It was a typical working day in a corporate office. Post lunch time, after hour of work, it was time to just free up legs and have a walk. Why not lets fill up the desk water bottle and settle down to work for rest of the day. I Walked down the desk towards cafeteria, while i received a call from one of my old friend. I thought of having a chat with him sitting on a couch in break out area of my office. Finished a chat and was just checking my phone for running messages on whatsapp. It was quite a dark noon and break out area was having a deserted look. It was in the midst of silence that i heard sound of boots from a female walking in. 
Completing by client visit, i was scheduled to return back to Mumbai from cochin.
Though by travel was domestic, my flight was international.
The flight was a special flight by Indian airlines and destined to reach UAE via Mumbai. Infact my company booked this as this was the cheapest option avialble then. I had to give handover to my colleague, and so i thought why not give it on the day i have to fly. Since i had whole day with me. We started our sessions and it was like taking a hell lot of time. And finally as it happens always wid me before every travel, i was running short of time to reach airport. Although i knew i will make it up, as i have never missed train in my life, juz like kareena kapoor ka “JAB WE MET”. I left the customer premises at 1600 hours, well now i had enough time to make it to airport via hotel. I started off to reach hotel Excellency, it took me half an hour from the site. And then i remembered that yes, before leaving this place i need to clear up all the pending bills. Never mind, i had enough time. I made all the payments and str
ated check out procedure. I got an unexpected call from my Mumbai collegue and he asked to leave the laptop at hotel as he was coming there, this urged the need to data transfer. I had to transfer around 6 gb of data to my portable harddisk. I hurriedly started the process. I had company of my other collegues and friends already to disturb me in this situation. I was accompanied by a senior with me, who had to catch up the same flight. He was the most worried person as if he is the only in on this planet scheduled to fly before the world ends and it was 13t December 2012.
Finally i was done and we left the hotel. We had hotel cab and some girls for company, ofcourse my office mates to be droped on the way to airport. Hurriedly we occupied our seats and the cab started. THAT was the time i remembered i didn’t had taken the printout of tickets. FUCK was the call and i got tensed. i immediately grabed my data card to opend my comapany’s email id. I mailed it to my gmail account and was searching for internet cafe. I had to take printout asap. I aked the cab driver to check for some cafe. Then i remembered that i had a friend at cochin who can help me out, i called him up and he was sitting at his office. I called him up, forwarded him mail and asked him to get a printout and come at the place where i was goin to drop females with us. The meeting of print out handover was a big square, right was airport and we crosses the signal and waited for my friend. I called him up and alias in this time of hurry he was standing at diagonally opposite end of the square. I got out of the cab and ran towards him, i did not was to miss the flight anyhow and bare the ticked money, on top of that my boss would have kicked me out. I ran like shahrukh khan of kuch kuch hota hai, to catch him. Finally i got him. Snatched the printout of my friends hand and ran towards the cab, bye bye to girls and we rushed towards the airport.
In all this drama, we realized that we didn’t had food. We stopped for a while and had famous banana chips of kerla. We reached airport just in time. Although a domesict fligh, we had to catch it up from cochin international airport. Airport was fantastic treat to eyes, far better than Mumbai international airport. We checked in to find that flight was delayed by 4 hours.We had a real hard time to kill. We watched the mallu movie shown at airport. I was fantasizing about the brave director who directed it. That's how i was looking at airport.
Finally the flight arrived and we started to board. Occupying a window seat i tried to rest back to find the lever welded out. Cushions repaired, overall the flight looked like being not used since years. The food tray was not sticking up. I was so frightened that i thought this to be my last flight. We i somehow enjoyed the flight with fear on back of my mind. I was playing
with
the knob to hold the food tray, i even hanged my boarding pass there. Yes, the same boarding pass that i m carrying with me in my hand in the snap above. We landed Mumbai airport. Ahhh.. what a feeling, as i had bad time at cochin, specially this hectic journey. But this was not he end. We had landed international airport. We passed through security checks after landing and the gaurd there then demanded for boarding pass. Fuck, where’s the pass. I checked by baggage, all pockets, bad i had a cargo with 10 pockets. I was looking fool searching alone until i had a comapnay, 1 more foreigner din had the pass .
We both looked in each other;s eyes and to gaurd. The foreigner searched hard and he found his. I was the alone traveller who din had boarding pass. All this bomb blast season forced the security gaurds at there best. He called up his seniors and they decied to check the manifest of the flight. My seniors already started to curse me. He was newly married and had his wife waiting for him in bed.I asked him to go ahead n go home as this would take time, Moron really left leaving me in despair. I stared to converse and convince the gaurd. She was a Marathi female. I started in Marathi. After all Mumbai was a city of Thakre’s. And i took the Raj thakre advantage. I told her about my identity. Showed her my pan card, driving license. Finally she let me go. Akhir baat karne se hi toh baat banti hai. This added to half hours delay.
I reached the baggage counter. I found my senior there still waiting for baggage. The baggage was not yet put on belts, reason being the airport athorites were waiting for some belt to get free. We had another half hours wait making our total dealy to 6 hours.
I remembered the rush we had to catch a delayed flight with delayed baggage with lost boarding card all the way coming to pune from the airport. To get a moral from this, start early when u have to travel n always check for tickets. You must be thinking why i m repeating this when we all know this very well n grown up. This is because this can happen with anyone of us anytime.
