My Visit to Delhi and Uttaranchal

Guys,
I had been to Delhi and Uttaranchal last week. Occasion was my cousin's wedding in Roorkee. We Utilized this opportunity and visited Haridwar and Hrishikesh which are 24 and 35 kms from Roorkee respectively. These places are predominantly religious ones but they also have incomparable scenic beauty.

Roorkee is a small town which mainly has Army cantts and IIT, Roorkee. Luckily, the place where we stayed was in front of IIT gate. So, got a chance to visit IIT also. Needless to say that the campus is well maintained and world class facilities are provided to the students.

We started for Haridwar on 22nd Jan. It took around 45 minutes to reach "Har Ki Paudi" in Haridwar. Here I would like to mention that I have stayed in Varanasi for one year and have seen Ganga there also. But this river is so polluted there that I used to think twice before putting even my feet into it. But in Haridwar, Ganga is so pure that you can directly drink water from the river(Now I know where these mineral water bottles come from :)). Ok, so we took bath in the river and thanked god for providing a shortcut to wash out all our sins in one go :). The water was ice cold. At the beginning we could not even get inside the water but ones we were in, it was a nice fun. After taking bath, we performed a small pooja and started for Hrishikesh.

Hrishikesh has only two important places to visit apart from numerous Ashramas. These two are Ram Jhoola and Lakshman Jhoola. Also note that when you visit Ram Jhoola, you must go to the famous "Chotiwala Restaurant". The food out there is excellent and service is also good. Also, you would be greeted by a colored person sitting on a throne with a prominent choti. And this explains the restaurant's name.

On our way back to Roorkee, we visited "Shanti Kunj Ashrama" founded by Pundit Shri Ram Sharma Acharya and Shrimati Bhagwati Devi Sharma. The ashrama is a very good place to meditate and for getting involved in various religious activities.

And how can I forget to mention Baba Ramdev's (The famous Yoga Teacher) "Patanjali Yogpeeth". That place looks like a 5 Star hotel. It has got all the facilities possible. Without getting into controversies and begging pardon from the devotees of Baba Ramdev, I would like to tell that whatever he is, he has got a brilliant business mind and has very good leadership skills. In Strictly positive sense, I would recommend that our MBA students should leave Lalu Yadav for Railways and take some classes from these Babas and Gurus.

I returned to Delhi on 24th after attending the wedding and relaxed for two days and spent some nice time with my family. On 27th January, we visited "Akshardham Temple" in Delhi. If I have to explain this place in one word then I would say "Unbelievable". The architecture and marble stone carvings are simply unmatched. It is spread out in acres of land and has 4 main temple-like buildings. The main temple has an idol of "Sri Narayanaswamy". Even for most of the people like me who are not a follower of this sampradaya, it is a highly recommended place to see. It seems slightly exaggerated but I would say that people who visit India must see two things, one is Tajmahal and the other is Akshardham Temple.

Note that if you want to save time during the Akshardham visit, don't take big bags, mobiles, cigarettes etc with you. It saves the time which I spent in filling up forms and waiting in the queue for depositing these things with the security.

Extremely sorry for not adding snaps. I did not have my digital camera with me. I certainly have some snaps taken from my old camera which I can get scanned and publish.

New Year Blast

Had a nice time with friends on new year's eve. The venue was Manish's house and Kaal, Hemant and Myself were invited. As usual we were busy B. Chatting (our way of gossiping) for hours.
We have surely matured with time but still our wild instincts have not died and whenever we meet, we talk and 'discuss' about unimaginable stuff. The specialty was home food. Thanks to Shweta and partially to Leena. And how can we forget the major contributions of Manish towards preparing Aaloo-dum. We people just had to chat and hog (literally, believe me).

Thanks to Manish ji for making this happen.