The name of this article is a cheap copy of
the Oscar winning movie "Driving Miss Daisy". But apart from
providing an inspiration in the title of this article the rest of the story
is definitely original and unique. This is regarding our son Debarghya
and his love (which is now a passion almost) of riding his car. So much
so that our car is almost like his car now. In general he loves to travel.
And on any means of transport, be it bus, train, auto, rickshaw, or any
other mode of travel. And this is actually the main inspiration of this
story and the bottom line as well.
We have been making travel plans and implementing them once in two months. And this has been hampered by our work pressure and our travel to the US. So when we started to look for options in late June for making arrangements for July, it was already too late. And thus Jaipur happened as a fall back plan. We booked The Holiday Inn and decided to travel by road, in our own car. We chose the weekend of 19-20-21 July mainly because my brother was planning to stay out of station in the same weekend. And yes, finally when the day arrived, we were all set to go.
We had planned to start at around 6 in the morning. But we actually started around 7 after completing our morning chores. The effect of that one hour delay in starting actually compounded to a two hour delay in arriving in Jaipur. And me being a stickler for routines, schedules and timetables was bit annoyed in the time we were stuck really badly in the huge queue of trucks and lorries; but in the end we were travelling without a schedule, we were free of any routines and we were actually travelling to chill out. And hence in the end it really did not matter. We made a stop for breakfast at Sagar Ratna a bit after ten in the morning. And we had a very heavy and sumptuous breakfast. The second half of the journey was much smoother and faster. And we checked in at 1pm at the Holiday Inn.
We took some time to freshen up and surprisingly Debarghya had a gala time in the shower room. We were trying to recollect our days from the past, where we had to request for buckets and mugs from housekeeping! But this time it was totally different! And during our stay he had been independently taking baths almost thrice daily!
We went down for lunch and ordered Laal Mas. To our expectation it was not Laal (red) at all! The Makki Kumbh Masala was though more likeable. The taste and the spice limits of the food have been toned down to suit the taste of the foreign visitors. And surprisingly even in the low season the crowd around us were foreigners in majority. And a group of tourists speaking Spanish as well. Sushree tried to coax me into getting into a conversation with the group. But my introvert nature prevailed. After lunch we came back to our room and took full advantage of the comfortable sleeping facilities. We loitered out of our beds around five, had tea and cookies in our room; and decided to roam and rustle around to the Mansagar lake. As soon as we got out of the hotel and reached the streets, a bus arrived at the bus stop at our doorstep. And then in a sudden bout of madness we found ourselves in it. Definitely Debarghya was the happiest in the lot. We went up to the conductor and asked him where did the bus go. He asked us back where we wanted to go, and with a slight chuckle. Jalmahal it is; and we were there in a jiffy.
The evening was warm but comfortable. And a nice stroll by the lake would actually hurt nobody. The crowd around was also gradually building up; but unlike our last time experience it was mostly the locals who were there and hence the overall population was also much more bearable. Just to add here we had visited Jaipur in April; and during that time as well we had travelled by road; but we had my brother Debanik and his wife Pragati for company. We had stayed in the Trident that time which is by the side of Jalmahal; so our evening stroll in effect took us back to April in a way. We were all missing the company of them; but Debarghya somehow was missing them the most. He had been looking for them ever since we stopped over at Sagar Ratna for breakfast. From that time onwards he had been asking for them; and even after checking in at Holiday Inn he was looking for the play area of the Trident (a facility for which the hotel management should be commended heavily). Sushree and myself were also recollecting our fresh memories from April. One more item from our April tour was also missing! And that is a vendor selling small Chinese made toy items by the lakeside! Vendors with local artefacts as memorabilia were there, but the vendor with small nick knack toys, mostly chinese made and hence cheap, was missing. He was important as Debarghya had asked for the specific truck and top he got from there last time as soon as we had arrived at Jaipur. Human memory is strange business!
After an hour or so at Jalmahal, and after having a round of Patashe (the local name for Panipuri or Fuchka) and tea we walked back to the hotel. We ordered Continental dinner at our room. Debarghya got pizza (which was pretty ordinary), Sushree ordered the grilled chicken steak (which was quite dry) and I went for pasta with bacon and egg (which was not great, but best among the lot). Sleep easily arrived after that and the first day was over just like that.
