Growing India, Shining India

Traveling leaves with you a lot of stories to tell. You just have to keep your all five senses open.

So this story is about when you really feel - no, something is changing. I have this feeling when we were traveling from Aurangabad to Shirdi. As we have learned a life long lesson of booking hotels beforehand (if possible) during our Ratnagiri trip, the men's section of our group was worried. We were again without hotel. I was a bit relaxed, as it was Shirdi. You can get hell lot of hotels there.

In Shirdi, you don't have to search for things. Things search you. Seriously, You just reach Shirdi somehow.  Then people will be after you for rooms. Once room is settled, they will be after you to a shortest route to temple, then Prasad shop, then Shanisignapur and everything. If you have vehicle, they will be after you for parking. If you are just walking at night, they will be after you for dinner. I think this place is somewhat similar like Mumbai. It never sleeps. You reach anytime of the day or night, crowd simply never fades away there.

So I was telling you, we were on the way to Shirdi from Aurangabad and there was this highway and it was almost dark. We were at some road side dhaba for tea. And the men's section was searching on phone to get some hotel in Shirdi. And yes, it was done in next 15 minutes.

So you are one some dhaba on some poorly light highway with hardly any vehicle in sight. The place is surrounded by hills from all side. And there you are booking hotels at this deserted looking place on your phone. Don't you get the feeling of something is changing ?

Happy Ghumakkadi :)

The Honeymoon period !!!

No no no....don't start guessing by the title...like they say never judge a book by it's cover. I am not gonna give you account of my honeymoon period or for that matter of anyone else's.

In fact if you know India well, at the end you will be surprised by the talent we Indians possesses. We can link two stories, poll apart from each other, if we set our mind for it.

So it all happened when we were exploring the Ajanta caves in Aurangabad. Now these Ajanta-Ellora caves, apart from being the marvelous example of Indian craftsmanship from thousand of year ago, I must say they have their fare share of eroticism as well. And here we are in 21st century and you know what fuss it generates in India if someone dares to talk of his/her hidden feelings.

So there we were inside the caves tired of walking, sitting and eating snacks, when I heard something.

Young guide: As they were on their honeymoon and you can see she was not letting him touch, though sitting very near.

Foreign woman: Ohh...hahaha

Young guide: yeah.. as you can see he was even trying to kiss..but she was very shy..

Foreign woman: (laughed even more)

And there I was dying to know whose honeymoon period was being discussed there openly in India. As the place guide was referring to was on the other side of the wall, I jumped off as soon as they vacate the place and there were the honeymooners: our very revered God Vishnu and Goddess Lakshmi sitting very next to each other and as simple as we can imagine.

We burst out laughing. These guides, they can cook up any story just to tell you something. This time as the client was a foreigner, he cooked even more deliciously.

After some time we again saw that guide, this time he was talking to some other foreigner (most probably a Korean or Chinese) in respective language. And intermittently he was talking to some local people in Marathi and Hindi. So the young guide was having a good command over at least 5 languages. Well as impressive as the story itself...

Happy Ghumakkadi :)