Destinations - What's Hot?

We have so many places in India, that are off-beat and many of us do not even know about them. In this article, I would like to provide some of the destinations that are not so hot, yet hot for the people who love to take not so oft-repeated destinations.

• CHITRAKOOT: "The hill of many wonders" is located peacefully in the northern spurs of the Vindhyas. The Vindhyas which are know for its tranquil forests, placid rivers. Travel to Chitrakoot, to enjoy the tranquility, draw inspiration, from its natural beauty, which has been inspiration to many poets, visionaries for ages together.
• CHIKMAGALUR: Chikmagallur is situated in the Baba Budan hills, which is serene, and calm. This is full of surprises - includes hills, valleys, streams, and snow white coffee blossoms. It is a trekker's delight, with its rugged hills and other adventures. Towards north of Chikmagallur, you have another hill station - Kemmanagundi, where Hebba waterfalls is there.
• NALANDA: Nalanda is situated about 90 Kms from Patna and this happens to be one of the earliest universities of our country. It was a flourishing university with 10000 students and 1500 teachers. It is believed that Hiuen Twang, the Chinese traveller spent three years in this university and has left detailed notes about this university.
• VARKALA BEACH: Varkala beach is situated about 51 kms away from Thiruvananthapuram and is a secluded beach. This beach offers a perfect beach holiday apart from Ayurvedic treatment, Yoga and meditation course. It is called Papnasam beach and lies to the south west coast of India. It is believed that dip in the holy waters of the beach will cleanse you of your sins.
• KANGER VALLEY NATIONAL PARK: This valley is in Chattisgarh and about 34-km long with an average of 6-km in width. The valley is completely hilly and happens to be last few pockets of virgin forests left in the peninsular region. This forest is proposed to be biosphere reserve and has fauna, that includes, such as tiger, panther, wildcat, cheetal, samber, barking deer, wild boar, jackal, langur, rhesus, macaque, sloth bear, flying squirrel, python, hyena, rabbit, crocodile, otter and civet.
• PRAGPUR: This small hill station is hidden away in the Kangra region and is about 4-hour drive from Chandigarh via Ropar and Anandpur Sahib. You can reach this place by train from Pathankot. This heritage village provides panoramic view of Himachal Pradesh and it houses some of famous paintings of Kangra School of paintings.
• TADOBA NATIONAL PARK: This is one of the oldest national parks in Maharashtra. If you love to walk and happen to be a wildlife enthusiasts, then this park should be must go in your list. This place charms you with its splendid flora and fauna, with attractions, such as thousand species of birds, animals, insects, tigers herds of cheetals, sambars, barking deers, chausings, neel gais, sloth bears, Indian bisons, wild dogs, wild boars, leopards, and other inhabitants.
• BENAULIM BEACH: This beach is about 3 to 4 kms away from Margao village in Goa. This place runs between Vasco de Gama and Mobor as a strip of land and has few restaurants, smaller guest houses. You can just sit and enjoy yourself at the beach without any disturbance. You can just walk to the beach, using the walk through between the green paddy fields, palms and other wading birds.
• ANGSANA RESORT & SPA: From Bangalore city, you can reach this place. Tucked away in the western ghats section, it invites you to come and enjoy the curative power of nature ensconced in the lavish greenery and vast space of picturesque Northwest county.
• DEVIGARH: This beautiful 18th century fort is nestled in the Aravali hills of Rajasthan in the Delwara village and commands three main passes into the valley of Udaipur. This fort palace has been renovated and converted into a 39 suite luxury hotel with emphasis on design and detail using local marbles and semi-precious stones.

Orchha - Hidden Treasure

I read an article on Orchha about 2 years ago and I liked the way the author describes this place. If you can let your thoughts run wild, I can bet that, you can actually visualize the place.

