trip to sikkim
Trip to sikkim – cal , Njp, gangtok, tsango lake , unsuccessful nathula and baba mandir , endless daaru, the IIML crowd, rechristening as chotu Tarzan Murgi wali, the seven sisters fall.
lachung and Yumthang valley (-13 km) say no to Katau, in gangtok –Then trip to pelling, the separation in upper lower and middle pelling. Scary night adventure. The one man army, the bangu loving lawyer uncle and the neglected wife. Kanchanjunga vie,. River rafting in Meli that could never happen. In Pelling ancient capital of sikkim and old capital of sikkim a chorten
Before I begin let me introduce u to “ HUM Paanch” main alias chotu, Bangu, Dwivedi alias ACP, Bhaiya aur bhabi.
So Hum paanch start from our very own green land school and reach this supposedly sleepy city’s railway station at around 10 at night, and ahh or aha ! Here we are. We get our first worth describing scene. The station is medium crowded, pretty ok for the time. And we see at a bench behind us, in the middle of everything a couple playing sweet games as if it was talkatora garden or Victoria memorial park. On the railway station? on the platform ? Whatever. and then people say Orissa is backward.
We then board the train which takes us to Cal, morning at 8; most of us facing the same problem, you understand now don’t you. btw this problem stayed with most of us for most of the days in the trip. But still every time we saw food, ACP used to order –“sutoo”. Toh subah aath baje humne howrah st ke food plaza mein sutoo machaya. Aur fir Hum paanch Pappu ke ghar gaye. Ya … Hum chaar. Haan obviously Bangu is a bong and he shud have smn to meet up in Cal, now this was a special smn. Gud for him. So he left us and instructed us to meet him at 4.30 below a huge watch. “ tum log mujhe saRe chaar baje baRa ghaRi ke neeche milna”
We reached pappu’s place, where lucky Bhaiya was greeted with the traditional hug. From Pappu’s place we set out to explore a bit of Kolkatta where we met the other four creatures from Greenland who were headed towards Bhutan. In Kolkatta we saw Victoria memorial of course including the park. And a Photo exhibition. Here we were joined by my sweetheart Navs who happily treated us on lunch at a nice park street restaurant. She got a loud round of applause for the same in the restaurant itself. And for Pappu we chanted “seekho isse kuch seekho”.
Park street is a must visit if you go to Cal n I must say the tea in front of the CA institute was good.
Now since Bangu had called us to station 1 hour before the train time. We obeyed, and there we were waiting, “BaRa ghaRi ke neeche” baRi der intezar kiya par Bangu nahi aaya. And so when he came, the infuriated ACP stated “Tum Bengali #&%* tumhara makaan pote denge dhaniya bo denge” and rest is history. how this then became the favorite dialogue for chotu (me) n Bangu. n how the rest got totally sick of it.
We reached NJP (New Jalpaiguri) next morning n took a shared jeep to Gangtok, made all the arrangements for the stay n sight seeing at SEN travels. Pretty decent place, bangu used some of his Bengali antics n then we started from there.
A bit about jeeps, the mahindra savari or …………… is the common mode to travel which is packed with 10 + 1 (driver) people. Now it is best if you are 8- 10 of you who have gone to the trip else you will have to become 10 and ADJUST. Also within gangtok taxis (which are maruti omni) don’t take more than 4 people so 8 works out the best. Midway there was a roadblock that made us halt for some 2 hours. And then there was bachon ki chilpun, ulti (vomit) dhool (dust), pyaas (thirst) n all that, we were totally exhausted n freaked out by the time we reached our Wild Orchid Hotel room in gangtok. Point to be noted here is that as against Bhaiya and Bhabi I am not a fan of little and noisy kids, who scream, sing pakau bollywood numbers and vomit. So like I said the above stated is totally my point of view, totally biased and straight from the gut...
We went to Lal bazaar in the evening n bought a bottle of brandy, oh forgot to tell you it was chilly there. Otherwise we are nice kids we don’t booze n all. So this was brandy (1).
Next day early morn we started for tsomgo lake called ‘chango’ lake. What a place! A frozen lake and lots of snow all around. There were snow boots, leather gloves and jackets available there. Also yaks if you wana ride all the way to the top. Now a bit of description of the snow boots – these are gum boots, made of rubbery plastic, and are lent to you for ten bucks so over the years their heels might get worn out. and no one bothers
( you get the worn out ones if you are unlucky enough) like I was. So the minute I wore them I felt uneasy but I din react much. Now a snow place doesn’t mean all snow it means ice, water, stiff snow and all that, so wen u walk on such a place with boots as described, good things can’t happen to you for sure.
