Δt, Small Things & Its Different.: December 2013

Do you like travelling in trains, especially in India ?
I do love to... !

Sometimes, its a good experience, sometimes it beyond worst. But every time u will have something, its kind of a package of experience. When u travel through different states u can see the diverse India.

The Konkan is a beautiful rail route.The Dudhsagar waterfalls and the station nearby is the only of its kind. You will meet people of different regions, languages...you make short friendships, sometimes long, and of course even life long.

You get to eat different food, this is my favourite. Even though, now the pantry services has degraded and has become something that u can't depend on, you will get some good food at the stations.The Paragon chain of restaurants, which opened an outlet at Calicut station, Kerala where is get "ek dum WOW, Malabari Biriyani" is an example. The Big Vada and sambar that u get at Goa is yet another.

At times we have to stay without food and water. Once when I was coming from Allahabad, back to Kerala it was 1 whole day without food and water. There were no big stations and I then understood why people brought big big earthern pots of water and bags full of food.

You can also see a variety of things while u are on a train.

You can see beautiful sunrise as well as colorful evenings, the paddy fields, sugarcane,sunflower,cotton and a whole lot.My longest trip was to Gorakhpur towards the north eastern part, with my family. You can see many many things that was there in your geography & history books years back.

I was so proud, when I came to know recently Cummins powered the Janshadabdi's that we have. And a big similarity between the great engine maker and Indian trains is "DIVERSITY".

Do share your Train experiences.It might be a small one. But small things can lead to a big change, is my belief. After all that is what Δt means..

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date of Journey : 7&8 December 2013

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I started my journey from Viman Nagar, Pune at 5.30 am, accompanied by 6 friends. We had arranged a taxi which was a 'trevera'. We were 6 Malayalees, 1 Tamil & the driver was Marathi.

Travel Route

The road to Aurangabad was excellent. We were at high speeds and in half sleep, except for the diver. At about 7.30 am we stopped for a break, in the highway. The morning was too cold. We had a cup of tea from a roadside chaayawaala. The hot tea turned to be an iced tea within seconds...

Ramu, my room-mate took out his new baby, the Canon DSLR and started clicking... ! The Sun was on his routine path,bright orange. We moved ahead, with Malayalam songs which I believe would have irritated the driver.But he had to

bear with us. By about 9.30 am we reached Aurangabad and took the road to Ellora Caves. I had gone to Aurangabad before, during my industrial visits. I knew the city, and its habits somewhat. Getting breakfast was not easy at that time. So I told my gang to stop at the first tea stall and have something. My prediction didn't go wrong. None of the hotels were open at that time. Its too early for the people there, rather its their last few hours of sound sleep.

We managed to find a small tea stall. Ate vada pav, bread bajji and samosas. The driver then asked us, "whether we are going to 'Verul' ? ". This actually confused us. We had told him to go to Ellora, and now he is asking some other place. The boy at the tea stall shouted that, "dono ek hi hai bhaiyya "... the actual place name is Verul & Ellora is a small village there. So guys be informed.

Ellora is 20 km from Aurangabad. On the way you can see the Daulatabad Fort. It is also a place to visit. But you will need one whole day to climb the hill and come back. Since we had planned our journey, we skipped the fort. When we were nearing the Ellora caves, we could see, on both the sides of road, people selling guavas. It was deep red in color and were attracting us. No one among us had seen such deep colored guavas.

Shortly we reached the caves.There was ticket for the entry and vehicle. Since natives we had to pay less. Foreigners have to pay higher amount. I noticed some state transport buses there.So if anyone wants to try it, its possible.Take a bus to Verul.

The caves were magnificent. There were lot of monkeys there. They would remind you of the Hanuman in our epic. Those were build before Christ. You will wonder how people cut such huge rocks during those times, when the JCB (excavator) was not even born.

The architecture and sculptures will take you to the ancient times. The caves had a theme of Hinduism, Buddhism etc.. You can see many shiv-lings inside the caves.The whole caves is 4km wide. It was not a single cave, but a series of them. You can take an auto service if u hate walking.They will charge you 400 Rupees. We chose to walk, as we were young blood.

By then Ramu, our photographer had started capturing the stones. We had a fun filled man with us, 'swami', we call him, who made this journey fun filled. He would narrate the story of each stone he saw there, which he himself was not sure of. But I believe, there must be someone like him in every tour, who makes it even more memorable. We saw the waterfalls in th caves. It was picturesque.