ORCHHA -the name spells it all, it means "hidden" and to me was like finding a hidden treasure. Away from the beaten track, this place is about 15 kms from Jhansi. To reach this place, one needs to travel through the dusty roads of Madhya Pradesh, small villages, and long terrains of arid fields. But, I would say its worth the effort and you finally reach Orchha. You can check into Orchha Resorts, which is situated on the banks of the river Betwa. The first thing you notice about the place is that this small town has innumerable temples and palaces that are scattered around. During the 16th and 17th century, Orchha was the capital of the Rajput bundela kings who left behind some of magnificent palaces.

The first place that catches your attention is the Ram Raja temple where Lord Ram is worshipped as King, not as God. This temple is about 400 years old and legend has it that, Lord Ram spends the entire day at Ayodhya, but he comes to Orchha to spend the night. After the visit to the temple, you can have good breakfast in any of the dhabas that are available. These dhabas serve you good food that too at reasonable rates.

Once done with your morning breakfast, you can first visit the Raja Mahal, built by king Madhukar Shah. Though, this palace is in ruins and facades have cracked in several places, exposing the bones and blackened innards behind the mustard walls. You can take help of the guide who can ensure that you will return safely to the entrance of the palace without getting lost among the 400 rooms and seven floors of the palace.This palace has some of the wonderful paintings, and murals that has been miraculously preserved in some of the rooms. The colors are fresh and figures has been drawn with sedulous attention to detail. On the ceilings, there were intricate patterns of birds, animals, flowers, and trees. There were wide open courtyards fringed by latticed windows and arched doorways and behind them were subtly concealed vents and passages that created a natural ventilation with a marvellous interplay of light and air.

The palace has been designed to be cool in summers and warm in winters and their architectural devices seemed to have been more effective than our current electronic gadgets. There were some large basins that were filled with water and scented flowers, so that the cool breeze could blow inside the rooms. There were niches on the walls that held small earthen lamps which would bathe the entire area in their shimmering glow.

The queens had a separate palace for herself and it was called the Rani Mahal, which was situated few metres away from Raja Mahal. This Rani Mahal is now the Ram Raja temple. Legend has it that, the queen of Madhukar Shah was a devotee of Ram. She did a long penance at Ayodhya, and finally Lord Ram appeared and he agreed to go with her to Orchha. But Lord Ram had three conditions that he wanted the queen to fulfill. They were: The queen would reach Orchha by foot, walking in moonlight, and once s=he reached there he would not move. The queen agreed to the conditions and carried the idol of Ram with her. Meanwhile in Orchha, a grand temple was being built for Lord Ram. So the queen temporally, placed the idol of Ram in her private chamber till the temple was built. The day the temple was completed, and it was time to move the idol, it would budge, so the temple stayed there from then on.

The Chaturbhuj temple, significant and dedicated to Lord Vishnu is next to Ram Rajya temple and can be viewed from king's palace. Then move along to Jahangir Mahal, built by King Bir Singh Deo in 1626 for Jahangir's visit after his coronation. This beautiful palace is modelled after a Datiya which was admired by Jahangir. The palace is a symbol of harmony between Hindus and Muslims. The palace is built in Indo Saracenic style and the color theme are blue and green. Though, most of the color has faded away, but you can still brilliant tiled flowers, and geometric shapes of a lovely aquamarine hue embedded in some walls. The room for Jehangir was the largest one with elaborately carved windows, a balcony, walls that had been embellished with gems and a magnificent painted ceiling. Jahangir stayed in that palace just for a night and after that no one lived there.

Another small palace called Rai Praveen Mahal. Rai Praveen Mahal was beautiful and accomplished courtesan whose fame reached Emperor Akbar. He summoned her to Delhi, even though Rai Praveen was besotted with Raja Indramani. On reaching Delhi, for a particular question, she compared Akbar to a crow saying that he was like a crow who lived on the leftovers. Emperor Akbar was so impressed that he sent her back with full honours to her beloved king. This palace was stands for her memory.

You can stop at cenotaphs of Bundela kins on the banks of Betwa. They are like mi nature temples with a pyramid like spears and arched doorways. Though no one hardly visit this place, but one should as it would be a tribute to the Bundela kings who created some of the beautiful jewels in a nodescript place called - Orchha.