I lost balance once on the plane road, but din bother then all of us started climbing on the snow capped peaks. Ur feet could go atleast 2- 12 inches in the snow every time you put ur feet on it. And here I slipped again, and again I then gave up “ mujh se nahi hoga” I was panting heavily and I was feeling as if I will die of an heart attack or my heart will burst. But bangu and ACP helped me climb a bit more. I crawled like a chimp on the snow slipping and standing. From a particular point every body was sliding down in a snow slide. So did all of us, it was great fun. Now after the slide ends u gotta walk, but I wished the slide continued. Cause now the minute I stood I wud fall, so after hurting my back side painfully thrice already I refused to stand up only. Finally crawling slipping sliding and with help from ACP I almost reached the road, when he said now stand up there is a lot of yak-shit around and u will get dirty if u slide on it. So for one final time in front of some 5-6 yaks and 15-20 people in a passage I stood and took one step just fall on wet concrete road, decorated with yak sit, my woolen cap was on my side and I was lying prostrate in the middle of all this. This was the final blow I cud hardly move after this I couldn’t really feel anything due to the cold water that had made me numb. So when we reached back I kept lying on the bed for that day with Volini and a hot water bag. So much for the day and like always we ended the day with brandy (2). So day 1 of sight seeing had only Chango Lake (not that I could take more) and due to snow blocked roads and bad weather we missed both Baba Mandir and Nathula pass (china border). Supposed to be nice places yet not very different from what we saw. Baba mandir has some café and is named after an army man who died fighting in the sino-indian war and is still supposed be hanging around in that place. So every year a jeep is sent for him to go back home n all.
Next morning on a painful hip and a nice sunny day. We started out to a 2 days and 1 night trip to Yumthang valley, this time in the shared jeep we had better luck our co passengers were a group of 5 guys from IIM L, nice people to. The road trip to Yumthang via Lachung is beautiful and bumpy not snowy though. It’s a 5 – 6 hours journey, so the driver spent some time trying to get his cassette player fixed but no use. Now we started without any entertainment source except ourselves. We took lot of snaps on the way, of deep valleys and high peaks and the river teesta. Some of us also tried to display our vocal cords to the amusement of every body else. Once when I saw a deep n dark valley n there was a killing silence in the jeep, I said “ yahan toh Tarzan hona chahiye” on this people burst laughing and later when I saw few big murga’s on the road I shouted “woh dekho murgi” on this small mistake of mine, I was instantly rechristened as Chotu Tarzan Murgiwali.
After seeing the Seven Sisters fall on the route we reached Lachung in the evening it was even chillier there and it rained too. So we had brandy again (3).the day was spent traveling, singing and eating.
Lachung was an amazing place there was a water fall inside the place that we stayed. The lodge was called MYSTIQUE INN. Just like you have your very own garden it was your very own waterfall.
It was only next morning that we started for Yumthang valley, the way up was covered with snow and 14 km prior to the valley, in the Rhododendron sanctuary all cars stopped as the road was also covered with snow and ice. So we got down to enjoy whatever we got. We walked for 1 km in the snow with our regular shoes (thankfully) and reached a quite snow covered place where we shouted, played in the snow, threw snow balls at each other and clicked lots of photos. Rhododendrons means ‘Rhodo’ for brown ‘Dendron’ for plants. Actually snow plants. And yes I did not fall or break anything else here. proving the fault in the snow boots.
After Yumthang valley did not materialize, the driver said that we can pay some more and go to a place called Katau. Supposed to very gud covered with snow ice and all that.
All of us refused it saying ‘aur nahi katwana’ so from there we went back to base Gangtok.
Next day had been kept for sightseeing in Gangtok, for which our travel was not booked the hotel guy said it wud take 700 per taxi and we wud need two since one taxi carries only 4 people but then we sealed the deal in 500 per taxi, with a local guy. True under age taxi drivers Now there are some 7 -10 points in Gangtok u can choose haw many to see - Rumtek monastry nalanda institute, rope way, and other useless places like flower show and viewpoints. The only worth it place is Rumtek monastery and it is real gud. Heard there is a Hanuman tok around which is also gud, Tok is a mandir.