The next morning started normally. We had bed tea, had our bath before the breakfast, and had a sumptuous breakfast at the restaurant below. The spread was not that awesome, though! We had booked a car for our day trip and we were on our way at 10:30 am to the Albert Hall, which is a museum in a historic building. The museum was not anything out of the world. But is a place where you can spend a bit of your time if you do not have any other pressing thing to do in Jaipur. Debarghya naturally did not enjoy much. So we got out faster than we had expected. And since we had an hour or so to kill we were driven to Sanganer as per our driver's advice. Sanganer is known for the cottage industries and handicrafts for which Rajasthan is famous for; and we could not resist ourselves from completing our Puja shopping for our parents. From there we came with our bags full and our wallets a bit empty. Then we went LMB for lunch; and was back to our hotel by 3:30. And an afternoon siesta followed, mostly driven by the lack of proper TV channels!
Afternoon was planned for another bus ride; but this time it was a longer one to Amer and for that we were out on the streets around 5:30. The weather was most beautiful. There was a slightest of drizzle; more like droplets of water being blown away by the wind like dust; which hardly wets us. The temperature was also very soothing. But the dampener of it was the long wait we had to put up with for our bus. But route number 5 had almost vanished. And when went up to our limit of patience we asked for an auto to go to Amer. The local auto made it look like a longer journey it actually is because of the laborious way it moved, chuffed and groaned along the route to the fort! After some time we made the auto drop us at the side of the lake. The evening was approaching very slowly; it was an extended session of dusk. The rain had stopped completely by that time but the cloud cover was persistent; and there was a tender breeze blowing which actually took away all the negative effects of the heavy humidity. We were strolling gently along the lake with the gorgeous Amer fort proudly looking at us from the other side. And the best part of all was the solitude we enjoyed. The fort was closed for the day; and we had the whole evening all by ourselves. Debarghya had managed to grab an ice cream from a vendor. And after sometime we reached the area around the main entrance of the fort. And there we came across a few local people engrossed in may be the most important evening leisure time activity of Jaipiur; feeding bread and dough made out of flour to innumerable fishes in the lake. We could not resist ourselves from spending some time throwing out small balls of bread and flour dough to the hungry school of fishes in the lake. The school of fishes was though big enough to graduate itself to a university!
Daylight stayed with us well after 7. And we were not in any hurry to go back; hence we waited for route number 5 to arrive. But luck was not with us. So desperate us, we boarded a local transport which would rank itself a few rungs below the RTV in Delhi. But what mattered most was the fact Debarghya was happy. And we were back to our room a tad bit after 7:30. Dinner of Chicken Biryani, Rara Gosth and Rotis followed. And sleep arrived in our tired eyes very easily.
The good Saturday weather at Jaipur actually was the effect of an incessant torrential downpour at Delhi, immobilising the traffic for almost the whole of the day. This actually prompted us to start a bit earlier than planned. We got ready almost immediately after breakfast and hit the road around 10:30. The drive back was excellent as it was a Sunday and we were always ahead of the normal crowd returning from Jaipur to Delhi. I should mention one more fact here which I should have shared with you earlier. We had packed a USB with almost 6 hours of music and audio. On our trip to Jaipur we had exhausted most of the good songs from the lot; so while coming back we had the luxury of enjoying some Sunday Suspense of Professor Shanku and Feluda. For those who do not know, Sunday suspense was an effort by Radio Mirchi of Kolkata converting quite a huge number of Bengali classics into radio plays. And Feluda and Professor Shanku? They are the immortal creations of Satyajit Ray, the litterateur, which has been the childhood hero of every Bengali kid growing up between the period of 1960 till 1990. So we had a bout of Professor Shanku's "Bagdader Baaksho" (The Box of Baghdad), followed by Feluda's "Gangtokey Gondogol" (Trouble in Gangtok). We though were not able to complete the Feluda story while coming back. Midway we had our lunch; Sagar Ratna arrived too early for a proper lunch time; and so we opted for Nirula's. I had a burger, Debarghya a pizza and Sushree opted for a chicken and rice thaali. We finally stopped for a fuel refill; though it was not an absolute necessity, but just in case; better to be safe than sorry. And in the end we were in our Gurgaon abode before three thirty in the afternoon.
A sad surprise awaited in our house. There was no power. And there has been a transformer malfunctioning on Saturday; sometime after the heavy downpour; and in effect Jalvayu Vihar was powerless for more than 24 hours! So, were supposed to move out again in search of a good nights sleep? Somewhere in Gurgaon itself? We were ready for that as well. Because the Jaipur trip had been so refreshing that physical fatigue was overpowered by our rejuvenated soul. But before making such a drastic decision we agreed to apply the policy of wait and watch for sometime. And sanity prevailed indeed; around 6 in the evening. And we were allowed to have our well earned sleep after our first roadtrip of our life.
