace.
Watching the ruins of Tughlaqabad where honey bees have made a dynasty of their own, During the elephant rides to the top of Amber palace in Rajasthan, When you stand below the magnificient Mughal arches of Buland darwaza in Fathepur sikri, And when you view the mighty Ganga mata in Varanasi.. you begin to feel the minutest part of timescale that our lifetime is composed of in the face of earth.

In the coming posts, lets know more about India. As we proceed..We will together travel to a city which was a dream for every king during the medieval age, to the most beautiful building in the world, to the most sacred places one can visit , to the most planned city in India and so on. Sometimes we will be travelling through Camels or elephants. Briefly We will be eating some real spicy Kachoris and some sweets which brings heaven to earth for a brief moment. Come lets travel..