Trip to Palampur - Summary

A couple of weeks back I went to Dharamshala, Macleodgunj and Palampur with Manas, Ashish and Vikas. Before I start saying anything I can't help but praise Manas for his non-stop driving (the total distance covered was well above 1000kms), Vikas for his trekking abilities (he easily trekked down in absolute darkness where I was uncomfortable even with torch) and Ashish for his immense patience (being with guys like me and Manas for 3 days without complaining).

One blog would be quite long - so I will break it and post them separately. This blog would summarise the entire trip and the subsequent ones will give details.

We started on Thursday night. We had decided to go by car and Manas would be driving. We met at around 11:30 PM and started our journey to Dharamshala. Vikas is from Himachal (Bilaspur to be precise) and he was our designated guide. Manas and I had gone out several times but this was my first time with Ashish and Vikas. So we set out on our journey.

Our route included Ambala, Chandigarh, Una, Ropad and Kangra. We stopped for dinner on the way and then drove non-stop to Una where we had a cup of tea and then continued. We reached Dharamshala around 10:30 AM and checked-in a hotel.

We had a little rest and breakfast. Then Vikas's friend Nitin arrived and he took us to Bhagsunath temple. We visited the temple and then went ahead to see a waterfall. We spent quite sometime there enjoying the view and having something to eat. Then we went to a mela. For the first time I had seen a mela and I guess it might be the last time - it was over crowded and the crowd wasn't to my liking. We came back to the hotel from the mela and went out for dinner. Had a good meal but the service was very slow. Came back to the room and rested.

Next morning we checked-out of the hotel and went to Macleodgunj. We parked the car there and strated our trek. We had some 4km to Dharamkot and then some 8 kms to Triund which was our destination. Soon after we started I and Manas took shortcut (read long cut) and got separated from Ashish and Vikas. I had a hard time trekking as I am not used to so much workout while others found it pretty easy. Despite the odds I did manage to reach the top within 4 hours. Manas did get impatient a lot for my being too slow and resting often but he still stayed with me. Finally as we reached the top it was worth the effort. We had our lunch there and stayed there for quite some time. Manas and Vikas went further up while I and Ashish stayed there. We didnot manage to get any accomodation there so we began our trek down just before sunset. By the time we reached midway it had become dark. Luckily I had brought a torch along and Manas's cell (Nokia 1100) had a torch which helped us climb down. When we finally reached Macleodgunj we didnot find a proper place to eat nor could we find a hotel to stay. We decided to go to Palampur which was some 35 kms away. Despite being tired Manas drove all the way to Palampur. There was an IIT exam there so all the hotels were booked and we almost decided to sleep in the car. But we tried our luck one last time and managed to find a room in a hotel. We checked-in at 12 midnight. We had bought juices on our way and that was our dinner. We woke up around 8 AM the next morning, had our breakfast and checked-out of the hotel. We began exploring Palampur. We went to Neugal Cafe and then spent some time in a tea garden. Then we started our journey back to Delhi after having stopped at Nitin's place. We had our lunch at around 5 PM and then drove continuously till we reached Chandigarh at around 11:30 PM. There we had dinner and reached Delhi early morning on Monday.

Three days full of fun (with some arguements/disagreements/fights) away from the routine life - it was a welcome break.

PS: The details of each day would follow soon.

A forgettable weekend

Arsenal lost the FA Cup semis to Chelsea.
KKR lost their IPL match badly. Ganguly was replaced as the captain of the team.
Lost the cricket matches on Saturday morning.
Had more than 1 program cancelled and eneded up spending the whole Sunday at home doing nothing.
Fedex lost yet again.
None of my friends called.
Had minor arguements at home.
Woke up early on both Saturday and Sunday - missed on a lot of sleep.
.............

As I sit in the office

It's 8:40 PM and I am sitting in the office waiting for my manager to finish his work so that we can leave. It has been a busy week this week with me not getting the full quota of weekend sleep that I am quite used to (This weekend I had a few commitments which made me wake up early and denying me the scope of sleeping late - which is my quota of weekend sleep). We had gone to an amusement park (Worlds of Wonder in Noida) yesterday; which was the venue of our team event and we had loads of fun there. But it was pretty tiring. Reached home late and got up today as usual to catch the bus (and I wanted to sleep). I had thought of leaving early but certain clients calls made sure that I couldn't leave early and now I am still at office (which means I will have less time for sleep).
Have to go out with friends tomorrow to Himachal - haven't done the packing yet; have to shave today as I don't shave on Thurdays; have to come to office tomorrow; and leave tomorrow night on some 12 hours drive. And I sit here writing this blog.

Tuesdays with Morrie

‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom.

I read this book a couple of months back. The book was given to me by a friend who insisted I would like this book. And I did like it after reading it.

The author happens to be a student of this professor named Morrie during his college days. Morrie was his favourite teacher. After college he lost touch with his favourite teacher and got busy with his life while Morrie continued in his own track. This happens to be the scenario with everyone – no matter who your favourite teacher is you tend to not keep contact with them once you move one in life; although you do remember them always.

Morrie is diagnosed by a disease which has no cure and he would die in sometime. The disease starts from the leg and moves upwards making the body parts dead as it passes through. Morries knows he is going to die but he still wants to enjoy all he can while he is alive. Morrie decides to meet all his friends and spend every moment enjoying the moments.
Mitch on the other hand is busy in his own world trying to achieve all the success, working at breakneck speed. One day he watches Morrie on TV being interviewed in a famous show and comes to know oh Morrie’s disease. The circumstances in his life gives Mitch a forced break from his work and he decides to visit Morrie. It is the meeting that starts a series of meetings and it is the conversations in these meetings that take the form of the book.

The book is beautifully written touching the fine points of life, stressing on the important things in life and the true meaning of life. A person who is dying is trying to live every moment while people who are alive are not living. It talks about how Morrie saw life and how precious life was. He never let his disease stop him from enjoying life. And the conversations changed the life of Mitch and many others.

The book talks about the world, death, regrets, fear of aging, forgiveness, love and much more. The book teaches some very good life lessons and I would suggest one should read the book once.

Traffic jam - is there a solution?

One of these days I was stuck in a traffic jam; the reason being a car was trying to jump the red light but ended up creating a chaos. I was getting frustrated seeing it and giving the driver my piece of mind (in my mind). It is then that I remembered a conversation I had with my dad some months back.

I had returned from a 2 week trip from US and seeing the driving here - in Delhi - I pointed out to him that if people would just follow the rules traffic would be smoother; especially on crossings the cars should wait untill they are sure they would get to the other side and not have to halt in between the road (this is what I had seen in the US). And I had proclaimed that if this starts happening here the traffic situation is going to improve. And I was pretty sure there wasn't anything dad could reply to counter my logic.
Dad's reply was - it's not the not following of traffic rules that creates the chaos but it is the no of vehicles on road that is the culprit. The no of vehicles on road are so high that whatever people do there is bound to be traffic congestion in peak hours if not at other times. River usually flows in its designated path but when there is heavy rain or snow melts the amount of water in the river increases; and when this increase is quite high it results in floods. No matter what arrangement is made the excess water will always lead to flood.