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Resources » Travel & Tourism » General »
A Trip to Delhi
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We had an educational trip outside Rajasthan in our final year. The whole Electronics and Communication branch was divided into two groups – one consisted of those guys who had been selected for Infosys Campus Connect Programme and were visiting Chandigarh campus of Infosys while the second group was going to Delhi. The first group (I belonged to it) was to join the second group in Delhi 2 days later. After the conclusion of Chandigarh tour we had taken the evening bus to Delhi from where we would be returning to Jodhpur a couple of days later.
We reached Delhi around 10 p.m. at night. Unlike Chandigarh, it was not very cold there. In fact, while carrying my stuff to the metro station from the bus stand I could feel sweat drops falling from my forehead. That day, in the evening, a couple of low level blasts had rocked the courts in Lucknow. As a result security had been beefed up at the metro station. We were oblivious of this fact and so were surprised at seeing so many policemen there. Few guys of our group, who were ahead of us, were thoroughly scrutinized. But rest of the students were not so strictly frisked when they realized that we were students on an educational trip.
Our stay was arranged in a hotel in Old Delhi. The 2nd group, which was already there for past two days, was staying in another hotel just a few blocks away. Many of my friends, who were not the part of campus connect programme were already waiting for me and others at our hotel. After checking in our rooms and getting rid of baggage, we came out of the hotel in order to have our dinner. It was already close to 10:45 and so we had to hurry. Also we were very hungry since we had not eaten anything after our lunch in Chandigarh. We went to a nearby restaurant and by the time we returned it was near midnight. We were very much tired and so all of us headed straight to our rooms. We didn’t get into any chatting sessions that night.
DAY 1
Our HOD had ordered us to be at the hotel’s gate by 8 in the morning. Our destination, Centre for Civil Aviation, was quite far from our present location so we had to hurry. At the metro station we got the opportunity to meet our peers who had their 3rd day in Delhi that day. They were heading to a totally different destination, a visit to DMRC. Other people looked at us we hugged each other and chatted in high pitched voices. Soon we parted our ways and moved towards our respective destinations.
I had been to Delhi a few months back and had traveled to few places in central Delhi in metro but the distance covered was very short. Here we spent almost an hour in metro before reaching our place, Dwarka. That place was almost out of Delhi and in the suburbs. There was not the kind of rush we had been seeing since landing into Delhi.
For a major part of our journey, especially in the latter half, the metro was in the open and not underground. So we could see Delhi in the light of the rising sun. It was then that I could see how polluted the city is. As I have mentioned before, there wasn’t that much cold outside and at 8:45 there was no fog there. But I could see a cloud of white dust spread above Delhi. As the sun kept on rising above the horizon, the clouds begin to diminish slowly. We passed through the different areas of Delhi and I could get a proper view of Delhi then only.
We reached our destination around 10 and as I have already said, it was a clam and secluded place. The director of CCA is a batch mate of our HOD. After completing his engineering he had taken this little different route which led him to aviation. He had bought an old airplane (Airbus A300) which was being used not only for the students but also by a couple of air hostess raining institutes like Frankfinn. Most of us had never sat in a plane so it was a new experience. Although the thrill of sitting in an actual air journey wasn’t there but it felt quite nice as we sat on the soft chairs observing the interior of the plane and listening to the director.
The session included some information about the plane, about the aviation and few questions about both of them. In between we had our breakfast. After our breakfast we went into the group of 3 into the cockpit to see how it looked like. I was disappointed to see that most of the machinery had been removed and in their places the pictures of different controls had been pasted. We also had a look at the section where cargo used to be put in. This whole tour took close to 2 hours. By 12 we were back to the metro station. Here the students got divided into the different groups and went their own ways with a strict order from our HOD to get back to the hotel by 11.
Our group decided to go to Rajouri Garden. Most of my friends had visited the historical places of Delhi no. of times and so just wanted to hangout in some place. We chose Rajouri Garden due to the presence of a no. of good malls there. Within 45 minutes we were there. The first thing that we did after reaching Rajouri Garden was to look for a suitable place to have our lunch. We went into an OK looking restaurant but found it too expensive. We had a day and half to traverse Delhi and didn’t want to spend a good chunk of money on eating food a single time only. After a little more effort we found a good place with reasonable prices and had our lunch there.
Post lunch we decided to check the malls one by one. So we went into the closest mall. Buying anything was not on our agenda so we just traversed through the mall looking at different shops. In the next mall we found a section dedicated to various latest technologies and gadgets. There a lady gave us a demonstration of the Mackintosh OS (an OS by Apple). Almost all of us had the first look of it then only as we were used to working on windows and had gone through Linux in our networking lab. The lady answered the queries put forward by few of the techno geeks among us calmly though I believe she knew for sure that we did not intend to buy that mackintosh based laptop (the cost was Rs. 50 thousand +) . I guess patience is also a part of good salesmanship.
At 4 p.m. few of the guys bid us goodbye as they had to catch the train back to Jodhpur in evening since they had an MBA entrance exam within 2 days (I think it was IIFT). A couple of more friends of mine left for the hotel since they were not feeling well. Only 5 of us were left then and we decided to watch a movie in the multiplex. I had never watched a movie in a multiplex and so I was the first to put this proposal and rest accepted it too. Now the problem was to decide which film? We were sure not to go for ‘Dhan Dhanadan Goal’ owing to average reviews. The decision was to be made about ‘Om Shanti Om’ and ‘Jab We Met’. I was clear from the first moment to go for ‘Jab We Met’. There were a couple of reasons behind it. The 1st one was the film getting positive reviews and secondly the music of the film. I had been continuously listening to the songs of the film for past few days on FM channels and loved the music immensely.
