An Adventure...

Bombay-Delhi-Bareilly-Farmhouse-Rampur-Corbett National Park-Rampur-Bareilly-Delhi-Jammu-Katra-Vaishnodevi-Katra-Jammu-Delhi-Bombay….
Its been an incredible 12 days…
temperatures as low as 2 degrees Celsius…
flights-trains-cars-open jeeps-elephant-metro-pony…
its been a journey of a lifetime… So many new experiences… so many learnings…

Bareilly-Farm(my nani’s home- summer holidays – the place in my mind where adventures began – memories of my nana – the bond with my mamas – the start of all things wild)
- Introducing someone you love to the people you’ve known all your life is so special… and when they accept him, it’s a simply wonderful feeling
- Its strange how even when you meet family after many years, you can still feel the same connection and the same warmth… it’s a bond unlike others…
- When a kid opens up their arms for you, it’s the best welcome you can ever get…
- Roasted potatoes and home made green chatni from your very own family farm… vodka with grape juice.. while you soak in the sun can be the best way to relax…
- to sit by a bonfire and what the flames dance over the logs of wood can be tantalizing… I could have sat there silently all night…
- To see how on one plot of land you can grow everything you ever need was such an eye opener… its such a sense of self sufficiency…
- To see vegetables as babies is really something… have you every seen baby cauliflowers? Adorable : )
- Have you ever seen over grown cauliflower? Simply stunning… each of the flowers actually grow long stems and open up into pretty white flowers…
- To look around you and just see farm land with sugar cane, cabbage, cauliflower, wheat, rice, capsicum, peas, tomato, brinjal, mangoes, guava…
- The taste of roasted burnt potatoes that you dug out yourself
- To eat pastries that cost Rs7 and taste just as good as when you used to buy them as a kid for Rs.2!!
- felt right at home when nothing ‘silly’ that I said raised an eyebrow… its was the norm there…
- reconnecting with people who I admire and love… seeing them in a different light…

Corbett National Park
















- 110 species of trees, 51 scrubs, 27 climbers, 37 grasses and bamboos, 50 species of mammals, more than 550 species of birds, 26 reptiles, 7 amphibians… teeming with life
- entering the Corbett National Park and knowing that this was a place that almost every member of your family had been initiated into the wild… that thrill…
- trying to read both ‘secret lives of tigers’ and ‘carpet sahib’ simultaneously…
- buying a beautiful tiger mug for my morning tea…
- post 7pm… sitting back in the room with a drink… hearing wild stories of tiger sighting… man eaters… planning trips to ranthambore and bandhavgarh… laughing as Trijit, my young cousin asks ‘one more question’… : )
- getting up at 5am when the temperature is between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius… wearing almost 15 pieces of clothing and yet not feeling protected from the chilly winds in the jungle…
- sitting on an elephant and simply marveling the sheer strength of the creature… marveling at how much one creature can poop!...it’s a completely different feeling when you view the world from that height…
- seeing a kill and really understanding why that simply had to be so…
- realizing that in the park alone there were close to 600 species of birds… and amazed at how my uncles knew many of them… incredible how they were able to spot them among leaves while we gapped around wondering what they were marveling at!!
- learnt a little myself… saw river chats, minivets, parakeets, sand pipers, wood peckers, common king fisher, raja lal-rani peeli, wagtails, bulbuls, brown fish owl, pallas fishing eagle, barbets, yellow martins, jungle fowls, jungle crows grey heron, Egrets, white stock, peacocks, yellow horn bill, kalish, vultures, magpie, pied kingfisher… think I will be able to recognize them! Some of these were rare sightings and we got some beautiful pictures…
- 3 cameras recorded our entire trip…: ) and we had so much fun comparing and compiling the best pictures of the trip…
- also learnt about the different deers… cheetal, kakkad, sambhar & para (hog deer)… convinced that my dog is a descendent of the barking deer… so similar in so many ways…!
- ever felt the thrill of a chase… we spotted a tiger crossing a river from the watch tower in dikhaka and rushed down to our jeep to try to find him as a crossed the many trails… the thrill of being on a chase… its as old as mankind… it’s like some gene passed down from primitive man comes jumping up to the surface… and while the instrument you use to shoot the tiger may have changed, the rush and the thrill remain…
- driving through the jungle… cold… runny nose… hair escaping from under my shawl… holding tight as I stood on the seat of the jeep… scanning the trees and bushes for anything unsual… hold on as the jeep veered dangerously… standing absolutely still when a tiger was spotted…
- spending over 12 hours of the day in the jungle… just driving through roads like Thandi Sadak, Sambhar Road… where tigers were most likely to be sighted…
- we had 8 tiger sightings… a rare rare thing… 3 tiger sat sunning in the bushes on the very side of the road, one of whom almost charged at another jeep… a tigress and her 3 cubs playing and running up the hills was an incredible sight…
- moreover beating my brother’s sighting of 7 tigers : ) that’s all that mattered… heheheheh
- took many photographs of the tigers… somewhere it felt like a conquest… and somewhere I felt that with every picture taken, a piece of the mystery unraveled… a part of a soul was captured… just a silly theory that I may be laughed at for but believe…
- climbing up and down really high watchtowers on really bare ladders… being able to jump into and out of jeeps… just a few things I never thought I would do with ease…
- hot aloo parathas and chai on a cold morning
- amazed at how some family genes travel and remain dormant till an experience like this…
- intrigued by the forests… what a wonderfully complex eco system… the ways of the jungle is what I would constantly heard the guides talk about…
- the sunrises were simply stunning against the lush greens and browns to the sound of the monkeys and the cheetals…and one lone star shining through…