Fact File:

• To reach Orchha, you can take a flight to Gwalior from Delhi and there you can hire a cab to cover a distance of 120 kms.
• There are many hotels in Orchha, that suit different budgets. Some of them are: Sheesh Mahal, The Betwa Retreat, Orchha Resort, Amar Mahal
• Food: There are many hotels where you can dine out, but my suggestion would be check out the dhabas, where the food offers you a great value for money and tastes great also.
• Best time to visit would be between October and March, but recommended time to travel would be late November to January.

Trip to Wargal

6th Dec, people of our country remember it as a Black Day in the Indian history, but our group would remember it as a day that was spent beautifully. As usual, we planned a day ahead. We packed up all the required eatables, water and all the other basic requirements that we would need, as we had a kid of three with us. The group had four energetic people and a hyperactive kid.

We started quite early, my husband, Shiv, son Aadhithya, (sleepyhead), and me left our home at 5:30 AM. On the way we picked up one of other group member, Shilpa, and then set off to pick up the last member – Ashwin. It was almost 6.00AM, when we were all on the way to Wargal.

The route that we took to Wargal was a pleasant ride for us. The fresh and crisp winter morning air, sounds of birds, was something we enjoyed all through the way. The route that we took was Secunderabad > Vikrampuri > Alwal > Ratnalayam > Wargal. Once you cross the city limits, you can feel that you are entering the rural areas of our country. Both the sides of the road had lush green fields, and it was a good drive. The road to Wargal is a straight long drive, after crossing Ratnalayam, after few kms, you would see an arch, with a beautiful Saraswati statue. You need to take a turn there, and from there the road is pretty narrow and you will literally feel and see the village atmosphere. On the way to the temple, the entire place was a feast for us as the entire was lush green and we also happened to cross small ponds full of lotus, which was quite rare for us.

The temple is atop a small rock. You need to walk about 100 steps to reach the temple at the top. On the way to the Saraswati Devi temple, we visited the Ganesha temple. The Ganesha temple was not at all crowded and we had a good darshan. From there we proceed to the main deity temple. When we entered the temple, we could hear the sounds of veda chants coming from nearby. Since this temple is not so popular, there was hardly anyone at the temple, except the temple people. The aarti timings for the deity and us entering the temple were beautifully coincided. After the aarti, we stayed back for sometime, had the prasadam and we just enjoyed the temple for some more time. While coming down, we came across vedpadshala, where boys of all age groups were reciting vedas.

We walked down to have the darshan of Lord Shani. Aadhithya and Shiv did some rock climbing, and we all just lazed around for sometime in the sand and then we decided to start back to Ratnalayam. Before we hit the highway for the Ratnalayam temple, we stopped the car and had a hot cuppa of chai.

While driving back to Ratnalayam, we decided to be little adventurous and took a turn on the left, which was off the main highway. We drove for sometime and then stopped in the middle of the jungle and had a photo session. Shilpa and me were busy looking for some wild flowers. One red wild flower caught our attention, as it was beautiful red bud, but unfortunately we do know the name. After the photo session we started again for Ratnalayam. We reached Ratnalayam, had darshan of Lord Balaji and we did archanai. We had the prasadam and then spent sometime at the children play area, where Aadhithya had a great time.

It was almost 9:45 AM or so and we all started to feel hungry. We started from the temple and started looking around to find a place where we could have a good picnic. But unfortunately, we could not find any such place, so we decided that we would go straight to the lake Shameerpet, which we had crossed on the way to Wargal. We reached the lake and look around for nice and clean place to sit and enjoy our breakfast. We had sandwiches, along with biscuits and chips and then downed it with apple juice. The place was so beautiful that we all were bewitched. Aadhithya, was so thrilled to see so much of water around that he got into the water and played around for sometime. We three adults, did nothing, we just gazed around and were enjoying the beauty of the nature. The sun was also good, just mild enough to keep us happy. We had been sitting there for a long time and we all having been eyeing a small temple kind of structure on top of a hill. We all decided that we will drive down there and see where it is. We asked a local person how to reach that place and then we set off. The ride down the place was good, the road leading the temple was neatly laid out, and so the drive was not a bumpy one as one would think and you could drive till the temple entrance. It was again the Lord Balaji temple. We had darshan, and then we walked across the road.

