Sunday, May 11, 2008

The City of gardens (Chandigarh) 10th May

Hi pals! How are you? It’s been great with us until now.

We left Delhi this morning…
And left for the magnificent city of Chandigarh. As the roads of the entire city are almost grid like, it had been easy for us to navigate in this massive city…

We visited the famous rock gardens. Although, the landscape of the entire structure is great, many of the sculptures were broken and had been removed. There are some big groups of sculptures, which without any reason appeal to the eyes.
You too will trust me, once you see the pictures... ... ...

Animals in rock garden


People in rock garden
 



Saturday, May 10, 2008

Into the Capital(Delhi) 10th May

Hi Guys, this is the second day in Delhi. I couldn’t write this post yesterday, because of an extremely long and tiring trip all the way from Shivpuri to Delhi. Even in Delhi, the hotel which we had booked came out to be very rugged & and in a very narrow and crowded gully….

Thanks to Gauri tai’s (Chetan Dada’s wife’s)sister, we were able to obtain a room in a DLF guesthouse.

There was not much happenings in these two days. All did, was visiting a giant of a mall. In this mall, I bought a pair of shades. In this mall, I did a very peculiar form of Bunji-Jumping .In this one, two ropes were tied to me and I was supposed to jump on a trampoline. As I did so, the ropes attached to me start getting small and smaller. Thus resulting me to jump higher and higher each time. I believe I had reached almost 25-30ft!!! well tomorrow we shall progress to the magnificent(and hot ) city of Chandigarh…just checkout my
shades…..




So no photos from me untill 3:00 in 11th of May.

The Magnificiant Taj (may 8th)

As you may have observed,I have from this blog onwards, started telling the date of post on which it was written(supposed to be written).This is for the convenience of all the viewers
Into Agra, aren’t we? Just besides the glorious Taj Mahal
Today morning, we went to visit the Taj. It is not at all an exaggeration by calling it a poem in monument, or a संगमरमर का स्वप्न.

There is nothing as beautiful and majestic than the Taj. In it, there are certain glowing stones, and a beautiful inlay work is done inside it. As we are not allowed to take photos in it, we
Were not able to capture its true beauty…

Still just checkout the photos


Buland Darwaza at Fatehpur Sikri



Tajmahal



Tajmahal (The scaffoldings are being used for cleaning)
 

Gwalior...And Papas old home

We drove to Agra via Gwalior. We spent around 3 hours seeing the Gwalior fort. It is a nice fort with a very interesting palace. This palace was built around 500 years back by Mansingh and had been occupied by various different kingdoms since then.

Since we had such a nice experience with MP Tourism hotels, we decided to stay at UP Tourism hotel in Agra. We checked in to Taj Khema. It is within 500 meters of East gate of Tajmahal and offered a view of Taj that is probably better than what you will see from inside the Taj campus. We were somewhat late so we could not go inside Taj today. We decided to visit the house where papa had stayed for around 4 years till 1976. This is right next to the southern gate of Taj. Though My father did not have the courage to disturb the current occupants of that house but my mother knocked at their door and told them that we had come to see the house. To our surprise, the current occupants of the house really welcomed us and treated us to nice Pethas. They wanted us to stay with them and not in any hotel!!



Mansingh’s palace at Gwalior fort





Sahastrabahu temple at Gwalior fort


















Inside the temple

The deers of Shivpuri






This is one of the posts, which I loved the most, for it comes in my field...

The national park of Shivpuri is known for the variety of the dears found in here. Spotting them in such a dense forest, with their beautifully camouflaged coat is not by any way simple.
Thus, in the photos which I have taken for this post, are genuinely hard-earned. The types of dears we saw in the jungle were the Chinkara(Indian Gazelle) ,Neelgai (Blue Bull),Chittal ( Spotted dear),Sambar
I have included one-one photo of each
.


A Neelgai and a cleaner bird interacting


A Beutiful Chital


A Sambhar



A Chinkara (photo by Papa)

 

Ujjain to Shivpuri National Forest, May-5

We had decided to start really early since the drive today was close to 350 Km. We had planned to start by 6:30 AM and we were more or less on time (7:30 AM) when we left Ujjain. This stretch of NH-3 is just wide enough to allow 2 trucks to pass but fortunately the road surface was good in most part and the traffic was sparse. In fact whole of our drive through MP has been through very sparsely populated area where you will not even see a hut for miles. We reached Shivpuri by 3:00 PM and checked into the resort (Tourist Village). We were the only 2 families in the resort.

We mainly relaxed for rest of the day though .I and Papa went for a walk in evening. I was very excited to see peahens flying high for the first time as two of them flew to rest on a 50 feet high tree.


Start of our long drive to Shivpuri.

 

Favorite adventure sport for people in MP.


Both the photos have been shot from running car and hence the bad quality .

