Pune June-3 and 4

 These are the two last days of this entire road trip…Dadu is highly excited to go there! So am I as I can see my pet cat Mini once again!

 

On the next morning, we left to see the famous crater lake of Lonar and then to Pune. The lake at lonar was fabulous and awesome the crater is almost 1/2 km in diameter! Almost 200ft in height! Imagine the impact which must have happened when that asteroid must have come and hit the surface of the earth. Even foreign scientists are showing interest in this phenomenon.
After this we reached Pune at almost 5:00 in the afternoon.

 

The crater lake at Lonar

 

Daityasudan temple at Lonar

 

Manali and The gigantic dam of Bhakkra!!! May 21st – May 23rd

May-21 : Right this is second day in Solang nala. It is around 18 Km from Manali and really beautiful with a beautiful river and forest.
I thought that this would be a quiet day. But, accidentally we saw a board mentioning zorbing in the meadows near the river. I knew about this sport of zorbing. It originated in New- Zealand. In it, we are enclosed in air filled ball, and let down rolling down the hill. I and Dadu went inside one & rolled down. A fabulous experience, believe me! In it for one second I would see Debu upward and at the next moment below me! At the end, I had landed upside on the side of the zorb, which was facing the ground!
We also went for skiing but there was a huge traffic jam leading up to Rohtang and we tried it on a patch of rough snow.I didn’t enjoy it.At the evening, we went and had trout fish at a restaurant called the Johnson’s restaurant and bar. Had a wonderful game of Foosball and I ate some veg pasta.

Beas river

View of Friendship peak from our hotel

A cute house in the middle of nowhere

Mom and Dad gobbling Trout

May 22-23 : From Manali we went to Swarghat. A highly uninteresting journey, we finally reached the place. There after few hours of resting, we left to see the nainadevi temple and the famous Bhakkra dam. At the temple, we boarded a ropeway to go to the top of the mountain, where the temple is placed. I enjoyed it a lot! I was feeling a bit sad for Siddhu because he and Chetan Dada had stayed at the hotel to watch TV. Then we went to see the grand Bhakkra dam. A wonderous experience really. As you know this dam is simply gigantic!!!

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

 

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

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 .

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

 

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

 

All The Way to Aurangabad

Our trip began today that is at the date of 29th April .We left Pune at 9:00 clock in the morning and left for Aurangabad on the highway. On or way , we utilised one of hour of our time to see the famous potholes of the river Godh . The river literally has sculpted evenly shaped pothole, in the hard bedrock , it was a wondrous sight to see the beautifully coloured stones as we were walking . The journey had been very much eventful. At the restaurant we ate our food (Hotel SmileStone), we saw pet Emu. The bird is found in Australia, but in India it is sold for free because its excretions are very useful. Their cages were big and they seemed very happy being there

We met some relatives in evening and then went to see “Bibi Ka Makbara” in night. It is also known as Taj of Deccan. We could not click many pictures as it was night and tripods were not allowed

Stopping for lunch at SmileStone










Light and shadows at Bibi Ka Makbara