Next day we went to Pelling. after frantically searching for a taxi or jeep finally we got one via Zorethang. So the connecting flight from Zorethang to Pelling was an open jeep, what fun to have an open jeep in absolutely chilly weather. Fortunately we reached in afternoon so we were able to go sight seeing that day. A tour was booked at 200 per person for 10 spots to be covered in 2 days. We saw the old capital of Sikkim and the ancient capital of Sikkim, which are two distinct and very beautiful places especially the old capital, a monastery, alpine forests, several waterfalls and lake a very picturesque place, the singing stone which was a farce and other view points. Next day in the evening we experimented with funny sounding dishes like Fak-thuk, ……………
In one of these water falls, which was actually our last view point for the trip ACP, bhaiya and Bhabhi sick due to lack of adventure ventured out to reach the start of this huge waterfall. Me and Bangu sensibly chickened out. It was a rocky climb up to the fall. They also chose not to come back through the stairs and explore their own way through the woods. Their adventure was succusfully fulfilled with ACP getting a bruised arm and bhabi slipping once leading to near heart attack for bhaiya. Amazing courage on the part of all three.
Pelling is a small and very beautiful and quite place, if not for lodges and hotels it would have had no population at all it seems. The entire town max 5 km of winding roads is divided into upper lower and middle pelling. So after walking down the road from our hotel in upper Pelling in ten minutes we could reach middle Pelling. Our hotel was run by one man – appropriately named the one man army. This guy alone managed the cash counter, room service and food; there was supposedly a girl also who helped in cooking etc, though we never saw her. He also packed lunch for us the day we went for sight seeing. Woke us up at 5 am to get an awesome view of the Kanchenjunga mountain peak from our very own balcony. Amazing ‘one man army’
Labels: trip to sikkim
Time to pay back
Well there was a time when i wrote a notorious entry and became famous by being infamous, anyways those well wishers of mine were well answered this january and now its time for payback.
this post is about - no not farewell, not a continuation of the earlier post, not a sneak peak into my life. its about a topic very close to my stomach oops heart !!! yeah its about food.
prologue - this is an incedent many of my friends have heard but for the lesser mortals, i repeat. I was out on a pseudo date in the garden city, (its only the second time I had gone out with this guy). Now we start with a buffet at "The Only Place" now the meaning of a buffet in my dictionary is to eat till either you die or you feel you have redeemed the amount spent. So anyways i eat and he too does, of course i take a longer time. from there we move on to a coffee shop. where i order something similar to a Devil's own at CCD (rich creamy n all dat) d poor chap orders jus an iced lemon tea. We sit and chat there for like an hour or more n then he says i feel like having a brownie but I am full, me says " don't worry I will share it with you". n there comes the bouncer "Hmm I see you eat well, err i mean not dat u eat a lot jus dat u have a gud diest, which is gud n blah blah ..........." Well jus explains why my orkut status still says 'single'.
So this is payback time, the two years spent at bbsr all the eateries that I have visited today get a review.(will be a biased veiw especially for nonveggies) lets start with
THE MUST VIST : Silver streak - and have the clear soups best so far was the lemon coriander.
mayfair's puchka's and pastries.
hotel swasti for mutton (near railway station)
triumph residency for mutton and drinks and generally gud food.
and the sandwich stall in front of the hlmark shop in shaheed nagar. its a road side stall.
tangerine 9 for affordable food
pal heights for the makhani dal and masala papad- rest i don really love the place
THE nEVER VISITS :
ginger
swasti plaza
trident hilton (except for breakfast - if u have the m0ney that is )
there are lots of other places which i hope people will leave as comments to complete this post
Labels: food
MANAGEMENT Rocks because Marketing rocks
THIS BLOG is a part of the blogging competition@NMIMS-Euphoria 2006-
www.euphoriaonline.netMBA ROCKS but marekting in MBA rocks even better
Main bhi marketing karoongi - The story of 3 days of marketing survey in d life of a B-school resident dats me ofcourse. Read on
I will generally refer to my B- school as Greenland. In this true incident we are four people on this marketing project here reffered to as ME (abuzz), Mr S , Ms S and Mr Rautosky
Day one we are at BPCL outlets measuring customer satisfaction using a 50 questions long servqual questionnaire. pls i don't want any advice on the fact that our questionnaire was too long i love my marketing group and i love my questionnaire (people told me that the questionnaire was tougher than a board exam, some college students called it a replica of the competitive exams complete wid all MCQs and 7 options instead of 4)