There was a cave kind of structure, made of two rocks. Inside that cave, we saw that there was a statue of Lord Murgan. We spent sometime inside the cave, discussing how one can do camping here. Can you believe we had almost decided to camp out there?? Then we moved out of the cave and went behind the cave formation. There were huge boulders and we did some rock climbing and again we had photo session. The place was peaceful, cool and green and we had no intention of leaving the place. We had spent almost 2 hours there, but still we were not ready to leave the place. We had crossed lunch time and none of us wanted to miss out the lunch. So we all got back into the car and came down the other way to touch the highway.

Then we started towards city and we thought we will have good lunch at a Punjabi dhaba, but unfortunately, we could not find a place where we all could stop and have food. So finally we decided to have food at Yatri Nivas, though unwillingly. It was almost 2:45 PM, we placed the order for the food and by the time we finished it was 4:00 PM. After lunch, we all went back home, tired, but satisfied as the day had went off well.

Chilkur - Home of Lord Balaji

Chilkur Balaji temple, Vikrabad. PC: Wikipedia

Chilkur Balaji, commonly known as Visa God. - the most surprising fact that has Chilkur Balaji has been associated with. This temple, though small compared to Tirupati but gets almost a lakh of devotees every week.

Initially, when I moved to Hyderabad, one of my neighbors told me about this place. From then on, we always wanted to visit this place. Finally, we got the opportunity, made a quick trip along with my friends.  That trip with my friends was a like bullet train ride for me. So, when another opportunity came in, I could not resist myself, and there you go...all set to leave. 

For me, I have always liked to visit the temples during the morning hours, not sure why?? Not sure, but always did.  That is one habit, which I still maintain. As usual, on a weekend, Nov 22, 2008, we started for this temple, and this visit is the most memorable one, as I lost my handbag. Neways, that is one part of the part, but it was the best one.  

On reaching the temple, we went in for darshan.  We did the 11 “pradakshinas” and their prayers to the deity. It is believed that once your wish is granted, then you have to visit the temple again and do 108 pradakshinas of the temple to show their gratitude and thank the God. As we did the pradakshinas, we heard the priest chanting mantras and guiding people.

Chilkur Balaji, commonly known as Visa God. - the most surprising fact that has Chilkur Balaji has been associated with. This temple, though small compared to Tirupati but gets almost a lakh of devotees every week. 

Initially, when I moved to Hyderabad, one of my neighbors told me about this place. From then on, we always wanted to visit this place. Finally, we got the opportunity, made a quick trip along with my friends.  That trip with my friends was a like bullet train ride for me. So, when another opportunity came in, I could not resist myself, and there you go...all set to leave. 

For me, I have always liked to visit the temples during the morning hours, not sure why?? Not sure, but always did.  That is one habit, which I still maintain. As usual, on a weekend, Nov 22, 2008, we started for this temple, and this visit is the most memorable one, as I lost my handbag. Neways, that is one part of the part, but it was the best one.  

On reaching the temple, we went in for darshan.  We did the 11 “pradakshinas” and said our prayers to the deity. It is believed that when you are making a wish, then you are supposed to do 11 pradakshinas. Once your wish is granted, then you have to visit the temple again and do 108 pradakshinas of the temple to show your gratitude and thank the God. As we did the pradakshinas, we heard the priest chanting mantras and guiding people.

As soon as we completed the pradakshinas, we took the prasadam and sat the outer area of the temple to enjoy the same.  While I was enjoying the prasadam, I met this uncle, who is a regular at this temple. Something got us talking and he asked me if I knew the story of the temple.  Since I shook my head in negative, he told me that the Chilkur Balaji temple is one of the oldest temples.  And then, uncle went on with the story. 

Chilkur deity. PC: haregovinda.com

The story goes that...

