More Travel!!!

Happy New year Everbody
So says the blogger named V

I finally did some travelling. Every year, my close knit group of wierdos also known as my family goes to visit our religious deity, in a temple town known as Tuljapur, which is about an hour away from one of The Indian Railway's main bastions, a place called Solapur. COntinuing with the information, Solapur also has one of the busiest railway schedules, and at any given time, one can see a train either chugging in or out of the platform.

When I was old enough to be made a part of this tradition, roughly at the age of 4, we used to rent a room at the railway waiting rooms. These are large rooms with two beds, and extremely airy ceilings. I used to always hope that we got room number 3. That was the one with the self-flushing toilet. Perhaos i should explain. There was something amiss with the plumbing, and as a result, this particular toilet used to flush every twenty minutes or so. Aside from laughing at that, there's not much to do in there. No television or radio. The rent is for the room, and two thermos loads of tea. Therefore, I used to explore. Down the stairs used to lead me to platform number one, where I was allowed to go on my own after the age of 10. The big trains come on this platform, the Grade-A trains so to speak. The Udyan from Bangalore, the Dadar-Chennai express with it's colorful engine, the Jayanthi-Janatha taking a pit-stop on it's way to Kanyakumari all found a halt on Platform number 1. Considering Solapur is a pretty important station, the halt is for about twenty minutes. In days gone by, you could exit the train, help yourself to a steaming cup of tea and some excellent onion pakoras. However, the railways, in some insane twist, felt that those stoves would serve as means to aid terrorists and hence discontinued it. Damned paranoid fools. However, they still serve the best omlettes on this station, and i will swear by that!!

Once you get out of the station, the next thing I'd be exposed to was the bus-stand. If people have read my earlier post on how much I love travel, they'd know that busstands have a special place in my heart. This is no difference. Buses coming from the very hearts of Maharashtra pull in, and the clientele that exists serves to remind me that there is more to this state than the city of Mumbai. People still wear the traditional Gandhi caps, these ones white, speak pristine Marathi, and discuss the price of livestock, all adding to the quaint old-world charm. Ofcourse, the dry heat does it's best to sap you of all energy, and the hard water does make you reach for the cola bottle a lot more willingly than usual, but it's all a part of the rustic experience I guess.

Once you leave the town of Solapur, it's about an hour's journey through some sugarcane fields to the town of Tuljapur, wherein lies the temple of Tulja Bhavani. This town used to be extremely well-protected by Shivaji's soldiers, considering it was his deity as well. The temple is part of a fort, and still has a back gate that leads into the hills and to some of the higher vantage points. The temple experience I wont go much into, considering it's not really something I like. The crowds are horrible, the place is incredibly filthy, and begging seems to be the prime occupation considering the droves who descend on you. What I do like is the authentic batata-vada and kadak cha we always have after a trip to the temple. It's been as much a part of the temple going ritual as offering our prayers to the deity itself.

Thinkpotty may complain that he can learn all this from the History channel itself, so I assure him that I have steered clear, for the most part, of giving a Lonely Planet description of the two places. I merely tried to convey the feeling of wanting to go somewhere that this trip always brings out in me.

However, we try and improve the experience each time we go. The past two trips, our pit stio has no longer been the waiting rooms at the railway station. Instead, it is now a rather modernistic hotel which goes by the name of Hotel Ambassador and allows it's guests to watch AXN on it's TV sets, and an excellent view of the biggest cowshed I have ever seen, not to mention an excellent to smell the manure as it is being cleared. Sigh. Somehow, as I sit in my air-conditioned room, and watch tv from a very comfortable bed, I feel that this just isn't the same.

But the omlettes here also rock. There is a silver lining.

Pack your bags people. The World is at large.

Cheers

V