From Mandu to Ujjain

A drive of around 140 Km took us to the town of Ujjain. This brought up 1000 Km of our trip. We decided to take a halt here for two reasons. The Mahakal temple here is another of the 12 Jyotirlinga and it also breaks the long drive from Mandu to Madhav National Park (Shivpuri) into two days. On the way to Ujjain, we took a lunch halt at Indore. We saw the Kanch Mahal at Indore. It is a Jain temple the insides of which are built totally of different type of mirrors. Even the floor is mirror. There is a lot of intricate work on those mirrors. Unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the temple. Today I had my first meal on this trip that was not that enjoyable. But the Lassi on the highway more than made up for this. BTW, Lassi has become a big part of our breakfast, lunch and dinner!

We probably spent more time locating our hotel in Ujjain than we took in driving from Indore to Ujjain. Fortunately the weather here is cooler than it was in Aurangabad. We decided to walk the 4 Km to temple instead of driving. We have been having too much good food (Dhaba for lunch and at our hotels in night) and all of us are worried that we will be at least 80 Kg by the time we return to Pune.



Fossils park at Mandu. It is in real bad shape and is probably a fossil itself



Baobab (not sure of spelling) tree that Alauddin Khilji got from South Africa




This is just a sword which I found pretty beautiful as it gives a feeling of power

Friday, May 9, 2008

Mandu

I developed some sort of stomach infection and was vomiting. So the two families decided to roam around Mandu fort (supposedly the world’s largest fort city with an area of 40 Sq Km) in two different batches making sure that i wasn't left alone in the hotel. The burn on my father's calf (he burnt himself by the silencer of his bullet on the weekend before we started) started hurting a lot. The doctor(?) in a small shop in the fort diagnosed that the wound was developing infection and asked him to start antibiotics. He also advised him to buy Hydrogen Peroxide and some ointment and asked him to clean the wound daily and do a fresh bandage.

Mandu is very beautiful with a lot of history and natural beauty. It has monuments starting from eighth century (King Bhoj) to British time. Rani Roopmati Mahal, Baz Bahadur Mahal, Jama Masjid and Jahaj Mahal are really good.


We are settling in to a nice rhythm. We have been living in hotels of state tourism board. When you are about to leave one place, you can talk to your current hotel and book rooms in the hotel at your next destination!


baracks at rani rupwati mahal

 
Top of Rani Rupmati Mahal

 

Jahaj महल
 

Omm Namah Shivay

ऊँ नामेह शिवाय


May-2 (Day 4)
Omkareshwar temple is on a huge island in Narmada river. The island is many Kilometers in perimeter and had a fairly big hill on it. We took a boat ride around the island. The highlight of the ride was that the route goes through several rapids (not very rough though) and it was an interesting experience to go through the rapids in a boat as against a raft. The boat had to be pushed up a couple of rapids on the return leg.

Drove from Omkareshwar to hill fort of Mandu (also known as Mandav) in the evening. The road till Maheshwar was really bad. The original road was closed for around 40 Km stretch and we had to ride on the sides that was being leveled for road widening.

Maheshwar has beautiful ghats (the riverside variety and not the hill road) built at the time of Ahilyabai Holkar. The temple is also very beautiful with carvings that are still fully intact after so many years. The locals there showed us the place where some scenes for film Ashoka were shot.

The ghat (this time the hill road) from Dhamnod were broken, narrow and full of heavy trucks. In all it made for interesting driving experience. On an impulse, my father gave lift to someone who looked like a farmer and he gave us interesting information about the place as drove. The MP Tourism resort (Malwa Retreat) at Mandu made up for all the bad roads.


On the way to Omkareshwar
 
Omkareshwar
 
 
Divers at Maheshwar
 

Monday, May 5, 2008

welcome to Ajanta......

Spent first half of the day seeing Ajanta caves. The caves are in much better state than we had expected. They are cleaner, have LED lighting that does not fade the painting and even have ventilation systems installed. It is not possible to touch the walls and paintings anymore which is helping to keep them safe from vandalizing.

Drove in the afternoon from Ajanta to Omkareshwar in MP. It is another of the 12 Jyotrilings. We went for Darshan in night itself so that we are free the next morning. We stayed at MP Tourism’s Narmada Resort.




Ajanta Retreat resort (that's my brother)





Cave pantings in ajanta
 

The Grand Ellora

Started for Ghrushneshwar temple late in the morning. It is one of the 12 Jyotrilingas. After this we went to Ellora caves which are just 1 km away. We spent most of our time in Kailash temple there. It is the world’s largest monument carved out of a single rock. It is some 200 feet tall, 300 feet deep and 200+ feet wide. It took 300 years to sculpt the temple and I wonder how the vision of the temple was passed from one generation to another. It is difficult to believe that the whole temple was carved out and not built stone by stone!!

Checked in to MTDC resort (Ajanta Retreat) next to Ajanta caves.


Kailash temple at Ellora.








resting in shadow in Ellora