ok lets move ahead now
DAY ONE - we reach this outlet where me and a friend are so excited that we straight away head for the In & Out store .(
U see d point is not that we did not know how important this survey was for us but it is a habit or has become a habit of people especially girls in our b-school who are so starved of good things in and around d b school dat the moment we see a shop with beautiful lights and foreign goods or atleast a gud assortment of normal indian goods, matlab grocery items bhi chalenge, we just jump into the shop). Ok so we 2 girls are in d shop and two poor guys go for the first kill. Dey go and talk to the manager of the petrol pump and guess wat? guess na pls CHAWANNI doongi. of course he did not say " aoo na survey karo hum aapka hi intezar kar rahe the. " Ok so wat he said actually was not important, ok i will tell u he very decently refused and said permission lekar aao. In my language dis is called laat marna. Achaa toh laat kha kar Mr S aur Mr rautosky also joined abuzz and Ms S in the In & out store. Now started the store looting spree. for beginers let me tell u In & Outs are BPCL's departmental stores and dey house things like shampoos, biscuits, dryfruits, diapers, icecream, deos, soaps, tooth brush, paste, detergents etc. simply put a lot of gud Home and personal care things and a few packaged foods. Among the four of us we shopped for Rs 800 and 1 hour. after coming out of this place we thought " bahar toh aaye hi hain toh khana kha kar chalte hain" issi khushi mein hum pahunche MAYFAIR nakli dhabha. Jeet ki khushi aur mausam bhi rangeen tha, pet mein bhook thi aur Greenland mein koi kam nahi tha.we ordered we ate and spent wat decent people spend at decent places like these (rs 600 only) we also made some success when we crashed into another member of our group who new the regional incharge of BPCL and so things got rolling. so total cost of day one 600+ 800+ overhead charges = 1500 aprox . Sales = zero questionnaires filled.
DAY TWO - went pretty good we had d letter of permission now. Luckily the guy who got us d permission had jus an year back gone thru the excitements of a B-school life so he cud understand us and we got rolling.we got some 17 questionnaires filled on day two 10 at one outlet and 7 at other. It took us 2 hours to achieve dis feet and den to celebrate we headed to BIG BAZAR as we reached there suddenly we saw people running away from us BIG BAZAR was already tormented by another marketing group who was doing a Servqual measurement at BIG BAZAAR itself. We had hard time explaining that though we are from Greenland but we are not here for a survey, jus harmless shopping. COST = two cornettos (rs 20) + fuel charges + shopping (rs 40 ) = approx rs 100 . Sales = 17 questionnaires.
DAY THREE- Sunday morning and we the punching bags had a class at 9. chalo koi nahi.we also had a prsentation, chalo koi baat nahi.after the class humara mann nahi maana. mausam katilana tha barish hue abhi 10 hi ghante hue the sadak gili thi mann baimaan tha toh socha CCD chalein wahin jaakar questionnaire bharwate hain. Matlab dekho vichaar kitne nek hain humare subah 11 baje CCD kaun aayega !!!!! CCD pahunche. We had cold coffee and a few other friends came along toh unko bhi survey pakda diya ( 2 forms got filled). In the mean time a few college students came to CCD so we distributed our survey questionnaires to them and waited to get them filled, here again out of decency my friend jus asked the guy at CCD can we ?? Of course once again wat did he say??. I mean if u have any bit of common sense u can understand that he did not say."Ya sure this is why we have opened CCD, so dat u guys can come and take surveys from the vella crowd dat comes to CCD to fill surveys" No but again he was extremely cooperative he called up the manager we talked to him and sought an umbrella permission, this point shud be noted by all Greenland denizens. An umbrella permission for all marketing projects will be a boon to our life as marketing students all thanx to UNCLE and Mr rautosky.We came back and i had my lunch and slept for 2 and half hours and was woke up by a call by Mr rautosky saying that we need to go for the survey in the evening in and around that place i mean der is a card shop and a Beauty centre der of course CCD was banned now.So we reached der and started administering our survey we made huge success but my friend Ms S actually got 2-3 laats so her morale went down so i had to buy her crackle pop after that she became happy and started working again.A few snapshots
Sir we are frm greenland we doing a marketing project - Srry i don't have time
Sir we are frm greenland we doing a marketing project on blah blah - I have already filled the survey.
Sir do u have a vehicle, hav u visited BPCL outlets - ya. Do u have some time - No . wud fill the survey - of course i will.
Sir we are frm greenland we doing a marketing project ...- wat will i get if i fill in dis survey, u shud atleast offer me a cup of tea( Mata ka bhandara khola hai kya humne ya diwali sale hai ek questionnaire ke saath ek chai free??)