Once upon a time, there was Balaji devotee who used to visit Tirupati every year without fail to seek Lord's blessing, but unfortunately one particular year he could not visit Tirupati due ill health. He was upset about it. Then one night, Lord Venkateshwara appeared in his dreams and informed him that he should not worry so much as he was very close to his place. 

The devotee got up and immediately went to the place where the Lord was dwelling in the jungle. He started digging the place and by mistake the shovel hit the Lord's idol and blood started oozing out of the wounds. Seeing this the devotee was shocked and before he could react, he heard a voice that informed him to cover the place with cow's milk. 

As soon as cow's milk was poured, swayambhu idol of Lord Balaji accompanied by Sridevi and Bhoodevi was found and this idol was installed at the current location with due rites and temple was built was built.

There are many stories attached to the temple, but I really do not know many of them. For me, temples have been an epitome of peace, and beauty which I have always enjoyed. But off late, I have noticed that devotees who come to this beautiful temple do not bother about the other devotees. 

Yes, I do accept many of them come there as they have some or the other wish.  Either they are doing 11 pradakshinas and making a wish or doing 108 pradakshinas as their wish ahs been granted. 

But in doing so, they just run blindly without thinking and in turn hurting other devotees which is not good. I just hope that in future devotees will ensure safety of other devotees, which is supreme in the eyes of the Lord Balaji of Chilkur.

Trip to Warangal…. Abode of Kakatiyas

Continuing from my previous article, Bhongir...the brooding fort. Must be around 8:30 or 9 am, breakfast over and our cab on Warangal highway...The morning sun, pleasent and beautiful, and the day held the promise of making our trip a great one....

Our cab was loaded with muncies, fruits and I do not even remember what all was there...just to ensure that no one complained of being hungry. While some of us munched on, some dozed off, while many of us chattering like school kids who were on a school picnic. The drive to Warangal was great, and our first pit stop was 1000 Pillars Temple. Though now, you can see only few pillars, many of them have fallen. This entire temple is looks like chariot and has a temple for Lord Shiva, Vishnu, and Surya. The moment you enter the temple, on your left you can see a huge Shiva Lingam, very beautiful. The temple has beautifully carved pillars, roof, and walls, and slabs. It is unique and each carving seemed to far more complicated than the one we had finished viewing. This Archaeological Survey of India site, is trying to get few more beautifully carved pillars back to its original count. We got so engrossed in the carvings, that we forgot the time that just went by and suddenly, we felt that we all were hungry and badly needed to have a lunch. We decided the place called Ashoka or something, sorry am not sure about the name, we packed ourselves into the cab and off we went for lunch.

Lunch session over, now we all decided to see the Warangal Fort, for which we all so enthu about. We reached there in 15 minutes. While entering the fort, we went through the huge gates, Cor, from our US office was really amazed. He mentioned that he had been to many forts all over the Europe, but this was first fort where he had driven through a fort!! Though there is nothing like to be called as fort there, but the ruins of the fort has been kept. I was informed by a person there, that invaders destroyed the entire fort and whatever you can see is the only the ruins of majestic fort that was once there. This entire place has huge garden and we all sat down and had great time. We took our sweet time to view the broken pieces of the fort, but somehow I found it so interesting and I was totally engrossed. Each piece had a story to tell. If it could talk, then we would have heard the entire story of the fort. Next to this place, was an old temple, and down some rooftop kind of structure.

Kaktiyas built the Warangal fort during the 13th century. It is believed that though this fort is not not huge as Golconda fort, but it was impregnable. We saw that the there four beautifully carved gateways and can you guess we tried to analyse how they were built....While returning back from fort, we crossed the Khush Mahal, built by Shitabh Khan. Since we did not have much time, we could not stop over and see what was inside. We moved on to see Bhadrakali temple, situated on a hilltop between Hanamkonda and Warangal. The image of Goddess Kali is embedded in the stone and was beautiful. It is belived that once Goddess was fierce looking, but over a period of time has mellowed down. The temple is located at the banks of a lake and I do not know the name of the lake.

