DAY3#Fun things to do when your college slams an indefinite closure on you

DAY 3

First thing running in my mind when i wake up - Last day of that Awesome breakfast and Dinner.

Today is Jaipur sightseeing day.

We set off stomach bursting towards the old part of Jaipur and learnt why it was called the pink city. Some phoren prince fellow was visiting Jaipur and we being the ever-sweet, guest loving country that we are( we let the British rule us for how many years?) decided to paint all the buildings pink to welcome him to the city. I guess they still follow that rule, cause even the new buildings in that area are painted pink .


The Hawa Mahal - for the ladies to look out and see whats happening without disobeying the purdah rule

From here we went towards the Amber Fort. I think thats the single best thing about Jaipur. From the elephant ride to the actual fort , i think it was spectacular. The elephants used to go on countless trips to leave visitors at the entrance to the fort but since one elephant fainted due to exhaustion the Govt stepped in and made it mandatory that each elephant is allowed only 5 trips a day. My elephant-driver nicknamed his elephant Ferrari , obviously you ll know why. He would have overtaken atleast 6 elephants, i held on for dear life but it was a lot of fun. 

A lot of Jodha-Akbar scenes were shot here. Aishwarya being carried away to be married to Akbar  is along the above road. The sword fighting scene is inside the same fort.

One of the gardens inside the fort- everything is symmetric and beautiful

One can spend the entire day inside the fort. The maternal house of Jodha bai is here and all the houses have holes to allow the women to have a look at the proceedings of the day without venturing out. We next saw the Jantar mantar. It had a whole lot of physical instruments indicating time and day which didnt make any sense to me and i doubt the guide knew what he was talking about. 

Anyway this was what i was tallking about - something about the stars and all. Physics and me -no connection

The Jal palace in the middle of the Man Sagar lake in Jaipur . Some hotel has bought it and plans to convert it into a resort type place. Looks majestic, guessing it'll take a fortune to stay there for a night.

Got so interested in the mughal history that i bought this book at the Airport .Its the first of the series chronicling the lives of Babur, Humayun and then Akbar. Blow-by-blow account of their lives , it was worth the read

Brilliant time .Met some great folks there.

 My phone tricked me.  Airtel somehow welcomed me to Andhra Pradesh when i landed in Gujarat . Still trying to figure how that happened.

Cheers :)

DAY2#Fun things to do when your college slams an indefinite closure on you

DAY 2


The next day we set off for Ajmer. Got up comparitively late, had the usual brilliant breakfast and set off with Bhagat Singh ,our driver. Now Ajmer is around 130 km away from Jaipur. The plan was to reach there around 11a.m and then do the Friday namaaz and leave

We reached and found a guy to help us out with the chaddar. We entered the dargah through the back entrance. I didnt quite understand why, we took an auto through the smallest of the smallest roads of India to reach one of the most holy renowned places of India

The main road leading to the Dargah super-crowded

I don't know how we got through that alive but getting into the Dargah and getting out was no mean feat. I got a little help from a small kid who appeared out of nowhere and shooed people who were coming in the opposite direction to make way for me. I couldn't even thank him, he just vanished after that.

A pot that cooks 4800 kg of food- just imagine how long that' ll take to cook

After doing our chaddar formalities , we had to do the prayers. Now ladies and men never pray together. Its always the women behind the men so that the men can't see the women ,and i mean literally. So this meant we had to find place for ourselves. Now first we found place to sit. Then they shooed us away saying that men had to sit there. That happened for every other place we sat at. Finally exasperated we walked out of the place and waited for the men to finish. Now , the jamaat prays on the road surrounding the mosque, so again the shooeing began. Finally (this is the last finally) we waited near the corner of a road.

Despite a bomb blast , scores of policmen waiting at the entrances and the bomb detecting entrances , its no big feat to bring in a bomb into the dargah. I had a huge handbag and all the policewoman did was to customarily open the bag and thrust it right back at me. No one seemed to follow the no camera, no mobile phone order.

What i learnt out of today:

1) Never go to a religious place on a Friday afternoon;

2) India is developed Yes, but not in every state. Ajmer looks like what Chennai would look 25 years ago.

3) Kudos to the dargah for handling unbelievable crowds like that. I dont know what they do , but they do it well .

4) Filth, pigs, dogs ,cats, impoverished people,diseases like encephalitis  - This was the real India.

  Had a mouth-watering lunch at one of the dhabbas. Simple but Yummy.

  Tired but Happy. Mission accomplished

DAY1#Fun things to do when your college slams an indefinite closure on you

DAY 1


It started off innocently enough with a small protest within college. It ended up in a 3-week long, well-publicized shutdown for no valid reason.

What i got out of all this was a well deserved holiday to JAIPUR.

The plan was initially only Jaipur and Ajmer. Once we landed there, our aWesome driver told us that 2 days for Jaipur alone would be a waste. So within that 20-minute drive from the Airport to the Hotel we decided on going to Agra ( jlt) 

Next day morning we set off on a 232 km drive and i did what i am best at, #Sleep. Yes, spectacular buffet breakfast+ the most comfortable Innova car + a non-bumpy drive is equivalent to the most boring lecture in my history of dumb subjects studied.

My first time seeing this masterpiece and it came as a complete surprise. Seemed more like some giant had just placed his beautiful little toy on Earth . I still can't believe that we( as in our species) actually built it. Pinch me.

We caught hold of some photographer who made us pose in THE most atrocious poses ever . Forget holding the top needle of Taj, that's olden style. Latest styles include the romantic gazes, the high jumps, the shy-bride look, the easy-chair look, the-i-am-thinking look and the-oh-wow look.Its difficult to give that intense look or even look your normal self when they ask you to look a certain way, so i ended up trying not to show all my remaining 28 teeth and looking quite the looker:p Sparing you the agony and not putting them up.

From here we rushed to Fatehpur Sikri. Without a guide ,going there is basically useless because everything looks the same at first sight. My dad told the poor guide that i didnt know Hindi ,so the poor thing had to make do with his rehearsed English speech about Akbar and his wives .I have to commend on these peoples English speaking skills, for their livelihood they actually learn an entire new language. 

Akbar's Diwan -i- Khas where Akbar would sit in the middle and his ministers from various religions would sit in the four corners

Akbar seems to have been this real cool guy. He had  many wives. But then the wives were of different religions Hinduism, Christianity and Islam etc. He provived different palaces for each of them and the architecture that he built was a mixture of each culture . The result was something brilliant. There was a palace which had been painted in blue and the paint was still intact despite hundreds of years of wear and tear

The Panch Mahal with gradually diminishing height of each of the 5 tiers

The Buland Darwaza which is one of the largest gateways in the world which is 54 mts high

The tomb of Salim Chishti 

Wonder of the world and also on the UNESCO World Heritage List  #bEautiful Agra

Soupy little Situation

CLICK THE PIC TO ENLARGE

Now MIT isn’t your average typical engineering college( not arrogantly boasting)  . No no , I don’t mean that because Abdul Kalam senior studied here … not because every 3rd  topper  gives a speech on SUN TV that he/she wants to get into the prestigious Aeronautical Department notwithstanding the fact that they have absolutely no idea why they want to join it in the first place.

                                              No, no. Oh no.Why because we did this and ended up dissed in the face.

Zipping it up.