One of my friends just asked me to share my last trip plan and I thought it would be a good idea update my blog and here I am, back with a trip report of my latest trip - the best one so far :)
Though we have been planning for a trip to Leh and Ladakh for last couple of years, it had not materialized. Some time in June'10 we decided to take our first materialistic step towards purchasing the tickets to Delhi. We had the tickets for 19 Aug'10 to Delhi and return 29 Aug'10 tickets to Bangalore (Pauline to Chennai). Let me introduce the "we" here. Its Chitra, Girish, Kumar, Lawrence, Manasvi, Prashant, Pauline and Sangita (Sangeetha).
As days passed, there were a lot of uncertainties that crept up about the trip. It started with "The Cloud Burst" in Leh, the concept that i had never heard of before. It along with the floods washed away our plan yet again! Chitra dropped out of the plan, cancelled her tickets.
We started looking for all possible options to continue with the trip. Last thing we wanted to do was to be in Bangalore on vacation! There were multiple plans, A, B, C etc.. Valley of Flowers, Rajasthan, Leh again for helping people in relief work etc.... We even thought of Sikkhim from Delhi in the last moment. In the mean while there was one new entrant, Pratima to make the gang as Gang of Eight. And there we were, eight adventurous people on 18th Aug '10 packing for all our backpacks without the faintest idea where we were heading after reaching Delhi :)
We decided to take a taxi starting at 5:00 A.M, from Lawrence's place and picking up everyone on the way to the airport.
19 Aug'10:
5:00 A.M: Unbelieveable thing happened! No.. no... we still didn't know where we were going but the most punctual guy among all of us Mr.Lawrence was not even up till the taxi guy called him waiting near his house! Well.... he was supposed to wake give an alarm call to other people too but luckily everyone had their alarms set...Let me not get into the details of "Why" Lawrence was late by half an hour :P
We all managed to reach airport on time and there again we had the same question in our minds.. where next from Delhi :)
The moment we reached Delhi and when I was about to step out of the flight, we heard the thunder :) there you go... it was raining cats and dogs in Delhi. :(
We had to wait at the airport terminal till Pauline's flight from Chennai reached, which was delayed by almost an hour. We had biryani at there which really sucked big time!
Heavy rains, bad food.. even worse no plan yet! Prashant was trying to call the other people from Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh still, hoping to get connected. He and Lawrence had spoken to a lot of people during the earlier planning phase. We spent the next 4 hrs at the airport, sitting near one huge dustbin trying to come up with a plan...
We planned to go to Jaipur and hire a vehicle from there and visit Jodhpur and all other places in Rajasthan. I called my parents and informed them that we were heading to Jaipur. They were happy that I was moving away from rain hit places.
We were about to start from the airport, just finally Prashant managed to get in touch with the guy from Himachal Pradesh. That guy suggested that we go to Manali and he would provide us a cook and a guide along and we can trek and camp where ever we can. Sounded like we had a plan finally again and good one too!
I didn't bother to call my parents again because I still was not sure. I decided to call them only after I get out the airport and get into some vehicle which would take me away from Delhi.
We hired couple of taxis from airport to Ramakrishna metro station. The buses to Manali would start from the Gate 3 of the metro station at 5:00 PM. We reached there and waited for the bus. There were many others from different countries mainly Israel, who were travelling to Manali.
We boarded the bus at 5:30 P.M and finally we knew that we the gang of eight are heading to Manali. I made one more call to my parents and informed them about Manali, the call lasted longer because I had to convince them that I was in the bus and there was no change of plan from now on atleast. :)
