I always love travelling. Travel and me is a better love story than most of the GV films. Not a great fan of spiritual tours but this trip is unique and it will be always close to my heart. Here i take this opportunity to share my Kedarnath trip to you all. If you find any grammatical mistake, please be informed that my mother tounge is TAMIL.
One fine sunday afternoon, call from an unknown number. Its none other than our great photographer Ramesh Muthaian on the other side. (I've no idea how many more number i need to save in his name). After few minutes of Mokkai chat he told that he and his friends are planning to go to Kedaram (Kedarnath). When he mentioned as Spiritual trip, i was half lost. And when he concluded the destination i was too excited. Immediately agreed for the plan and booked our tickets.
After the call the flight tickets were ₹6700 for Chennai to Delhi (to n fro) and we ended up in buying the ticket for ₹8500 due to delay we made. Also i was not 100% confident about this trip. Because we always plan well but at the end majority of the people will step out and the plan will cancel. So with this mindset i agreed for the trip and even bought the flight tickets.
Day 1: (24-June-2017)
All set for the trip. Early morning 3:45 AM i woke to see a notification that UBER has cancelled my previous night booking due to driver unavailability at that time. Checked OLA again there was no drivers.
Adapavigala!
I can't even cancel the ticket because those were booked as non-refundable.
Ventha punnla vela paachura moment - It was raining in chennai.
Enna koduma Saravanan sir ithu.!!
Luckily at 4:30AM it was just drizzling. Along with my father i reached SIPCOT hoping to get a cab to Chennai Airport.
Kandukonden kandukonden 😊😊😊😊
On the way to SIPCOT, I saw a cab driver fighting with the OLA app. There seems to be a network issue with the operator and the driver lost was not showing to the public. He agreed to drop me for 600INR. I had no other option and checked UBER and it was showing as 6x surcharge and the approx rate would be ₹1300.
WHAT???
No more argument. Agreed for ₹600 and he dropped me in 27 mins (32KMS) and reached airport on time i.e. 5AM where Ramesh was waiting for me with a big smile. There i met my school friend Balaji after 12+ years. Airports are always awesome.
We were hungry and ordered 1 plate of idly, 1 plate of upma and 1 plate of pongal inside airport food court and we paid ₹500.
Ennaga da, pagal kollaiya iruku!
09:30 AM we reached Indira Gandhi International Airport and met Vamsi Krishna for the first time. Then we three were waiting for other 4 people to join us. So at this point only i came to know that we're 7 members all together for this trip. After waiting for 3 hours in Delhi Metro station near Terminal 1 we got to see the remaning team. Here we are:
(From Left: Santhosh, Senthil, Raaja, Myself, Vamsi, Ramesh and Muthu)
After having an useless lunch near railway station, we were ready to cath DDN JANSHTBDI train and our journey started towrads Haridwar. Train was asusual full. With so much struggle fighting with heat, humidity, thirst, sweat, seat adjusting we reached Haridwar junction (20:30) and the train was 1 hour late.
Since all were tired, we booked 2 rooms in Hote Prem Bihari. It was costly for the town but it was affordable. Close to Haridwar earliest station. Each and every streets of Haridwar are filled with hotel. Even the locals found it difficult to guide us. Thanks to Google Maps which saved our time and energy. After a quick refresh, in spite of body pain we were heading towards the Goddess - River Ganga. We took battery car to reach the destination.
We tasted our first victory after taking a holy dip in Ganges. Water was freezing cold. (11 PM) Despite being so cold we happily to a dip and then slowly we started to enjoy the chillness. This video shows us where took that holy bath.
[Video]
After reaching room we had enough time to know about each other. I came to know about the yoga practices of Muthu and vasee. Suddenly heard Rajinikanth voice from muthu. It was so nice to hear the broken tamil from santhosh (Alias sandiego / Rajnikanth) At least he tried Tamil even though his mother younger is kannada.
We knew that it's going to be a tough day on day 2. 8-14 hours of journey in the day time is going to be tough for anyone that too on a burning hot summer. After completing a successful day 1 we had a good sleep.
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