We finished all these places by 8:30 PM and by that time we all were dead tired. By the time we all reached it was half past midnight. Though tired, we had a great day and now we are planning for our next trip. You guys will see it soon....

Bhongir...The brooding fort

We, a group of colleagues and friends planned a trip to Warangal on 12th January 2008, and for this trip we checked all the minute details of the things that we may require. When the entire Hyderabad was sleeping to wake up for a lazy Saturday morning, we all (about 9 people) started for Warangal at 6:00 AM in the hired cab.

Though Bhongir fort was not a part of our agenda, but I do not know why we just decided to stop at this fort and check it out. I was very happy, as this fort has something alluring, which has fascinated me so much that time again and again I love to visit place.

Bhongir…the brooding 10th century fort at the height of 500 feet from ground level, spreads over an area of 40 acres and is about 51 Kms from Hyderabad. The western Chalukya ruler named Tribhuvanamalla Vikramaditya, built this fort on the top of a hillock at Bhuvangiri (now called as Bhongir). As someone aptly says… Forts made of rock never crumble away, and Bhongir happens to be a small rock fort perched on a massive dome of granite and was considered practically impregnable by invading armies. This 10th century fort has quite a history attached to it. The fort has been through Chalukiya, Kakatiyas, and then the Bahmani Sultans relinquish this fort. Qutab Shahi used this fort as prison for pretenders though it is an interesting fact that the British never paid attention to this fort, and finally by 18th century this fort was long forgotten. While climbing the steep hillock, we found that the fort’s unique egg-shaped construction, two entry points, one of which was used by us to enter the fort, and another one on the other side. The entry that we had used was close to the main road itself. While climbing through the rumbling fort, we noticed some in scriptures detailing the past life. We even noticed that the sculpture of the fort, was found different in many places, we could see the Chalukya, Kakityas, and even some places some stray sculpture.

From time to time we took a break during the trek up the hill and took our time to enjoy the nature at its best. The silence that broke with bird song, rising sun gave us a glimpse of nature that we city dwellers miss it quite often. During the climb, at some places we saw few steps embedded in the hilly terrain, but at most of the places these steps have eroded, or should we say that these steps were lost over the passage of time.

Once we reached the top, we found that the fort had a vast underground chamber, trap doors, an armory, stables, ponds, wells etc., and is surrounded by moats. These moats were used as reservoirs and if one looks around carefully, one can find that the rock has gashes, and these were used to channelize the rainwater to these moats. A brilliant idea to harvest the rainwater!!

In all we found two cannons lying around the fort, and each one of them was strategically placed. When we were at the top, we realized that this fort was built in a very strategic location and the huge rock itself made a well fortified fort.

Though the mansion was completely ruined, but the massive two stairways were still strong. While using the staircase, we found them to be amply narrow as well as steep to climb up to reach the terrace of the mansion. Immediate next to the ruined mansion we found some wireless antennas, probably belonging to the radar department of the state government. We spent sometime at the top, had some snacks. The view from the top was simply breathtaking….. can’t explain in language unless one visits.

After spending sometime, we started to climb down the hill. Once we were all down, we had breakfast and got back to our cab to move on with our trip to Warangal, leaving behind Bhongir fort, looming like grey, menacing and silent fort over the line of trains and traffic snaking past …

More about our Warangal trip in the “Trip to Warangal…. Abode of Kakatiyas….”

Calcutta - The City of Joy

Calcutta - aptly called as City of Joy, I could feel that joy when I visited the city sometime back. Even now, when I talk to my friends about Calcutta they tell me that it is an over-crowded place, with dirty streets. While my friends keep cribbing about the place, I keep wondering which city in our country so clean that they can vouch on.

Calcutta, the city has something in the air and I really get charged up. It is only city in our country, which has soul that compels you to think about it. A trip to Calcutta provides you a rich experience and the whole city overwhelms you. In Calcutta, you can find some very familiar names that resemble the names from the English country - England. You will find the names and architecture, old and the city has an over powering effect on you and you feel that you have stepped into some 17th or 18th century period.

