Weekend at Delhi and Chandigarh

Last week, I was off to Chandigarh for my friend, Garima's wedding on 7th. It was very do-able since it was on a Sunday and it would be a good weekend trip for me. On Friday, I took the August Kranti train to Nizamuddin (near Delhi) on which, unfortunately, my ticket was not confirmed. Since I have never travelled RAC, I was very confused on the language on my PNR status online. It said my seat was on coach RA4, which made me think RA4 was an actual coach number. But my ignorance was soon cleared after some googling. RA4 meant I had an RAC seat in coach A4. Ouch.

So I went to the station early to speak to the TTE and see if anything could be arranged to get me a confirmed ticket. Nope, he said. The train was full. So I travelled RAC. I had to share my berth with some guy. But time passed well coz we were 4 RAC people on 2 berths and we talked for some time until it got late and was time to sleep. I couldn't sleep with the guy so I arranged to sleep with a little girl named Muskaan. She was traveling with her father and he was kind enough to let me share sleeping space with her.

At 11:00 am, Saturday, at Nizamuddin station, my cousin Monica had sent a driver to pick me up. She's always doing these ultra nice things for me which i totally protest but she never listens. So I went to her place at Gurgaon and spent the rest of the morning and afternoon with my neices, Bhuvi and Diva, and Bhuvi's friends. Bhuvi just had her 11th birthday and was treating her friends on Saturday, and her mom, dad and little sis were gonna be chaperones. So I joined in to be with Monica.


The party was a lot of chitter chatter, which is obvious when you have so many 11 year olds. We went to Pizza Hut where we had a reservation. After half an hour of sitting there, only half the soups had arrived and Sandeep (Monica's husband) was steaming mad. We left Pizza hut as the garlic bread just made its way to our table. But we left and went to McDonalds instead. All the kids were so thrilled by this! And thanks to them, I tried the "shake the fires" thingy which is btw not better than regular fries.

So all this done, I sat and chatted with Monica, sandeep and his parents for an hour or so and then decided to finally leave. Monica had made the cab wait for me so I got a ride to Vasant Vihar where my other cousin Joy lives. I spent the night with them, and discovered that Joy's dad was a really good singer and is interested in learning to play music after he retires.


The next morning, I took a bus to Chandigarh from ISBT (or the bus adda in hindi). I did not take a Volvo, because I don't crave for comfort, and the semi-deluxe buses have reclining seats and all, except no AC. Which you don't need in winter up north anyways. Plus, the volvo's only leave every 2-3 hours whereas the semi-deluxe buses leave every half an hour and cost only Rs. 150. The bus usually takes 5 hours (+/- an hour) and I reached in 4.5 hours which was great. At 5:00, I was at Garima's house.


Garima wasn't home coz she was at the parlour, but she came back and obliged to pose for a typical garima picture.

The wedding began at 7:00 pm with the baraat and dinner first and the actual marriage ceremony started only at 12 am. In between the ceremony, the bride, groom and pandit are allowed 5 minutes breaks. Which is a good thing because by 4, it was still not over. Thats when I got really tired and took off to a glass room nearby, laid myself on the couch and slept with my shawl over me. I eventually woke up when the marriage was done and all I wanted to do was to sleep.

We left for Garima's place and then I realised that there was no place really for me to sleep in. I could've squeezed in with osme ppl, except that I didn't know them! So when I saw Garima sleeping in a single bed all by herself, i pushed her to one corner (and she didn't even realise this, and slept next to her. So technically, she spent suhaag raat with me! lol. She was supposed to leave for Nitin's house in the morning for the vidaai and I didn't even realise when she left coz I was fast asleep.

The next morning I had to wake up and take a bus to Delhi, but one of Garima's uncles was also leaving for there in his car and so I got a ride. By 5 pm, I was in Delhi and I had a 8 pm flight to catch. I whiled away my time at the airport and finally the flight left at 9:50 pm. It was so irritating coz I was supposed to reach Bombay at 10 but reached only by 12. Ughh.

Anyway, after that, I met Kashif who was really nice (and angry) to wait for me coz I wanted to have dinner with him that night (I thought I would reach Bombay by 10:30 max!). We went to Mirador, which is a good hotel with a reaaaally cheap coffee shop. It serves food at the prices of normal restaurants....not like the hotels charge. After going through some photographs and stories of the trip with Kashif, he dropped me home and I went off to sleep, to get up in time the next day for another day of regular life.

North Trip: Part I - Con Capital

People: Alpana, Kashif, Saurabh, Rajesh, Chandan, Vicky, Ashish.

