A trip, i'd like to remember!

No, not Nanitaal…actually, so not that place. Being there was like using a used bed sheet. May be wrong time of the year or something, plus places didnt look fresh. Damp and dirty all the way. Whatever it was, uneasiness had entered the equation. Outskirts were awe-inspiring. U couldnt pass the sights without registering how much the view fitted descriptions of ideal beautiful places.

Anyways, go lower on altitude…u slide into Jim Corbette National Park through Kalidungi and then Ramnagar and voila…Car wheels effortlessly slither towards this destination. No signboard’s required to sense that the silence around you got profounder, disturbing. And no surprises if your car is running parallel to horses, deer or if you spot elephants here n there …but we all know that we are waiting and not waiting at the time …..for… yes, u got that right…tiger! Staying in a guest house there was more amazing than words can communicate. Clean, clean, euro clean air, mountains, huts, broiler in the garden for warming water, faultless rooms, and outside the trees were laden with ripe fruits, purity in every bit of nature, the old caretaker... What a well put together man, wow!, his wife and his kids, perfection to the core in the complete picture. They said that the place had healing properties. Folks with sickness got hale n hearty without popping in one pill. Great!


The other side of my trip….

I am one of those who likes the idea of traveling but actualizing travel plans tire me. Obviously the end result is no travel and a lot TV watching, frequenting channels like travel n living, discovery etc, and that’s how, seeing places I rarely talk about and never visit. This time in mid June, opting out of a family excursion was not an option Destination was Haridwar, a place we never reached because of rains. We thought of heading towards Nainitaal instead. From Delhi to Ghaziabad, from Ghaziabad to Moradabad and thereon taking road to Nainitaal, that was the route we were supposed to take. Starting at 1 pm , we had not made it to Moradabad till 7 in the evening, a place just 158 kms away from the capital. This appalling delay was the result of a mad traffic and jams that we came across on our way. Covering 1 km was taking more than half an hour. We came across a never ending queue of trucks loaded with vegetables and fruits on a ridiculously thin highway. Those trucks didn’t seem like vehicles, they looked like houses and as if drivers were there to stay, brushing teeth and having food and then leisurely walking up to their trucks, moving it an inch forward and joining back their roadside gang. There were trucks near railway crossing that had put their ignitions on because if they didn’t move in time, the crossing may close again. I thought, if this is the kind of time it takes to carry agricultural produce from one place to another, it is most unfeasible because they rot by the delay. And the slim highways and atrocious traffic conditions would ensure that there is delay. Today, when the oil price has unleashed hell, considering the amount of oil these trucks burn or more appropriately waste stuck in jams, is criminal. I thanked my trip that it let me see how pathetic transportation conditions are in our country. As if its veins and arteries are clogged. We don’t have certain resources and we waste the resources we have. Last 2-3 years country was brimming with foreign funds, government let rupee appreciate, suffocated its exports, why didn’t it build highways that looked like Highway not some dusty alley? Huge investments in infrastructure could have at least partially put multipliers effect into motion, growth could have improved and there would have been substantial and visible change on ground. Government let the huge foreign funds rot, paid interests on it, just the way it lets a farmer’s year long toil rot in Lorries and trucks. Our country looks as primitive as it looked years before. Government changes every five years but governance remains the same. India is beautiful in some narrow patches not because anyone is doing anything about it but because nobody is doing nothing to such places. The day people go there, they will make those pristine places look dirty too and full of dirty smells. I don’t exactly figure what good or great happened to Indian Economy in last few years if our country continues to look haggard and unclean. Its better I watch fun places on TV. Coming face to face with my nations worn-out looks saddens me somewhat.