Saturday, February 13, 2010

~~Trip to Mystique Land-Day 7~~

Before KG's goes on describing his experiences at Bangkok I thought I would finish the Sikkim trip with the last episode which is pending quite sometime. Since it was about the final day and as I was busy(lazy) enough to write what I have been procrastinating this for a long time. Anyways its time to wrap it up. Day seven here it goes...

We got up past seven,woken up by the room boy giving bed tea, one of the luxuries which I will miss till my next vacation.With all things scattered around we dumped everything into our suitcases as quickly as possible. For breakfast we ordered momos,after having tasty momos the day before, our tongues detested the same momos which we liked two days before. After settling our bills with the hotel manager,he gave a wonderful farewell,a traditional one honouring us by tying a silk scarf around our necks.He wished KG to become the next Ambani of India and wished me to get married soon and come as a couple next time.

After the formalities we hired a taxi to the local Jeep station, since we had decided to take a shared jeep to Siliguri. The place was buzzing around with activity as soon as we landed there people began crowding us asking/demanding us to come in their jeeps. We choose a driver who said he will leave as soon as possible once we get in his jeep but after reaching his jeep we found that we were the first person to reach that place. After waiting for few minutes two other people joined us and off we started, picking up few people on the way. He said he is Gurka and the valued truth more than anything else.

On the way back there was a rafting competition organised by the Indian army and we could see people carrying the rafts all the way to the Teesta river. Given the speed at which our vehicle went I thought rafting downstream would be a much better way to reach our destination. When the jeep was turning at a bend we heard a DUDD sound and found one bag rolling across the road as if trying to commit suicide at Teesta river. It was KG's trolley which just missed the dive in the river, falling short by 10 feets. He had all his stuffs from his digicam to his mini laptop and we found everything was intact only beacuse of the speed with which we drove.

After the final back breaking journey which lasted around 5 hours we reached Siliguri. We were dropped at place we didn't have any idea about,the people there were asking to have lunch but we badly needed to go to airport some 10km from that place.Finally I found an auto stand asked them for a drop,we agreed to whatever charge he was demanding because we didn't have any alternative. Now I should say about the auto rickshaws there, if you want to see an assembled auto you can go to Siliguri, the auto we travelled was made by welding few metal pieces together fitting a 100cc engine in the middle.It has a removable seat which and can be used as a tempo when its not taking passengers. Their average speed will be around 10km/hour and when it travels a slope it can reach 20km/hr maximum. After an 60 mintues of slow & bumpy ride we finally reached the airport.

Bagdogra airport is one of the kind in India, a small airport with a restaurant giving a magnificent view of the runway. We can have lunch or sip a drink by watching aeroplanes taking off and landing. I had cheese sandwich and KG settled for fish finger appreciating the fact that Bengali's are the people who know to cook fish well.Once done with the lunch we went for the check in being a military airport and seeing KG's look the military guy checked and rechecked his hand luggage ,disappointed not having found anything he gave the bags to KG.

Once on board, seeing a guy sitting in the aisle,KG ran to take the window seat giving me the middle one.Once the flight took off KG asked whether we need to take the trouble of settling the accounts,as a matter of fact both of us didn't keep track of what we had spent over the week. Since I believed KG would have spent more than me I agreed not to bother about it ;). We paid 20 bucks each for the cup of coffee and it was somewhat better compared to the coffees I had over the week.Its treat to see Chennai at night from the skies,lights all around as far as your eyes can reach.We landed at Chennai airport just on time to send off Diana and Ganesh who were leaving to US the same night.

A great trip with sweet memories to cherish for a long long time!

2 comments:

KG said...

haha :)..if guys reading your blog are naughty like us, they'll immediately notice one slip-of-a-keyboard cheeky sentence but don't worry, they'll not :)

Sriram JP said...

got it ,not willing to change it though ;)