So it began with the mighty Mumbai trip and now I almost completed 6-7 trips, slowly I’ll pen down my experiences.
To start with………
“Yeh hai Bombay, Bombay meri jaan………”
A trip to Bombay came across my mind, when I was hearing this song in radio. I wanted to check, what secrets this city holds, that so much of importance is given to this. I got into internet and started searching things and also started checking with my friends for accompanying me.
At last, tour plans versions 1.0, 2.0, etc….were framed by my friend, who was joining me for the trip (Subhashini). We decided to go with 5.0 and started our journey on 07th January 2010.
7th January 2010:-
Again as usual it was a dramatic start for us. We thought 90 mins was more than enough to reach Majestic railway station from Marathahalli however we were proved wrong by Bangalore traffic. Our train was at 2010hrs and at 1950 we were still at Hudson circle. We decided to catch an auto from there, and got down at the traffic signal to see around 100 vehicles around us. Slowly negotiating across each vehicle we started checking for auto rickshaws. Three of them rejected us and before the 4th auto driver replied we got into his auto.
All the way till station our fingers were kept crossed. We were at the station at 2008hrs and luckily our coach was just in front of the platform. By the time we sat on our seats, the train gave a gentle push. We were exactly on time, before we felt lucky the train stopped and waited for 10 more minutes. May be the railways were showing mercy to our fellow passengers struck in traffic.
Exactly at 2020hrs the train left station, and along with it we also…. with lot of dreams to visit the financial capital and highly populated city of India.
Before the trip I had framed the following things to do at Mumbai:-
1) Eat Vadapav,
2) Travel in double decker bus
3) Travel in last local Metro
4) Meet dabbawalas,
5) Visit the dobbyghat
6) Have drinks in dancebar ;-) etc,etc..,
Thinking of this, I started snoring in the upper berth allotted for me.
08th January:-
I woke up well before the sun, and got myself fresh. Came back to berth and saw many of them sleeping around me. I had no other choice, so I restarted mine.
The journey was not tiresome. Soon after breakfast we started getting introduced to each other and played some card games.
Passing by various yellow boards which had their names painted on them, we crossed, Karnataka, Andhra, and again got in to Karnataka and then at last entered Maharashtra.
It was almost 1500hrs in the evening, when our journey got somewhat interesting; we were passing by the western ghats over, Lonavala and other places.
In and out from the tunnels were stunning. And I think it was my first time to enter into a tunnel. We were lost in the beautiful sceneries across the hill side, and awesome sun set. We never knew when we got into the outskirts of the city.
By the time we got down at kalyan junction, Subha had 2 parents and one aunt. All of them blessed her and we exchanged our contact numbers. We were first surprised to see the empty local trains and then realized that it was already 1900hrs. We traveled till thane and bought ourselves two new smart cards. This is a kind of prepaid card for traveling in trains and BEST buses. You just need to swipe the cards at source and destination and it will calculate and deduct money accordingly.
I dropped Subha at her PG in Ghansoli and traveled with my friend Ragesh, who was there in Ghansoli station waiting for me. We reached my PG, which was around 20 kms away from ghansoli and I slept immediately without delaying a minute.
To be continued..........