But in the end, this is not just a story of our travels to Jaipur, nor is it the memoirs of our first road trip; it is just another travel story. Or is it?
We have been making travel plans and implementing them once in two months. And this has been hampered by our work pressure and our travel to the US. So when we started to look for options in late June for making arrangements for July, it was already too late. And thus Jaipur happened as a fall back plan. We booked The Holiday Inn and decided to travel by road, in our own car. We chose the weekend of 19-20-21 July mainly because my brother was planning to stay out of station in the same weekend. And yes, finally when the day arrived, we were all set to go.
We had planned to start at around 6 in the morning. But we actually started around 7 after completing our morning chores. The effect of that one hour delay in starting actually compounded to a two hour delay in arriving in Jaipur. And me being a stickler for routines, schedules and timetables was bit annoyed in the time we were stuck really badly in the huge queue of trucks and lorries; but in the end we were travelling without a schedule, we were free of any routines and we were actually travelling to chill out. And hence in the end it really did not matter. We made a stop for breakfast at Sagar Ratna a bit after ten in the morning. And we had a very heavy and sumptuous breakfast. The second half of the journey was much smoother and faster. And we checked in at 1pm at the Holiday Inn.
We took some time to freshen up and surprisingly Debarghya had a gala time in the shower room. We were trying to recollect our days from the past, where we had to request for buckets and mugs from housekeeping! But this time it was totally different! And during our stay he had been independently taking baths almost thrice daily!
We went down for lunch and ordered Laal Mas. To our expectation it was not Laal (red) at all! The Makki Kumbh Masala was though more likeable. The taste and the spice limits of the food have been toned down to suit the taste of the foreign visitors. And surprisingly even in the low season the crowd around us were foreigners in majority. And a group of tourists speaking Spanish as well. Sushree tried to coax me into getting into a conversation with the group. But my introvert nature prevailed. After lunch we came back to our room and took full advantage of the comfortable sleeping facilities. We loitered out of our beds around five, had tea and cookies in our room; and decided to roam and rustle around to the Mansagar lake. As soon as we got out of the hotel and reached the streets, a bus arrived at the bus stop at our doorstep. And then in a sudden bout of madness we found ourselves in it. Definitely Debarghya was the happiest in the lot. We went up to the conductor and asked him where did the bus go. He asked us back where we wanted to go, and with a slight chuckle. Jalmahal it is; and we were there in a jiffy.
The evening was warm but comfortable. And a nice stroll by the lake would actually hurt nobody. The crowd around was also gradually building up; but unlike our last time experience it was mostly the locals who were there and hence the overall population was also much more bearable. Just to add here we had visited Jaipur in April; and during that time as well we had travelled by road; but we had my brother Debanik and his wife Pragati for company. We had stayed in the Trident that time which is by the side of Jalmahal; so our evening stroll in effect took us back to April in a way. We were all missing the company of them; but Debarghya somehow was missing them the most. He had been looking for them ever since we stopped over at Sagar Ratna for breakfast. From that time onwards he had been asking for them; and even after checking in at Holiday Inn he was looking for the play area of the Trident (a facility for which the hotel management should be commended heavily). Sushree and myself were also recollecting our fresh memories from April. One more item from our April tour was also missing! And that is a vendor selling small Chinese made toy items by the lakeside! Vendors with local artefacts as memorabilia were there, but the vendor with small nick knack toys, mostly chinese made and hence cheap, was missing. He was important as Debarghya had asked for the specific truck and top he got from there last time as soon as we had arrived at Jaipur. Human memory is strange business!
After an hour or so at Jalmahal, and after having a round of Patashe (the local name for Panipuri or Fuchka) and tea we walked back to the hotel. We ordered Continental dinner at our room. Debarghya got pizza (which was pretty ordinary), Sushree ordered the grilled chicken steak (which was quite dry) and I went for pasta with bacon and egg (which was not great, but best among the lot). Sleep easily arrived after that and the first day was over just like that.
The next morning started normally. We had bed tea, had our bath before the breakfast, and had a sumptuous breakfast at the restaurant below. The spread was not that awesome, though! We had booked a car for our day trip and we were on our way at 10:30 am to the Albert Hall, which is a museum in a historic building. The museum was not anything out of the world. But is a place where you can spend a bit of your time if you do not have any other pressing thing to do in Jaipur. Debarghya naturally did not enjoy much. So we got out faster than we had expected. And since we had an hour or so to kill we were driven to Sanganer as per our driver's advice. Sanganer is known for the cottage industries and handicrafts for which Rajasthan is famous for; and we could not resist ourselves from completing our Puja shopping for our parents. From there we came with our bags full and our wallets a bit empty. Then we went LMB for lunch; and was back to our hotel by 3:30. And an afternoon siesta followed, mostly driven by the lack of proper TV channels!