Seven of us from Bombay were on their way to a 10-day vacation to the north of India. The itinerary was unplanned and ad-hoc. All we knew was that on the 23rd of December, we had to take a train to Delhi from where we would head towards Mussourie and the 28th and 29th would be spent in Jim Corbett National Park in Uttaranchal.

I guess this trip started out tiresomely – we had a 28 hr train ride from Bombay to Delhi. There are other trains that take only 16-17 hours, but we couldn’t get tickets for those trains, and since we were budget travelers, the Rajdhani at Rs. 1500 per ticket was out of bounds for us. We took the Nizamuddin Express which stops at 44 stations in between! We got on at Borivali at 8:15 am to find that there were already people sitting on our seats! Confused, we asked and found out that this train is always full with local travelers till Boisar and with so many of them, we couldn’t really start a fight. Even the Ticket Checker told us “Sirf ek ghanta ruk jaao, yeh log utar jaayenge.” (Just wait an hour, these guys will get off)!! So we stood till Boisar, making sure that the guys taking our seats would have no peace of mind. We shouted and screamed and sang stupid songs and gave maa-behen ki gaalis to each other and till Boisar it really did seem like we were the rudest people alive. But what the hell, we were “bonafide passengers”!

We reached New Delhi in the afternoon to see a really bad looking station. Immediately, we hunted around for a hotel to stay the night and travel agent who would rent us a vehicle for the rest of the days up north. We got a hotel in a really sidey location call Hotel Klick, very close to the station. Cows, dogs and dung had to be passed to get there. Electric wires hung from the top of the streets like confetti during a party celebration! Some of them were so close to the top of some of my friends’ heads, it wasn’t funny! Anyways, Klick itself looked like a good hotel, but when we asked for towels, they said the laundry hadn’t come yet and when we asked for food, they said the cooking gas is over!

People: Alpana, Kashif, Saurabh, Rajesh, Chandan, Vicky, Ashish + Manish

Manish arrived later in the afternoon by flight and came directly to the hotel.

Information:
A ride from the airport to New Delhi station costs Rs. 100 by auto-rickshaw (they will generally quote you a higher price, but you mustn’t settle for anything higher that this). In Delhi, a rickshaw is different from an auto-rickshaw. The former is pulled by a man with a cycle whereas the latter runs on fuel. I cite this difference because in Bombay, we only have auto-rickshaws and so when we say simply rickshaw, it doesn’t involve any manual labor.

We called people we knew in Delhi and asked them what we could do for the evening. Chandni Chowk was said to be a must-see place and so off we went to the Metro station to reach there. I must say that the metro stations are so well done. Clean, with clear directions and security guards doing their jobs. Though I noticed one thing that in two different places in Delhi – one in the metro and one in a mall – there was no female security guard and therefore I wasn’t frisked. Quite a stupid security system, I must say! But once out of the underground metro, we got off to a place with minimal lights and almost no women. Delhi really seems scary for the ladies living there. Also, no auto-rickshaws run on the meter although they have completely state-of-the-art meters compared to the ones in Bombay! We crossed some really dingy roads to reach a Muslim food joint with absolutely awesome and cheap food. I ate this sweet bread – almost like a naan – called shirmal, recommended by my fellow foodie, Kashif. Stomach filled, we started looking for a vehicle to rent. And this is where our ordeal began.

We were negotiating prices with one fellow at the Red Fort area, which is where all the travel agents set shop in one big line that probably spans a kilometer. The deal is that a commercial car from Delhi must pay tax when it crosses the Uttar Pradesh or Uttaranchal border. For our travels, we would need to cross them both. Now each commercial vehicle can either pay these taxes on a quarterly or daily basis. However, if we hired a private vehicle (one with the white background and black numbers on the number plate, unlike the yellow background on the commercial vehicles’ plates), we could tell the cops on the way that the car was our own and we would not have to pay taxes. However, this can be a little risky and most private cars don’t have luggage carriers on the top which was essential for us. So we settled a deal for a Qualis for Rs. 7.5 per kilometer + Rs. 100 per day to the driver with a minimum payment for 200 km/day of driving. When we were just about to seal the deal, the guy suddenly did a volte-face and insisted that we had agreed on 250 km/day. Not only had we kept on saying that we wanted 200 km/day, this straight lie to our face was something we are not used to dealing with. I and this gang of friends of mine have been going out regularly for the last 5 years. We’ve traveled to Goa, Chandigarh, Shimla, Manali, Bangalore, Mysore, and trips to Manori, Lonavala, Pune, Matheran or Mahabaleshwar are almost monthly affairs. But we have never been lied to straight to our faces during any negotiation like this!

