The Cold trip... Part 2

Delhi to Shimla

Delhi is hot, I mean the 'warm-hot' not the 'sexy-hot' ;-).  It was 7 in the morning, but the Delhi-heat was pretty much high and burning. We got a 9-seater van booked for the whole trip and then there was this Punjabi driver who came with it. An angry Sardar he was. Whenever we laughed after passing a comment in Tamil, he had a strange expression on his face and was staring angrily at the road. All this had been done during the first half hour of the trip and we had a quiet-long 7 days ahead of us. I doubt a happily ever-after with this guy.

Being the true Chennaite we are, our first stop was at the Saravana Bavan for a dose of Pongal-Vadai-filter coffee and yeah an hour of food carnage that ensued later. Now that we are full, its time for some Sighting...er...Sight Seeing. Planned to start off with Gandhi Ashram!!

PS: You are supposed to look at Gandhiji and not the one who's looking at him ;-)

Gandhi Ashram was quite cool with the laser projectors and LCD panels. Not some stuff you would expect in a government-run-memorial especially. But, it retained the Gandhian charm by being simple & calm in most places.The place is filled with a lot of foreigners than our people. Its funny in a way that people are often interested in other's leaders than theirs. Thank you Papa, all bcoz of you now we are enjoying!! 

The second stop was at Birla Mandhir. This one is a marble beauty and. Hey...wait... I could already overhear plans from the guys to beat me up for including 'Gandhi Ashram' & 'Birla Mandhir' in a fun-trip. But, thats what the guide said as 'must-watch'. I tried to escape their clutches by promising some Dhaba treat :). It started to get darker by the evening and we started off to Shimla.We had a stop-over at the promised Dhaba by the NH, ate heavily as usual and then continued our journey up-hill.

The Sardar was still looking squint-eyed at us and picked up the mid-night to take revenge on us. Everyone was in their peak singing best with Rajni songs playing, when he wanted to put his hindi-oldies so as to drive-away his sleep, he said. I gave up after 1/2 of his first song and started getting restless. Being back from the Gandhi Ashram, we took the "Gandhigiri" approach and started singing along these Hindi songs to scare him. He was startled at first and then realized we are making fun. He quickly caught up and changed the cd to a "Hare Krishna Hare Rama", thought we would stop. But then, this is war dude, can't leave even if it's a Devotional song. Hare Krishna was even better in our vocals. Didn't knew that Krishna had some pay back later in the trip. Damn, I should've watched these comically-dubbed-from-hindi-Mahabharatha-serials for some dose of mythology!!

[to be continued..]