Jammu-Katra-Vaishnodevi
- stayed with my mousi who I call gu mousi… amazed at the similaries between her and my mum… frightening…
- through this entire holiday, we had one of the sisters calling us every couple of hours to know what we were doing… it was like they were with us through the entire way!
- took a beautiful picture of the sun rising with a tree in the foreground and the snow peaked mountains in the background at the start of our journey…
- hired 2 ponies… Kajal and Basanti who came with their owners brothers by the name of Farooq and Rehman… it was a tough climb and we alternated between walking and riding our ponies up the 13 km tough climb to the shrine…
- was pleased to see that the brother did not beat the ponies… instead they used just their voices to guide the ponies… and many a time they strolled behind as the ponies made their way up…
- we were surprised to find a café coffee day right in the middle of our journey up but decided to go to the tea stall instead…
- Manu’s pony had his nose in my pony’s butt the whole way… hilarious… we talked to each other and I got constant reports on how much my pony was pooping! Disgusting talk for a pilgrimage!
- saw some people who were bigger than the ponies that they were riding…
- there were many people with us slowly making their way up…
- in the past 20 years since I last came to vaishnodevi, its completely changed… the roads are paved and kept spotless clean by an army of sweepers… the last 2 kms to the shrine are covered… there are restrooms ever couple of kms…
- saw slushy ice on the sides of the road… : ) made me happy…
- it took us over 4 hours with many breaks to make it up… there stood a long serpentine line of people to enter the shrine… we got our special pass stamped… found a cloak room and left all our things in a locker along with our shoes and socks… barefoot from this point on… entered through the army gate and joined a long line…
- its changed completely… there are TVs everywhere to send you live feed of the morning arti… the entire way is marbled and clean and extremely cold… felt my feet go numb…
- we were literally pushed through the shrine and the darshan lasted less than 2 seconds… we had mentally made a list of all the people we loved and one thing that we wished for each of them but then decided that we should just do a simple blanket wish would have to do…
- after a quick cup of coffee and a few sandwiches, we began the journey down… tired and cold… and through the entire way down, I kept chanting ‘jai mata di’… strange how much courage those words can build…
- after over 3 hours of walking and pony riding, we reached katra… oh the aches and pains…
- since manu says he barely saw the shrine, we bought a picture so that he could see the goddess for as long as he wanted…
- a trip of a lifetime… Vaishno devi has a total of 1 lakh visitors a day in the summers… with over 1500 ponies working each day…
- we petted the ponies for a long time to thank them for making the journey possible…

Experience of a lifetime… even on a holiday, we found ourselves getting up at either 4am or 5am at the latest everyday… 6am was a luxury… it was just our kind of time off… action packed… filled with family… delicious meals… lots of laughter… many photographs…
Ready to get back to city action now… our very own jungle…