Afternoon was planned for another bus ride; but this time it was a longer one to Amer and for that we were out on the streets around 5:30. The weather was most beautiful. There was a slightest of drizzle; more like droplets of water being blown away by the wind like dust; which hardly wets us. The temperature was also very soothing. But the dampener of it was the long wait we had to put up with for our bus. But route number 5 had almost vanished. And when went up to our limit of patience we asked for an auto to go to Amer. The local auto made it look like a longer journey it actually is because of the laborious way it moved, chuffed and groaned along the route to the fort! After some time we made the auto drop us at the side of the lake. The evening was approaching very slowly; it was an extended session of dusk. The rain had stopped completely by that time but the cloud cover was persistent; and there was a tender breeze blowing which actually took away all the negative effects of the heavy humidity. We were strolling gently along the lake with the gorgeous Amer fort proudly looking at us from the other side. And the best part of all was the solitude we enjoyed. The fort was closed for the day; and we had the whole evening all by ourselves. Debarghya had managed to grab an ice cream from a vendor. And after sometime we reached the area around the main entrance of the fort. And there we came across a few local people engrossed in may be the most important evening leisure time activity of Jaipiur; feeding bread and dough made out of flour to innumerable fishes in the lake. We could not resist ourselves from spending some time throwing out small balls of bread and flour dough to the hungry school of fishes in the lake. The school of fishes was though big enough to graduate itself to a university!
Daylight stayed with us well after 7. And we were not in any hurry to go back; hence we waited for route number 5 to arrive. But luck was not with us. So desperate us, we boarded a local transport which would rank itself a few rungs below the RTV in Delhi. But what mattered most was the fact Debarghya was happy. And we were back to our room a tad bit after 7:30. Dinner of Chicken Biryani, Rara Gosth and Rotis followed. And sleep arrived in our tired eyes very easily.
The good Saturday weather at Jaipur actually was the effect of an incessant torrential downpour at Delhi, immobilising the traffic for almost the whole of the day. This actually prompted us to start a bit earlier than planned. We got ready almost immediately after breakfast and hit the road around 10:30. The drive back was excellent as it was a Sunday and we were always ahead of the normal crowd returning from Jaipur to Delhi. I should mention one more fact here which I should have shared with you earlier. We had packed a USB with almost 6 hours of music and audio. On our trip to Jaipur we had exhausted most of the good songs from the lot; so while coming back we had the luxury of enjoying some Sunday Suspense of Professor Shanku and Feluda. For those who do not know, Sunday suspense was an effort by Radio Mirchi of Kolkata converting quite a huge number of Bengali classics into radio plays. And Feluda and Professor Shanku? They are the immortal creations of Satyajit Ray, the litterateur, which has been the childhood hero of every Bengali kid growing up between the period of 1960 till 1990. So we had a bout of Professor Shanku's "Bagdader Baaksho" (The Box of Baghdad), followed by Feluda's "Gangtokey Gondogol" (Trouble in Gangtok). We though were not able to complete the Feluda story while coming back. Midway we had our lunch; Sagar Ratna arrived too early for a proper lunch time; and so we opted for Nirula's. I had a burger, Debarghya a pizza and Sushree opted for a chicken and rice thaali. We finally stopped for a fuel refill; though it was not an absolute necessity, but just in case; better to be safe than sorry. And in the end we were in our Gurgaon abode before three thirty in the afternoon.
A sad surprise awaited in our house. There was no power. And there has been a transformer malfunctioning on Saturday; sometime after the heavy downpour; and in effect Jalvayu Vihar was powerless for more than 24 hours! So, were supposed to move out again in search of a good nights sleep? Somewhere in Gurgaon itself? We were ready for that as well. Because the Jaipur trip had been so refreshing that physical fatigue was overpowered by our rejuvenated soul. But before making such a drastic decision we agreed to apply the policy of wait and watch for sometime. And sanity prevailed indeed; around 6 in the evening. And we were allowed to have our well earned sleep after our first roadtrip of our life.
But in the end, this is not just a story of our travels to Jaipur, nor is it the memoirs of our first road trip; it is just another travel story. Or is it?
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