Journey to the Himalayas - YHAI Saurkundi Pass

21.05.2011 ( Saturday) – Hyderabad to New Delhi

The day had eventually arrived, after a lot of counting down on facebook and texting! I was so excited, hadn’t slept at all the entire night. I had been packing late into the night till almost two and was shocked looking at the sheer amount of luggage I would have to carry! I remembered telling everyone about how they need to carry as much luggage as they can carry and not more, but alas I didn’t seem to follow my own advice! But I could carry it anyways and that was all was necessary. I was carrying this really cool rucksack from wildcraft that I had specially bought for the trip, only god knows how much of it I will be using later on.

Early in the morning I took a shower not knowing when I would be next! And then left for the station with my dearest mother in tow, and had to wait for THE gang at the station. First to come was Gauti (Gautam), and then came Ajay with his dad and sister! He looked like he was going for a meeting rather than on an adventure trip! And then trotted in Adi (Aditya) with his mum and dad who then started an interview with me to know how their baby was gonna be safe with us :P Then came in Pavan, the guy who was the only odd ‘man’ out literally. He had come to be with us through a long list of friends who never turned up but he did and we were glad he did. After Pavan at the last minute came in Monish. He called up almost everyone at the station and always consistently kept telling he would be there in 2minutes! Well he did finally and so that was the bunch of us who got in from Nampally station, Hyderabad!

As the train moved and finally the goodbyes done with, the train tugged along to Secunderabad station, where the rest of the gang would meet us! I was apprehensive about Mohit ever coming on time, and I called him a couple of times before he told me he was with the girls and I almost sighed with relief! I had a surprise in store for the guys, Amba was a surprise last minute joinee, and had booked his ticket just a couple of days before we left. He wanted to give the rest of the guys a surprise and so we didn’t tell any of them!

At Secunderabad, the rest of the gang, Madhuri, Snigdha, Mohit, Aniruddh and Amba got in! And as expected everyone was shocked seeing Amba in the train ;) and then there were eleven! :D The initial euphoria of getting together slowly waned as everyone was really sleepy, some of us were hell bent on not sleeping at all and ended up playing one game after the another!

Ajay, Monish, Snigdha and Me we started playing a quiz then later on joined by Amba and Adi. It was a grossly unfair quiz (My blog So can say whatever ;) ) They asked us questions about sports, well I didn’t back down either and asked them questions on wildlife and it went back and forth, a lot of knowledge gained and ‘lost’ in the process :P But I think it’s obvious here I with my oh so awesome IQ won the quiz, and it was quite apparent seeing Ajay switched teams and joined me ;)

We somehow dazed through the day, and then it was afternoon and the heat started getting to us. We were completely sweating it out, the damn place was just so hot! The train heated up, the water in the bottles got warm, cold drinks would get warm in minutes! This was Summer in India, and we were getting to know it the hard way. We took a break and got down at one of the longer halts to fill ourselves up with ice creams and milkshakes and whatever else Amul decided was good enough for us to drink! :P And then we sat down for lunch when the rest of the train was readying itself for snacks! I took incharge of the serving and managing department, well everyone knows how great a manager I am, don’t they? ;) After a huge and great lunch of Pulihora and Bobatlu (courtesy Ajay and Adi’s mums) accompanied by yumm fresh cut salad bought on the train we ended up going back to sleep and just simply lazing around.

We did not have a compartment reserved only for us, but because we were such a large group we somehow managed and almost owned the place! The train started getting hotter by the minute as we reached Nagpur and somehow we managed through it all and evening brought with it some respite. Well it also meant that the co-passengers had no respite :P because we had started our antakshari, it wasn’t about how fast you could think of a song, it became all about how bad you could sing! People started staring and peeping out of their compartments right to the end of the bogie towards us, to see where these excellent singers were sitting :P the choicest sad songs were picked and mind you almost all by Ajay, never knew he had such a lot of knowledge of hindi songs, even I don’t! :P

After an eventful and entertaining night, we had our dinner, more the remaining food and we wished we had more of the amazing Tomato curry and rotis that Amba’s mum had made for our breakfast! Dinner done, we had to be decent and put down our berths so we could not be a nuisance to our fellow passengers! Well we had already irked them enough, didn’t want to do more of it later during the night too :P

And up we went on to our berths, all of us crouching under the low roof. I had had very little sleep in the last 48 hours and was almost dozing off but didn’t want to, lest I miss out on something : ) And then I couldn’t have no more and drifted off to sleep....and it was an eventful day and a great beginning to our journey to the Himalayas :)