We had lunch from the Ellora canteen. Vegetarian Thali meals. It was good. Even the Europeans were enjoying the same.There we met a priest, Father Babu, a philanthropist, who turned out to be a Malayalee. It was also surprising that he stayed in the same area where we stayed in Pune. After lunch, we went to cover the other side of the caves.

The Father had suggested a place to visit, which was about 40km away from Aurangabad. It was called "Paithan" a garden and dam. After finishing the caves, we planned to go there.On the way back, we stopped near one guava seller. We realized that the deep red color of those guavas were just red paint, to attract people. All of us, the heavily ranked engineers, fell for this "Village Marketing strategy" . though we enjoyed the fruit...!

The road to Paithan was not good. It was narrow & broken. We reached there at dusk. Finding the dam was a little difficult, as lot of development works were going on there and proper sign boards were not installed.

Finally when the sun was about to sink, we found the dam. Went on top of it... The beautiful dam with the orange sun & dark blue waters.

You could see all the colors in the world, on the sky. We really enjoyed the scene. Took a lot of photos from there.By then It was dark. We went to the garden, saw the musical fountain. The music was an old Hindi song. It took us a few decades back. Some of us didn't like it though. After that we started back to Aurangabad. I had a friend there and he arranged for our stay. Its better to stay in Aurangabad while going to Ellora. We had a light dinner. The stay was at Sahyadri Hotel. It was a good room, and we had a comfortable stay.

The next day we started to Shirdhi "Sai temple" at 4.30 am. The road was terrible. It was foggy at some areas and we had to move slow. I was the one giving company to the driver, talking with him with my little knowledge in Marathi & Hindi. All the other fellows were deep in their sleep. I felt a little horrified when we traveled through the fog. You cant even see what is just ahead.A little spooky also.

We reached shirdhi at 8.30 am, it was a long queue then itself. But we were moving faster in it. No electronic gadgets were allowed in the Sai temple. Everything was well arranged for the devotees. elderly people had a separate entry. We walked through the long zig zag passages.

On the way inside the temple, packets of laddo were kept. It was free for all. I was surprised at this. i believe there is no where else we can get such big laddoos for free...!

I could take only one packet. Swami took two of them. It was early morning and we were all hungry. The two big laddoos were looking at me.

We went inside the shrine. A beautiful idol of Sree Satya Sai Baba. The white idol with garlands was so serene. My grandmother is a Sai devotee and she used to come here. its my habit to relate things and places I visit to people I know. I feel their presence there or in it.

Then we visited other smaller shrines in the temple. I was looking for, something my father told me is special of Shirdhi, "The Vibhooti". My father has travelled to a lot of temples and he knows much of the stuffs.

But I couldn't see anything in that name in the temple premises. Then I saw a long queue with a board "Udi distribution center". I assumed that this would be it, and stood in the same. Yes..! It was for Vibhoothi, and the person in the cage was giving it in sachets, one per person. I thought I could get plenty. Then I realized that, something you get in plenty is not Special. I have kept it for my grandma, she would be happy with it. What I believe is this powder has the power to cure all diseases. Sai Baba used to do wonders with it.

We then came out of the Temple, had South Indian breakfast from an "Udupi restaurant", did some small shopping and started back to Pune. We then wanted to get home at the earliest. The driver was very cooperative and friendly. He knew us, and he was really fast in taking us back.

On the way, at Ranjangaon he stopped and told that there is a famous "Ganesh Temple, and we must visit there. It was an "asta-ganapathy temple". We all went there. A beautiful little Ganapathy. By the way, Ganapathy is my favourite God. I then saw the board showing "Anna Daan" and I wanted to go for that. But was worried whether my friends would like it. Suddenly, swami suggested that we have food from here. I felt happy as if God granted my wish. We had our luch from the temple, the holy food, I would say. It was simple and grand. I used to have it with my family from Kolloor, yet another temple in Karnataka.

The below pictures are wall-paintings from the temple, which tells the whole story of the temple.

There are 7 more temples in Maharastra, which has the other 7 of the asta ganapathy (asta in sanskrit means eight)

After that we bought some fruits from temple-side and left to Pune. I slept till halfway and woke up when we got up in the traffic. I knew we entered back in the city. We all came back safely.

We traveled in total 850 km. If you go in a tourist taxi, it would cost you around Rs.7500 ,just for the travel. A single room in Aurangabad will be around Rs.1000.