Finally 3 voted for ‘Jab we Met’ and 2 for ‘Om Shanti Om’ and so we took our separate ways. Unlike the huge single screen theatres, the multiplexes are small and I was astonished to see a girl checking tickets on the entrance. My friend quipped ‘Welcome to Metropolitan’. The seats were not more than 500 (my guess) but were very comfortable. The film was very good and I loved it. We came out happily praising the film while the other 2 guys came out blaming themselves for watching a film like Om Shanti Om. One of them was literally holding his head trying to make out what had happened in the film in the last half an hour.
It was nearly 9:30 p.m. when we came out. We needed to hurry now. Since metro station is very near, we reached there quickly to get back to our hotel at Old Delhi. We found our other friends (from the other group that had gone to DMRC) waiting for us at our hotel. We had our dinner together and then went to their hotel to meet rest of the guys. By 11:30 we were back to our place. I was so tired that I went to the sleep immediately.
DAY 2
My eyes opened in the morning when I heard the loud voice of our HOD. Initially I thought I was dreaming. It took less than 5 seconds to realize that it was not a dream. I got up quickly to find our HOD scolding a young lecturer accompanying us on the tour (he was staying with us in our room) I came to know later that he himself had returned very late at night. Once he had reprimanded the lecturer enough, our HOD unexpectedly turned towards me and asked me about my plans for the day in a some what calm voice. I said that we had not made any plans yet but would decide soon. He nodded and reminded me strictly to be at the hotel by 7:45 in the evening since we had our train (Mandore Express) back to Jodhpur scheduled at 8:45p.m.
While having tea at a nearby tea stall, few guys from the other group told us about the metro mall in Rithala where they had spent their last day. We didn’t consider it initially since the place was very far. Since both groups were free to tour that day, the friends of mine from both the groups combined and we 12-14 people decided to go to Palika Bazaar first.
Most of us didn’t buy anything in Bazaar but we enjoyed annoying a no. of shopkeepers. The guys would bargain and when the shopkeeper would agree to sell the item/article as per their price they would decline saying they didn’t like the product much. We spent more than an hour in Bazaar. After coming out we had something to eat and then went to nearby Connaught Place but got bored there very soon. It was then that metro mall came to our mind and we unanimously decided to go there.
It took us almost an hour to reach Rithala as that place too is situated in the outer areas of Delhi. We enjoyed metro mall a lot more than the other malls we had visited a day earlier because here the mall was spread over a larger area instead of being confined into a building. The mall was divided into different section and there was an adventure park as well. There were a lot of place to sit around and just relax there and unlike the city this area was pollution free. We spend close to 2-2.5 hours there and decided to return to Delhi at 3 at noon.
This time we decided to traverse the area we were staying in so that we could get back to our hotel on time. Our first stop in Old Delhi was ‘Sheesh ganj Gurudwara’. Coincidentally that day was ‘Guru Nanak Jayanti’ and so the whole place was shining brightly and there was a lot of rush too. I had never visited a Gurudwara before. It was a different experience of tying our handkerchiefs around our head, washing our feet into the running water and then entering into the Gurudwara. ‘Shabad Keertan’ was going on and the environment was very peaceful. We sat there for 20-25 minutes. The whole tiredness of the day was gone in those minutes in that calm and peaceful environment. We came out around 5:30 after having our Prasad. Nearby the ‘Langar’ was being prepared and the mere sight of it whetted our appetite. We had not eaten anything proper since morning and so this time we decided to go to a place to eat and which one would have been better than ‘Paranthe wali Gali’. So we headed in that direction.
Here I had the biggest disappointment of my tour so far. We found a one OK looking shop in the gali and climbed in. The menu was soon brought to us and we decided to ask for a no. of varieties so that we could taste each of them. Paranthas were a bit expensive but they said that we would be provided with chutneys and achars (pickles) as well. We waited patiently and excitedly for the paranthas but all of it was gone once we tasted them. Each of them had a similar taste. There was no proper stuffing in the paranthas and they tasted more like chapattis. We didn’t ask for more paranthas and came out after having just 16 between us 12 people. Every one of us agreed that our mothers can easily give these people a run of their money if someday they decided to enter into this business.
Since we were still hungry, we decided to have some lassi. The previous bad experience in the ‘paranthe wali gali’ had made me skeptical but one of the guys assured us that lassi would be fine since he had had it a no. of times in his last visit to Delhi. And he was right. The lassi was delicious, though not quite like the ‘Makhaniya lassi’ of Jodhpur but was good. Most of us had two of them.
By the time we had our ‘lassi’ it was already past 7:15. So we quickly hurried to our hotel. We reached there by 7:30. It didn’t take us much time to prepare our baggage since we had neatly arranged all the things before leaving in the morning only. Then we chatted there until our lecturer called us to get down with our stuff. We had reached the station by 8:15. The guys form the other group too had begun to come there. By 8:30 the whole group was there and we had boarded the train. At 8:50 we had concluded our tour of 5 days and with the sweet memories of the trip we left Delhi behind.
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