At the card shop after some time Ms S got restless, she said agar shop wala kuch bol nahi raha toh humme galat fayda nahi uthana chahiye. Den i said ok pooch lete hain. I said " hope u don't have a problem wid we getting the survey filled at ur shop" and guess wat ? wat did he say ? I mean u cannot guess he said of course not !!! u can continue.We continued and den celebrated our success over a pizza and pasta. Wen it came to the choice of pizza me the non-veg starved soul at greenland ( i am alergic to fish) cud not stop my self. And I have a confession to make I ate chicken salami and sausage on my pizza.I don't care if i live tommorow or not. But i lived my life today, its been close to 20 days since i last had chicken, kya karoon control nahi hua, ab ho gayi galti toh kya jaan loge bachi ki. aur leni hai toh le lo I DON'T CARE.
Cost = coffee (sponsored) + pizza ( 240) + toffes for Ms S (rs 10) = Rs 300 Approx. Sales = a whooping 20 questionnaires.
After day one we started going in atleast 2 groups and the assorted sales figure is at 70 currently as per conservative estimates. and total cost i have lost count of it.
Agar main bird flu se nahi mari toh fir blog likhoongi
if bird flu does not take its toll on me i shall be back soon
For all the masala and chat pls visit
http://abuzzunbounded.blogspot.com/
FM the endless struggle
The endless struggle for the FM exam
I hope now people are not coming on this page.
and even if u have u have not come to read that frustrating post. So as adviced by a lot of people i shud write something new but i don have the time u see. I mean as if u don know why , of course i don have the time. I am studying yaar, will write something about my first love biotechnology soon (as adviced by my sweet friend Javed) all i know right now is somebody jus came and blew away all the efforts that we (biotechnologists) had put in understanding stem cells by saying that stem cells do not exist . Now what is this i can't really comment upon it.
But ya what is on my mind right now is FM End Term. what is funny about this subject is every time i start i feel i shud start from the begining and i feel ohh it is so easy and wen it gets tougher i think i will do it tomm, now tomm the cycle repeats itself. dunno wen will i reach the last page. No more posts before 25 Pukka.
On popular demand
shweta_pathejaOk since this is on popular demand it is not goin to be very interesting jus doin it for my friends.Here's a story read on...
After 6 months of mindless exercises and endless tasks countless meetings and infinite exams there came a ray of hope in my life which made it look so meaningful and beautiful.
i started loving it, and got engrossed in watever shone due to that ray of light. Seemed like days are changing and wow change in real terms.
ok before u ask me was dis a living being ..yes. was this a guy ...umm yes ... how old ... 30's . Ok looks ?? extraaa large ...
ha ha ha ok will tell u d profession and end the suspense .. he is a new prof.
No this is not a post on another prof's torture on us. Infact i really respected this guy for the shear enthu he has and his style, but then my ideal story had to have some road blocks. that happened when we wrote his first quiz. Now i thought atleast
he would respect thinkin over muggin but no, to my disamay he wanted to differentiate between those who have read and those who did not.
I am not being judgemental and how can i be. Man imagine the kind of effort he puts in to make not 2 not 3 but 5 sets of one problem for a 12% quiz . It is true that he is putting some true effort and is obsessed about his subject. and wants us to be the same probably. But all that he does not understand is that we have other subjects and objects to take care of. so this time he is right in his place and i am right in mine.
YES i am perfectly alrite
Wow i am feeling so much better ......
Thanx to all for reading that post i know it was like watching "Saw-2" twice over.
It is in my complete senses that i write this post saying that - nobody did anything wrong to me and that i am not opressed. and as adviced by a few freinds that i need a break and some cold water and all dat let me assure one thing very clearly i don't need any advices comfort or sleep and rest. I am not going anywhere (untill a disciplinery action is not taken on me for writing a revolutionary post like this). "Main shweta kumari patheja apne sir par haath rakh kar kasam khaati hoon ki main summer holidays se pehle ghar nahi jaaongi"
A few people jus misunderstod me to the limit that they posted anonymous comments trying to shut me up. but please for heaven sake understand that i am not against u or any body for that matter. Jus a vent to my irritations and why not i have all right to do dat sorry " main toh raste se ja rahi thi ice-cream kha rahi thi tujhe mirchi lagi toh main kya karoon"
On a slightly serious note der are others who share the same concerns as i do and along with those who came askin whether i am alrite or not der were those who told me that i was so very true.
so to reiterate the purpose of this blog, it is not to malign anybody but to make ourselves realise that we are ohh so wrong at times.
saving the rest of my energy for the next post........