It was an unplanned trip, we thought of it on Saturday night and executed it Sunday morning. Addy, Niks, Priyank and me gathered our gears to hit sihangadh in early hours of beautiful Sunday morning. Unplanned Plan was to start off from our viman nagar residence right after the dawn. But we work up to find that our eden garden residence had no water supply. Niks was worried abt it since night, and we others realize the consequences only in morning hours. All woke up but unable to decide abt the start.Finally by God’s grace tap’s were open and water started flowing. We got fresh and started with Amits Alto to hit the GADH. The drive was around 40 km, one way, with a steep ghat of abt 15 kms in that. We were charged a 50 bucks to take our CAR to the top. Well theres another way to reach there and that is to trek. The road was so pathetic and too steep to drive in second gear. Finally we made it to the top listening all the way to Michael and himesh.
Moment we park our car, people started rushing on to us “Ithe gaadi lava, dahi kandi bhaji kha, charshe payrya aahe gadha var, kahi khaun java”, the voices started following each other, as all vendors there made desperate attempts to grab our attention. We least bothered, and started on climbing the fort. We reached the entrance door of the fort. We had already started snapping each other right away. Priyank started playing golf on the top of roof, don’t know if it was tiger woods effect. I wanted to have a brotherly snap with niks, but he refrained. We moved on and horse stable, few old remains of the fort. As our bladders were ful, we were looking for a place to pee until we found one, but it was charged, 3Rs/pax, but those 3 Rs were not less than heaven for us. Relived we moved on to grab a hill top view. There was a group of teenage girls besides us. Addy’s suddenly became active from his dormant state and started clicking there pictures. Even the girls were sending signals to him, which only he intercepted. We appointed Priyank as our TANAJI to lead us throught fort. Tanaji insited us check out the wind point. We moved along the fort, tyring ourselves to find the point. Mid way we stopped to have the famous “DAHI, Kandi bhaji”. Dahi was extremely delicious. It melted down through my nerves juz like ice. We had around 2 rounds of bhaji each and a sexy chai to end our feast. The search for wind point continued, this time it was too tiring. We reach another gate named as “Kalyan Gate” which had eye catching view. Addy had almost given up the hope of reaching wind point, and not even dared to climb the gate. He entertained himself clicking our snaps from distance. Clicking few we moved on to follow foot steps of our Tanaji, priyank to take us to wind point. The mercury was rising and we again halted for food. The moment food vendors see us, they start calling up for dahi, bhaji, and pithla bhakar. We decided to go on for one. Immediately mousie there grabed a chatai for us and we settled down under the shadow of tree. We discussed all the topics here, mainly about psychology. We asked various interesting questions that juz made us know better each other. Resting for a while, we waited for tanaji’s order. Finally we reached the windpoint, and to tell u it was worth the efforts we took to reach there. The group of girls we left behind soon joined us, and Addy had all the excitement back in him. We clicked some action snaps, flying high in air. Observed the flight of eagle and had an google earth view of the pune city. Spending some time there, we walked back to our car parking. Coming back, we peed at some reserved area, and saved valuable 3 bucks ;) We steeped down the gadh having malai koolfi and further having kairi’s and berry’s to make our stomach’s a complete bin. At car park, we had a fresh tea to start our journey back to city.
Together we spent a quality time and hope to visit again to this lovely place more often in future.
I booked the tickets and a cab came to took me to that place. It was 25 kms away, he picked the fellow passengers and to my surprise, all were foreigners’. With me was a 65 yr old foreigner lady from my hotel. She had a stick to support her while walking. We reached the place. A boat was lady, and again I was surprised not seeing a single India. Well since I was alone it hardly mattered. I helped the lady to climb the boat with help of the boatman.
Boatman was wearing a cap, a shirt and off course ‘lungi’. Lungi is the pride of cochin. No matter what you are driving, a boat, a bicycle, bike or bmw, all are in lungi. The boat was made up of wood, tied together by coir, (sutli) made from coconut. There were 20 neelkamal chairs kept on the boat. I grabed one chair, helping the old lady to have one. Boat started, it was tremendously slow moving. The height of back water was around 6 feet and there were two boat men controlling the boat. One was at front side and other one back. They had a long bamboo stick with them, they used to put it inside the water and push the boat. This made the boat so slow to move that time almost stopped for me. I looked down, and up and down and up and again to my watch to see the clock moving. I began to curse myself for wakening up to early in morning to catch this pathetic trip. I imagined myself diving off into water and somehow swim to make life a litle fast forward, but the boat moved, with its own sweet speed and guide explained about the various trees and shrubs and plants that grow on the back water, one of the foreigners screamed when she discovered a mango tree inside water, guide told us that it looks like mangoes but it’s a poisonous fruit. The guide was so bore, that I thought why he din ate it in place of mango. The boat moved tring, tring, tring.. slowly slowly… and I now started to hate myself. The site seeing soon turned out to be a industrial visit as guide showed us how the coconut are kept in water for six months and dried up to form the coir. A lady has a small mechanical machine to turn the cores of small pieces of fiber into coir. I was getting bored enough until I decided to have some conversation with a foreigner, She was sweet girl from Australia. To begin with her, I bought a banana chips packed sold by one of the villagers there. I told her that these banana’s are awesome in taste. She bought a packed and we being talks. I exchanged her views on different beaches in INDIA, as I knew only GOA beachs.. I ask her about how she planned the trips, her reply was that she never plans any tirp. I raised my eye brows and she looked back saying she only buys tickets. NG pays her tickets and stay of few days and later on its her own. I asked her if she had visited BALI, one of the hot favorite destination of ausies And this gave me a chance to elaborate on this topic, as I been to there before. I thought that she is the one who gonna make my day somehow until she slipped and her SLR camera fell on the ground breaking lens. I helped her and asked if that thing is working, she picked it up and said its fine. A minute later she came to me and said, no its not fine and after that she din uttered a single word to me. And I too kept mum. Our small back water trip was over and I stepped out of the boat, off course lending hand to the old age woman.