In other words we can say that Calcutta still has the old world charm and we felt that we are watching a story from PG Woodhouse series. This is the one city in India, where people follow football as a religion as they would do for cricket. We still remember this incident that took place while we were eating in a small roadside restaurant. All of a sudden we found that the waiter who amidst of adding katchori to our plate, his hand stopped mid-way and we looked up to find him staring at the TV screen that was placed at one end of the corner of the room. In a spur of the moment the guy just put everything on our table and started clapping. We were surprised that all the local people in the room were doing the same. We realized what was going on and watched the TV for sometime and to our surprise local people were watching the highlights of the Women cricket match between India and New Zealand that took place long time back. Amazing…

It is a town, which moves on its own pace, in other words it is most laid-back city in the world. People have all the time in the world to explain. You may have asked a small doubt or for that matter a route to some place, and am sure will explain each and every road that you would cross to reach your destination. Even though it is laid-back city, but still you will find people up, walking, jogging, stretching and catching up with each other in a sprawling maiden – that too as early as 5 in the morning…

Our days in Calcutta started with a cuppa of chai served in the mud cups, aloo kachori, and top it all with gulab jamuns or rasogullas. We had hogged so much on the first day that we were thinking it would cost us a bomb, but it came as a pleasant surprise to us when we paid the bill for the breakfast. We found that everything in Calcutta cost so less.

As a traveler we enjoyed Calcutta in many ways. We could actually strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger and talk about …Politics, sports, religion, books, art, films, music, the news, food… just about everything under the sun is worth talking about for the Calcuttan. While talking to a Calcuttan, we found that they are passionate about everything that they discuss and we did have some heated arguments but these arguments never go out of hand.

We had plethora of places to see in Calcutta... Museums, galleries, heritage buildings, amusement parks, temples, churches, synagogues – there was something for every one of us in Calcutta. We went sightseeing and took the ferry across the Hoogly and while ferrying the Hoogly, my mind was playing the song - 'Oh Majhi Re' at the back of my mind.

We enjoyed Calcutta to the hilt; we had wide range of public transport facilities to get around the city. We avoided the local buses as they were quite crowded, but we used Metro extensively. We felt that our trip would not be complete if we did not travel in Metro and the Trams.

Trams reminded us of the bygone era of Raj, where people did not have to hurry around to reach their destination. The tram ride is worth each penny that you pay…and the feeling of tram ride is heady. Frankly speaking, I still feel that I did not enough of tram ride…. Tram adds character and charm to this city and I cannot dream of Calcutta without trams.

Calcutta is the only place in the world where we found all modes of transportation from cycle-rickshaw pulled by the rickshawallah on his foot to the ultra-modern metro station.

Calcutta - home for volatile poets, sensitive artists, and romantic men and women and it is city, where every house has a singer in making. Our friends in Calcutta ensured that we soak into their culture, and soaked we were in the arts, the alluring and intellectually crafted books and movies. In this place only we can find the spirits of Rabindranath Tagore, Uday Shankar, Jamini Roy and Satyajit Ray, to soak us all.

Apart from soaking us with their Bengal culture, we indulged our self with food. A visit to Calcutta is ever complete without indulging yourself with wide range of sweets and junk food. The range of sweets left us baffled. We just had to name the sweet and there it was for us to eat. We came to know that each town or district has a sweet for which it is famous for…rasgullas, mishti doi, sandesh and so many of them.

Though we did not have a chance to enjoy Durga Pooja, but we could imagine the city coming alive during that time. We could visualize Kolkatta decked as a new bride during the festive season – the doors decorated with bright red, yellow, and white flowers against the green mango leaves. The air renting up with the sounds of conch shells, excited sounds of people, and with the smell of camphor, vermilion, and aromas of dishes that would be cooked in the kitchen.

Back home our trip to Calcutta was envy of all our friends. I found that Calcutta is a city which is full of surprises, and I had the thrill of discovering new places, people, culture, and of course food…

Though we do not know when we would get a chance to go back to Calcutta and enjoy the old-world charm, but during this trip we knew why it was/is called City of Joy...