So we went to another travel agent, Mr. Khanna, who agreed to give us the specifications we wanted. While talking to him, the first guy came to his shop and started telling us to come back to him and that he would give us the car. Mr. Khanna, a much older person than the former, asked him to do his business in his own shop and not inside Khanna’s premises and there were a few abuses hurled at both directions. We found Khanna to be slightly nicer as a person and so we okayed the deal with him. Khanna took our numbers including a landline number for security and we went back to Hotel Klick for a good night’s sleep. Little did we know what was about to happen.

We were expecting the car at 6 am the next morning. Being completely bad at managing time, we all eventually woke up by 9. Seeing that the car was not there yet, we went out for breakfast. But at 11, when the car was still not there, we called Khanna who said that the vehicle he was expecting to come at 4 am had still not arrived and that he was trying to get another one for us. By 12, he got us a private Qualis without a carrier. Seeing no more options, we stuffed our entire luggage at the back and fit ourselves as we could. It was going to be one long journey. And to top it off, Khanna told me that he had called up at my home to do a background check and had spoken to my mom! Immediately, I called mom and let her know everything was fine and not to be worried about the call from a stranger asking questions about me. I was really pissed!

Information:
Mr. Khanna
9872177549, 9814194611

Satguru Travels
Shop No 1, Behind Bus Stand
Court Road, Near D.E.O. Office
Gurdaspur (Punjab)

Deep Travels
Shaheed Bhagat Singh Lane
Opp. Ramlila Ground
Batala

No Delhi address on his business card.
I strongly recommend you do not use this man’s services, though I’m not sure any other travel agent in and around the Red Fort area will be any better or less of a cheat.

We left the Qualis, filled the tank with fuel and when we were just reaching the outskirts of Delhi, the driver asked us, “Kitne din ka trip hai?” (How many days is this trip for?). When we said 8, the car was immediately turned around to go back to Red Fort with the driver astounded. He had been told only 4 days and the car was not free for 8. We had been fooled again. Khanna probably was buying time for another car that was free for 8 days and when we reached his shop he apologized and gave us a commercial Tavera after half an hour of waiting. At least this had a carrier, we thought. All taxes at the state borders were taken care of, said Khanna and we didn’t have to worry about anything except paying fuel costs till we came back to Delhi and made the final payment.

So we left again until we reached the UP border where our driver, Joginder, told us we would have to pay tax for the vehicle! Now this was getting too much. The worst thing was that nobody was giving us one figure for the taxes to be paid. The internet was not too helpful either. We couldn’t find one site that gave us any information on the road tax for commercial vehicles at the UP and Uttaranchal borders. At this point, though, I must say that the Reliance wireless card was a big help all the way whenever we needed help with maps, train information, or simply to find information when we were debating on the road!

Information:
For all commercial vehicles not from UP or Uttaranchal, a tax of Rs. 400 has to be paid for a day when crossing the UP state border. So for example, if you enter UP at 7 pm, you pay Rs. 400 as long as you cross UP till 12 midnight. If you cross later than that, you have to pay an additional amount of Rs. 400 for the second day the vehicle has spent in UP. For Uttaranchal, an amount of Rs. 2000 is levied on fixed quarterly periods of January to March, April to June, July to September and October to December. So if you pay the tax on 25th December like we did, it is only valid until 31st December, as from January starts a new period. I don’t know who comes up with such crappy systems, but the government sure is looting people. Especially because, if you want to travel from Delhi to Uttaranchal, you have to cross UP (there is a 4 hour road) and thus the UP tax has to be paid even though you never wished to do anything there.

And there we were, fighting with Jogi, calling up Khanna and fighting with him as well. Khanna eventually said he’ll be there at the state border to sort things out with us, but 1 hour later arrived a third vehicle, this time another private Qualis without a carrier! The driver got off and said that Khanna had sent this car which was private and therefore needed no taxes to be paid. Now we were really angry and decided that we are not going to reset our luggage once more and that enough was enough! We contemplated a police case, going back to Red Fort and getting another travel agent, but eventually called up Khanna and told him that we were taking the Tavera, would pay all taxes on the way, but at the time of final payment, would deduct the taxes we paid and pay the remaining amount. We had the car with us, we were 8 angry young people against 2 drivers, there was nothing they could do and so we finally left Delhi at 6 pm on the 25th. The whole of Christmas wasted, we abused the city for the lack of any business or ethical sense and made our way through the border, finally leaving the con capital of our country.