THE GRAIL OF THE TRAIL!!

I have always been fascinated by the 'hippie trail', the thought that people travel thousands of kilometers over land from their homeland to come explore the Indian subcontinent. I wanted to do this!!! Or at least the last bit of the trail - Delhi to Katmandu and Pokhara.

On the first instance called up my regular travel partner, fixed up our leaves, and just waited for the day. We never have enough money to travel, so we needed to be frugal. We had saved up some money since we last went broke so there was some money between us.

Delhi, 06 June 2014

Reaching Delhi, I wanted to find some friends place where I could stay the night; 'Facebook' showed me one of its benefits that day, other than the random hours I lose on it. Pavel, a friend from my times in Hyderabad asked me to come 'home'. So there I was, finding a place to stay even after reaching Delhi at the dead of the night. My travel partner (Livin) had also similarly hitched up a place to stay with a school friend of his. 

We met the same night and sat around and planned to plan the travel next day. And went away after a good long discussion on gender and the various institutions that are gender blind (Pavel is a gender sciences student).

The DLF confusion and Hauz Khaz solution

The next day I was supposed to meet up with Julie aka Jules aka Annie, and also my peer from work, Prashanth and his family. He suggested to meet at DLF and so I set up to meet Julie  at DLF as well. So me and Livin got together and took an auto rickshaw (auto, not as in auto pilot) and left for DLF. Fast forward through the Delhi traffic and we are in front of the DLF place, I spot the huge DLF logo on the side of the building and anticipate it to be the place. I ask the auto guy, is this what I'm looking for and he says no, where you need to go is still ahead. And he drops us across the street to another huge building with DLF insignia on it (the first DLF building is in the background) and we walk in. I ring Jules and let her know that we've just walked into DLF and she asks us to come straight up to the food court on top and that she had be waiting by the elevator. So we quickly elevated ourselves to the top floor, and we find Jules right about nowhere. I call jules up again and walk around the whole food court looking for her, but to no avail. And Jules confirms to me that she is standing right there by the elevator, and I start thinking if Harry Potters invisible cloak really exist (no sane person would wear a cloak in summertime Delhi). And i  get another call from Jules and this time she has a probable explanation to this mystery where we can't find each other in the same time and space. Its like we went through a portal while walking through that scanning machine at the entrance to another time and space. We were in two different buildings with both having food courts at the top.

The mystery solved we walked to the other building and met up. Already mentally exhausted from all the problem solving that involved time and space relations ( Einstein would have been happy!), I call up Prashanth. To my utter exhaustion, he is at yet another DLF place which is in another part of town. DLF WTF! They seem to have built landmark concrete trees all over the city of Delhi. I politely explain to him my helplessness in navigating through the jungles of Delhi and promise to meet him the time I am back from my small wandering trip. 

The heat had given way to a thriving thirst and we wanted beer. Annie suggested the Beer place within the DLF building only to find the watering hole crowded with fellow thirsty beings who had loitered there to have a quenching gulp of the gold tinted bubbly miracle water that was my favorite in the summer heat. Disappointed on the Beer front, now I was craving for beef. The memory from my previous trip to Delhi relishingly kicked in . Along with the Beef stranganoff, the place was also very fresh in my mind. HAUZ KHAZ. Wild spirits and energies roamed and love floated through the streets in perfect harmony like mild dew on green grass. In the jungle I'd just come to the point of frustration in gave way to hope. 

For all the evil of growth and development we were put through that day, at Hauz Khaz, how growth and need for commerce space and culture can all be in a strange way be harmonized. And it brought cheer into our hearts to be amidst this cranky swanky town within the city. 

Hut overlooking Phewa Lake high in the hills.

The road comes to an end here. But I'll come again for more. 

Nagarjuna Reserve Forest.